Happy Mother's Day, EEBO!

Like success, EEBO has many mothers, and since today is Mother's Day (delightful history provided by the Swedish embassy to the US, to enlighten its diplomats), we at BtR want to honor them. Using "mother" as a title keyword through 1660 yields 196 records. Disregarding those that merely mention mothers generically (like the many mothers killed by their children, or the ballad mother who "beguiled her daughter") gives us, by my count, eighteen proper "Mother"s--that is, instances of the phrase "Mother X." Some are personifications: Mother England, Mother Tongue, Mother Church (and her Scottish sister, Mother Kirk), Mother Mass (appearing only in an "indictment" against her, not a very good Mother's Day present). Some are witches: Mother Dutton, Mother Devell, Mother Margaret, Mother Lakeland. Some are religious: Mother Mary, Mother Teresa (of Avila, not Calcutta), Mother Suor Maria Maddalena de Patsi (a Florentine Carmelite nun, whose children-biographers hailed from the English college at St Omer) Some are famous literary figures: Mother Bombie, Mother Hubberd. Two are well-known for brewing ale: Mother Bunch (the jestbook hostess) and Mother Watkins (whose ale was highly popular with the ladies--if you aren't familiar with Watkins' ale, well, there's many jokes I could make here, but instead I'll just refer you to STC 25107) The most popular Mother in EEBO is Mother Shipton, the prophetess. But my favorite EEBO Mother is Mother Cunny, one of the women who "approved" a short pamphlet printed in 1660 (Wing L151), which contains what may well be my favorite early-modern title page ever (click to enlarge): Where to start? Eugenius Theodidactus (the "Well-born Godly Teacher") was the pseudonym of astrologer, neoPlatonist, and Rosicrucian John Heydon (1629-c.1670; best unblocked link I could find), who (among other exploits) married fellow astrologer Nicholas Culpeper's widow and was charged in 1667 with conspiring with the Duke of Buckingham to astrologically calculate the date of the king's death. The DNB, not surprisingly, does not list this text among Heydon's actual works. The Wandering Whore, to which this piece responds, was a multi-part English adaptation (1660-61) of the mock-epic Puttana Errante, attributed (falsely, according to Ian Moulton's Before Pornography, p. 148) to Aretino. The Ladies Champion (so far as I can discern from the incomplete EEBO copy) is a satiric, obscene, somewhat Nashean mock-defense of prostitutes: these poor Creatures term'd whores will serve to supply a mans wants better than marrying a wench, having nothing to show for't but two pairs of legs in one pair of sheets ... a wife a man cannot put off as one may a whore with eighteen pence or a couple of boards[?] without any disturbance or greater prejudice, if he scape pockyfying .... The author also notes that prostitutes have so much sex that, unlike wives, they "seldom prove with Childe, as Peg Cross the short A-- Wanderer is," which makes me wonder exactly what Peg Cross's particular sexual talent was. The author speculates that the anti-prostitution author of The Wandering Whore is really a patron of whores or else has lost thy Evidence, or been serv'd as they do Eunuchs in other Countryes, where their stones are cut out, who would otherwise prove the stoutest stallions ... [and] who would lie tickling and towzing with his Mistriss with his standing T-- for three or four hours, nay all night sometimes together, without tyring, but with no Ejection, it being impossible ... Someone alert Sting. The sex-negative author of The Wandering Whore, Eugenius continues genially, would have [women] go to't with Carrets and Parsnips, as the milk-maids did with one another till they let them slip over head and ears, for want of tying a string about them irrecoverably ... And it only gets dirtier from there. The women listed as approvers on the title page are, I believe, the noms de guerre of various London prostitutes. In some way, the text is also a satire and mockery of John Heydon "the Universal Mountebank," but I don't know enough about Restoration politics and astrology to explain why or how this is. Of course, all of this is mere prelude to the greatest thing about this pamphlet's title page: PIMPMASTER-GENERAL Ladies, you really couldn't ask for a better Mother's Day gift from your son EEBO than that spectacular coinage.