[Footnote 1:  Tlalli, earth, oc from octli, the native wine made from the maguey, enormous quantities of which are consumed by the lower classes in Mexico at this day, and which was well known to the ancients.  Another derivation of the name is from tlalli, and onoc, being, to be, hence, “resident on the earth.”  This does not seem appropriate.]

His wife or sister, Chalchihuitlicue, She of the Emerald Skirts, was goddess of flowing streams, brooks, lakes and rivers.  Her name, probably, has reference to their limpid waters.[1] It is derived from chalchihuitl, a species of jade or precious green stone, very highly esteemed by the natives of Mexico and Central America, and worked by them into ornaments and talismans, often elaborately engraved and inscribed with symbols, by an art now altogether lost.[2] According to one myth, Quetzalcoatl’s mother took the name of chalchiuitl “when she ascended to heaven;"[3] by another he was engendered by such a sacred stone;[4] and by all he was designated as the discoverer of the art of cutting and polishing them, and the patron deity of workers in this branch.[5]

[Footnote 1:  From chalchihuitl, jade, and cueitl, skirt or petticoat, with the possessive prefix, i, her.]

[Footnote 2:  See E.G.  Squier, Observations on a Collection of Chalchihuitls from Central America, New York, 1869, and Heinrich Fischer, Nephrit und Jadeit nach ihrer Urgeschichtlichen und Ethnographischen Bedeutung, Stuttgart, 1880, for a full discussion of the subject.]

[Footnote 3:  Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Pt. ii, Lam. ii.]

[Footnote 4:  See above, chapter iii, Sec.3]

[Footnote 5:  Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, Lib. vi, cap. xxiv.]

The association of this stone and its color, a bluish green of various shades, with the God of Light and the Air, may have reference to the blue sky where he has his home, or to the blue and green waters where he makes his bed.  Whatever the connection was, it was so close that the festivals of all three, Tlaloc, Chalchihuitlicue and Quetzalcoatl, were celebrated together on the same day, which was the first of the first month of the Aztec calendar, in February.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Sahagun, Hisioria, Lib. ii, cap. i.  A worthy but visionary Mexican antiquary, Don J.M.  Melgar, has recognized in Aztec mythology the frequency of the symbolism which expresses the fertilizing action of the sky (the sun and rains) upon the earth.  He thinks that in some of the manuscripts, as the Codex Borgia, it is represented by the rabbit fecundating the frog.  See his Examen Comparativo entre los Signos Simbolicos de las Teogonias y Cosmogonias antiguas y los que existen en los Manuscritos Mexicanos, p. 21 (Vera Cruz, 1872).]

In his character as god of days, the deity who brings back the diurnal suns, and thus the seasons and years, Quetzalcoatl was the reputed inventor of the Mexican Calendar.  He himself was said to have been born on Ce Acatl, One Cane, which was the first day of the first month, the beginning of the reckoning, and the name of the day was often added to his own.[1] As the count of the days really began with the beginning, it was added that Heaven itself was created on this same day, Ce Acatl.[2]