According to one myth, these were created by the four primeval brother-gods, and placed in the heavens, where they occupy a large mansion divided into four apartments, with a court in the middle.

In this court stand four enormous vases of water, and an infinite number of very small slaves (the rain drops) stand ready to dip out the water from one or the other vase and pour it on the earth in showers.[1] [Footnote 1: Ramirez de Fuen-leal, _Historia de los Mexicanos_, cap.

ii.] _Tlaloc_ means, literally, "The wine of the Earth,"[1] the figure being that as man's heart is made glad, and his strength revived by the joyous spirit of wine, so is the soil refreshed and restored by the rains.
_Tlaloc tecutli_, the Lord of the Wine of the Earth, was the proper title of the male divinity, who sent the fertilizing showers, and thus caused the seed to grow in barren places.

It was he who gave abundant crops and saved the parched and dying grain after times of drought.

Therefore, he was appealed to as the giver of good things, of corn and wine; and the name of his home, Tlalocan, became synonymous with that of the terrestrial paradise.
[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.