The Magic Moon

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Title:     The Magic Moon
Author: Benjamin Taylor [More Titles by Taylor]

Certainly since, and probably long before, Job 'beheld the moon walking in brightness,' all the peoples of the earth have surrounded that luminary with legends, with traditions, with myths, and with superstitions of various kinds. In our time, and in our own country, the sentiment with which the orb of night is regarded is a soft and pleasing one, for

'That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,'

is supposed to look with approval upon happy lovers, and with sympathy upon those who are encountering the proverbial rough places in the course of true love. Why the moon should be partial to lovers one might easily explain on very prosaic grounds--perhaps not unlike the reasoning of the Irishman who called the sun a coward because he goes away as soon as it begins to grow dark, whereas the blessed moon stays with us most of the night!

Except Lucian and M. Jules Verne, one does not readily recall anyone who professes to have been actually up to the moon. Lucian had by far the most eventful experience, for he met Endymion, who entertained him royally, and did all the honours of the planet to which he had been wafted from earth in his sleep. The people of Moonland, Lucian assures us, live upon flying frogs, only they do not eat them; they cook the frogs on a fire and swallow the smoke. For drink, he says, they pound air in a mortar, and thus obtain a liquid very like dew. They have vines, only the grapes yield not wine, but water, being, in fact, hailstones, such as descend upon the earth when the wind shakes the vines in the moon. Then the Moonfolk have a singular habit of taking out their eyes when they do not wish to see things--a habit which has its disadvantages, for sometimes they mislay their eyes and have to borrow a pair from their neighbours. The rich, however, provide against such accidents by always keeping a good stock of eyes on hand.

Lucian also discovered the reason of the red clouds which we on earth often see at sunset. They are dyed by the immense quantity of blood which is shed in the battles between the Moonfolk and the Sunfolk, who are at constant feud.

The reason why the gentler sex are so fond of the moon is satirically said to be because there is a man in it! But who and what is he? An old writer, John Lilly, says: 'There liveth none under the sunne that knows what to make of the man in the moone.' And yet many have tried.

One old ballad, for instance, says:

'The man in the moon drinks claret,
But he is a dull Jack-a-Dandy.
Would he know a sheep's head from a carrot,
He should learn to drink cyder and brandy'

--which may be interesting, but is certainly inconsequential. It is curious, too, that while the moon is feminine in English, French, Latin and Greek, it is masculine in German and cognate tongues. Now, if there is a man in the moon, and if it be the case, as is asserted by antiquarians, that the 'man in the moon' is one of the most ancient as well as one of the most popular superstitions of the world, the masculine is surely the right gender after all. Those who look to Sanscrit for the solution of all mythological, as well as philological, problems will confirm this, for in Sanscrit the moon is masculine. Dr. Jamieson, of Scottish Dictionary fame, gets out of the difficulty by saying that the moon was regarded as masculine in relation to the earth, whose husband he was; but feminine in relation to the sun, whose wife she was!

With the Greeks the moon was a female, Diana, who caught up her lover Endymion; and Endymion was thus, probably, the first 'man in the moon.' The Jews, again, have a tradition that Jacob is in the moon; and there is the nursery story that the person in the moon is a man who was condemned for gathering sticks on Sunday. This myth comes to us from Germany--at all events, Mr. R. A. Proctor traced it there with much circumstantiality. Mr. Baring-Gould, however, finds in some parts of Germany a tradition that both a man and a woman are in the moon--the man because he strewed brambles and thorns on the church path to hinder people from attending Sunday mass, and the woman because she made butter on Sunday. This man carries two bundles of thorns, and the woman her butter-tub, for ever. In Swabia they say there is a mannikin in the moon, who stole wood; and in Frisia they say it is a man, who stole cabbages. The Scandinavian legend is that the moon and sun are brother and sister--the moon in this case being the male. The story goes that Mani, the moon, took up two children from earth, named Bil and Hjuki, as they were carrying a pitcher of water from the well Brygir, and in this myth Mr. Baring-Gould discovers the origin of the nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill. 'These children,' he says, 'are the moon-spots, and the fall of Jack, and the subsequent fall of Jill, simply represent the vanishing of one moon-spot after another as the moon wanes.'

