The Goddess Eileithyia

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Eileithyia, She-Who-Aids-Women-in-Labour.
ALA3ÜY*
Alternate meanings: She-Who-Comes-to-Aid-Childbirth; {The-Ready-Comer}.
[to Whom the twenty-first day of June, day 172, is dedicated]

Geography/Culture: Greek: Pre-Hellenic, Aegean.
Linguistic Note: Greek orthography Epsilon-iota-lambda-epsilon-iota-theta-upsilon-iota-alpha, as if from Greek elethuia, 'the ready comer'.
Description: Goddess of birth; She Who is connected with acts of generation; Mid-wife of Deities; Helper of those in labour; Presider over childbirth; Liberator; She Who frees the infant from the womb, 'There is no love so strong as mother love'; Spinner of life's thread; the Good Weaver; the Deft Spinner; of Whom it said She sometimes delays birth by tieing knots in Her garments and crossing Her knees, or by squatting cross-legged and intertwining Her clasped fingers.
{Note: Graves says the above methods of delaying childbirth are still practised by Nigerian witches. Perhaps my mother's unease with, and discouragement of crossing my knees (I could never get a good reason from her for not doing it) stemmed from some remnant folk belief in the power of such a position, when assumed by a female, to hinder birth.}
To Whom Sacred: {wormwood; dogwood; southern-wood;} dog (and dog sacrifice); horse; spinning; Sosipolis (the name of a serpent housed in Her shrine at Elis and fed by a white-veiled virgin priestess with honey-cakes and water).
Male Associates: the babe Sosipolis, ----, who turned into a snake. Some say She is the Mother of Eros. She is associated with Hercules, ----, as having tried to delay his birth at the request of Hera.

Titles/Variants, etc:

Aphrodite, is the more familiar Mother of Eros.
Title of Artemis, High-Source-of-Water, as Goddess of birth.
She may have been identified with and sometimes called Clotho, Spinner, the first person of the triple Moirae, qv.
Some say She turned Galanthis, into a weasel for having supprised Her into undoing Her hex on Hercules birth.
Title of, and Daughter of: Hera, Our-Lady.
Transliteration variant: Ilithyia.
Title of, and attributes assimilated to Roman Juno-Lucina, She-Who-Brings-to-Light.
Identified by the Greeks with Egyptian: Nekhebet, Queen-of-Vultures.
See also Tyche, Who is also associated with Sosipolis.
Identified by the Greeks, with Etrusan Uni, {Dove}.
{I have a note that She was Christianised as Saint-Yllis, but with nothing further and no source. So far have been unable to confirm this.}

Source:Graves GMv2 118,d,g,4; ibid 138.o; Graves WG 367; IGEL 228; Walker 427. {Check Walker WEMS 880}

worked on: June 1990; July 1990; August 1991; June 1995
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