Mother Hubbard Sanctified

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 46, 14 November 1907, Page 15

Mother Hubbard Sanctified

With what saint may Mother" Hubbard 'he identified, and why?

Several competitors in ' Lippincott's ' ' Hundred Prize Questions' named St. Elizabeth, though acknowledging that it is almost an insult to the sweetest of all the saints of the Roman calendar to give her name as the answer to this question. And yet—' Die Mutter von Ungarn '—the transition to 'Mother Hubbard' is simple enough. In the "'cupboard yt&s bare' of the nursery tale we find the 'empty treasmy' of Hungary, exhausted by Elizabeth to supply the wants of the. poor. In her seeking clothing for 'her poor dog' we see the fair saint giving away her otto robes, even tearing off her rich mantle to' bestow upon a beggar. In the search for 'white wine and red' we find Elizabeth's charity and visits to the hospitals which she had founded ; in'' the sickness of her four-footed companion, the sick and suffering whom • Elizabeth relieved with her own hands, and the leprous child for whom she cared, laying him in her own bed. Even as in the nursery tale Mother Hubbard thought of another, not of herself, so Elizabeth's unselfishness and self-denial shone forth' like stars. The 'bare cupboard' may also indicate the famine which afflicted Thuringia in 1226, which was followed by a plague, in which Elizabeth herself nursed the sufferers. She was born in 1207, and died November 19, 1231, being canonised four years after her death. The most celebrated picture of Elizabeth is that painted by Murillo for the Church of La Caridad (Gharity) at Seville.