In Britain there are references in the ancient monkish writings to a man in the moon; and in the Record Office there is an impression of a seal of the fourteenth century bearing the device of a man carrying a bundle of thorns in the moon. The legend attached is, 'Te Waltere docebo cur spinas phebo gero' ('I will teach thee, Walter, why I carry thorns to the moon'), which Mr. Hudson Taylor, who describes the seal, thinks to be an enigmatical way of saying that honesty is the best policy--the thorns having evidently been stolen.

Chaucer has more than one reference to the man in the moon, and so have most of the older poets. Shakespeare not only refers frequently to 'a' man, but in the Midsummer Night's Dream Peter Quince distinctly stipulates that the man who is to play 'the moon' shall carry 'a bush of thorns.'

The man in the moon, according to Dante, is Cain, carrying a bundle of thorns, and yet in that planet he found located only those comparatively mild sinners who had partly neglected their vows. A French legend, on the other hand, identifies 'the man' with Judas Iscariot. Per contra, in India the Buddhist legend places a hare in the moon, carried there by Indra for kindly service rendered to him on earth.

May not this hare of the Indian mythology be the moon-dog of some of our own legends? Peter Quince, we know, recommended that the moon should have a dog as well as a bundle of sticks, and the association of the quadruped in the story is very common. The North American Indians believe that the moon is inhabited by a man and a dog. The Maoris believe in the man, but not in the dog, which is not surprising when we remember the limited fauna of the antipodes. The Maori legend runs something like this. A man called Rona went out one night to fetch water from a well, but, falling, sprained his ankle so as to be unable to return home. All at once the moon, which had risen, began to approach him. In terror he clung to a tree, which gave way, and both tree and Rona fell on the moon, where they remain even unto this day. Here we have clearly a variation of the 'bundle of sticks' legend, but there is an absence of apparent cause and effect in the Maori legend which is unsatisfactory.

More precise is the Bushman legend, quoted by Dr. Bleek. According to this, the moon is a man who incurs the wrath of the sun, and is consequently pierced by the knife (the rays) of the latter, until there is only a little piece of him left. Then he cries for mercy for his children's sake, and is allowed to grow again until once more he offends his sunship; the whole process being repeated monthly.

Dr. Rink relates a curious tradition of the Eskimo, not quite quotable here, the gist of which is that a man who desired to make his sister his wife was transformed into the moon, while the woman became the sun. Something like the same legend has been traced as far south as Panama. Another notable thing about Eskimo traditions is that the moon is associated with fertility in woman. This superstition is both very ancient and very widespread, and, indeed, seems to have been the root both of the moon-worship of the Oriental nations and of the mysterious rites of the Egyptians referred to by Herodotus. Luna is identified by some mythologists with Soma of the Indian mythology, i.e., the emblem of reproduction.

In China, according to Dr. Dennys, the man in the moon is called Yue-lao, and he is believed to hold in his hands the power of predestining marriages. He is supposed to tie together the future husband and wife with an invisible silken cord, which never parts while life lasts. Miss Gordon-Cumming, in her interesting account of Wanderings in China, relates that, in the neighbourhood of Foo-Chow, she witnessed a great festival being held in honour of the full moon, which was mainly attended by women. There was a Temple-play, or sing-song, going on all day and most of the night, and each woman carried a stool so that she might sit out the whole performance. This recalls what Mr. Riley states in The Book of Days, as related by John Andrey in the seventeenth century: 'In Scotland, especially among the Highlanders, the women make a courtesy to the new moon, and our English women in this country have a touch of this, some of them sitting astride on a gate or stile the first evening the new moon appears, and saying, "A fine moon! God bless her!" The like I observed in Herefordshire.'

As illustrative of this superstition may be instanced a curious practice in this country, in olden times, of divination by the moon. It is quoted by Mr. Thiselton-Dyer from an old chap-book: 'When you go to bed (at the period of harvest moon) place under your pillow a Prayer-Book open at the part of the matrimonial service, which says, "With this ring I thee wed"; place on it a key, a ring, a flower, and a sprig of willow, a small heart-cake, a crust, and the following cards: a ten of clubs, nine of hearts, ace of spades, and ace of diamonds. Wrap all these in a thin handkerchief, and, on getting into bed, cover your hands, and say:

"Luna, every woman's friend,
To me thy goodness condescend:
Let me this night in visions see
Emblems of my destiny."

