The motive of encoiling is mother symbolism.[70] This is verified by the fact that the trees, for example, bring forth again (like the whale in the legend of Jonah). They do that very generally, thus in the Greek legend the [Greek: Meli/ai ny/mphai][1] of the ash trees are the mothers of the race of men of the Iron Age. In northern mythology, Askr, the ash tree, is the primitive father. His wife, Embla, is the "Emsige," the active one, and not, as was earlier believed, the aspen. Askr probably means, in the first place, the phallic spear of the ash tree. (Compare the Sabine custom of parting the bride's hair with the lance.) The Bundehesh symbolizes the first people, Meschia and Meschiane, as the tree Reivas, one part of which places a branch in a hole of the other part. The material which, according to the northern myth, was animated by the god when he created men[71] is designated as trê = wood, tree.[72] I recall also [Greek: y(/lê] = wood, which in Latin is called materia. In the wood of the "world-ash," Ygdrasil, a human pair hid themselves at the end of the world, from whom sprang the race of the renewed world.[73] The Noah motive is easily recognized in this conception (the night journey on the sea); at the same time, in the symbol of Ygdrasil, a mother idea is again apparent. At the moment of the destruction of the world the "world-ash" becomes the guardian mother, the tree of death and life, one "[Greek: e)nko/lpion]."[2][74] This function of rebirth of the "world-ash" also helps to elucidate the representation met with in the Egyptian Book of the
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