It is certainly hard to imagine pleasant dreams as the result of such a very uncomfortably-stuffed pillow.

In this same connection may be named other items of folklore related by Mr. Dyer. For instance, in Devonshire it is believed that if on seeing the first new moon of the year you take off one stocking and run across a field, you will find between two of your toes a hair which will be the colour of the lover you are to have. In Berkshire the proceeding is more simple, for you merely look at the new moon, and say:

'New moon, new moon, I hail thee!
By all the virtue in thy body,
Grant this night that I may see
He who my true love shall be!'

The result is guaranteed to be as satisfactory as it is in Ireland, where the people are said to point to the new moon with a knife, and say:

'New moon, true morrow, be true now to me,
That I to-morrow my true love may see!'

In Yorkshire, again, the practice was to catch the reflection of the new moon in a looking-glass, the number of reflections signifying the number of years which will elapse before marriage. All these superstitions are suggestive of that which Tylor calls 'one of the most instructive astrological doctrines'--namely, that of the 'sympathy of growing and declining nature with the waxing and waning moon.' Tylor says that a classical precept was to set eggs under the hen at new moon, and that a Lithuanian precept was to wean boys on a waxing and girls on a waning moon--in order to make the boys strong and the girls delicate. On the same grounds, he says, Orkney-men object to marry except with a growing moon, and Mr. Dyer says that in Cornwall, when a child is born in the interval between an old and a new moon, it is believed that he will never live to manhood.

Dr. Turner relates several traditions of the moon current in Samoa. There is one of a visit paid to the planet by two young men--Punifanga, who went up by a tree, and Tafaliu, who went up on a column of smoke. There is another of a woman, Sina, who was busy one evening cutting mulberry-bark for cloth with her child beside her. It was a time of famine, and the rising moon reminded her of a great bread-fruit--just as in our country it has reminded some people of a green cheese. Looking up, she said: 'Why cannot you come down and let my child have a bit of you?' The moon was so indignant at being taken for an article of food, that she came down forthwith and took up woman, child and wood. There they are to this day, for in the full moon the Samoans still see the features of Sina, the face of the child, and the board and mallet.

Mr. Andrew Lang finds in an Australian legend of the moon something oddly like Grimm's tale of the Wolf and the Kids, which, again, he likens to the old Greek myth of Cronos. The Australian legend is that birds were the original gods, and that the eagle especially was a great creative power. The moon was a mischievous being, who walked about the earth doing all the evil he could. One day he swallowed the eagle. The eagle's wives coming up, the moon asked where he could find a well. They pointed out one, and while he was drinking, they struck him with a stone tomahawk, which made him disgorge the eagle. This legend is otherwise suggestive from the circumstances that among the Greeks the eagle was the special bird of Zeus, and it was the eagle which carried off Ganymede.

There is another Australian fable that the moon was a man, and the sun a woman of doubtful reputation who appears at dawn in a coat of red kangaroo-skin belonging to one of her lovers. In Mexico, also, the moon is a man, across whose face an angry immortal once threw a rabbit; hence the marks on the surface of the planet. These same marks are accounted for in the Eskimo legend already mentioned as the impressions of the woman's sooty fingers on the face of her pursuer. By some mythologists the moon is thought to be Medea, but it is more common to interpret Medea as the daughter of the sun, i.e., the dawn.

It is certainly not a little curious to find the moon-lore, as the star-lore, having so many points of resemblance among such widely-separated and different peoples as the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Australians, the Eskimos, the Bushmen of South Africa, the North American Indians, and the New Zealand Maoris. The comparative mythologists would argue from this resemblance a common origin of the myth, and a distribution or communication from one race to the other. The folk-lore mythologists would infer nothing of the sort. They say there is nothing remarkable in all savage races imputing human motives and sex to the heavenly bodies, for, in fact, to this day there are savages, as in the South Pacific, who suppose even stones to be male and female, and to propagate their species. On this method of interpretation the hypothesis is not that the Australians, Indians, etc., received their myths from, say, the Greeks, either by community of stock or by contact and borrowing, but because the ancestors of the Greeks passed through the same intellectual condition as the primitive races we now know. And thus it is that in listening to the beautiful legends of the Greeks, we are but, as Bacon says, hearing the harsh ideas of earlier peoples 'blown softly through the flutes of the Grecians.'

Now, beside the personality of the moon, and the peculiar influence he or she is supposed to exercise on mortals, there has survived an old superstition that the moon has direct influence on the weather. Apropos of this association, there is a pretty little Hindoo legend which is current in Southern India, and which has been translated by Miss Frere, daughter of Sir Bartle Frere. This is the story as told her by her Lingaet ayah:

'One day the Sun, the Moon, and the Wind went out to dine with their uncle and aunt, the Thunder and Lightning. Their mother (one of the most distant stars you see far up in the sky) waited alone for her children's return. Now, both the Sun and the Wind were greedy and selfish. They enjoyed the great feast that had been prepared for them, without a thought of saving any of it to take home to their mother; but the gentle Moon did not forget her. Of every dainty dish that was brought round she placed a small portion under one of her beautiful long fingernails, that the Star might also have a share in the treat. On their return, their mother, who had kept watch for them all night long with her bright little eye, said: "Well, children, what have you brought home for me?" Then the Sun (who was eldest) said: "I have brought nothing home for you. I went out to enjoy myself with my friends, not to fetch a dinner for my mother!" And the Wind said: "Neither have I brought anything home for you, mother. You could hardly expect me to bring a collection of good things for you, when I merely went out for my own pleasure." But the Moon said: "Mother, fetch a plate; see what I have brought you;" and shaking her hands, she showered down such a choice dinner as never was seen before. Then the Star turned to the Sun, and spoke thus: "Because you went out to amuse yourself with your friends, and feasted and enjoyed yourself without any thought of your mother at home, you shall be cursed. Henceforth your rays shall ever be hot and scorching, and shall burn all that they touch. All men shall hate you, and cover their heads when you appear"; and this is why the sun is so hot to this day. Then she turned to the Wind, and said: "You also, who forgot your mother in the midst of your selfish pleasures, hear your doom. You shall always blow in the hot, dry weather, and shall parch and shrivel all living things, and men shall detest and avoid you from this very time"; and this is why the wind in the hot weather is still so disagreeable. But to the Moon she said: "Daughter, because you remembered your mother, and kept for her a share in your own enjoyment, from henceforth you shall be ever cool, and calm, and bright. No noxious glare shall accompany your pure rays, and men shall always call you blessed"; and that is why the moon's light is so soft, and cool, and beautiful even to this day.'

It is remarkable, nevertheless, that among Western peoples, at any rate, the moon has usually been associated with the uncanny. It is an old belief, for instance, that the moon is the abode of bad spirits; and in the old story of the Vampire it is notable that the creature, as a last request, begged that he might be buried where no sunlight, but only moonlight, might fall on his grave. Witches were supposed to be able to control the moon, as witness the remark of Prospero in The Tempest:

'His mother was a witch, and one so strong,
That could control the moon.'

The Rev. Timothy Harley, who has collected much moon-lore, suggests that if the broom on which witches rode to the moon be a type of the wind, 'we may guess how the fancy grew up that the airy creation could control those atmospheric vapours on which the light and humidity of the night were supposed to depend.'

But the 'glamour' of the moon is not a mere poetic invention or a lover's fancy. Mr. Moncure Conway reminds us that glam, in its nominative form glamir, is a poetical name for the moon, to be found in the Prose Edda. It is given in the Glossary as one of the old names for the moon. Mr. Conway also says that there is a curious old Sanscrit word, glau or glav, which is explained in all the old lexicons as meaning the moon. Hence 'the ghost or goblin Glam (of the old legend of Grettir) seems evidently to have arisen from a personification of the delusive and treacherous effects of moonlight on the benighted traveller.'

Similar delusive effects are found referred to in old Hindoo writings, as, for instance, in the following passages from Bhasa, a poet of the seventh century:

'The cat laps the moonbeams in the bowl of water, thinking them to be milk; the elephant thinks that the moonbeams threaded through the intervals of the trees are the fibres of the lotus-stalk; the woman snatches at the moonbeams as they lie on the bed, taking them for her muslin garment. Oh, how the moon, intoxicated with radiance, bewilders all the world!'

Again:

'The bewildered herdsmen place the pails under the cows, thinking that the milk is flowing; the maidens also put the blue lotus-blossom in their ears, thinking that it is the white; the mountaineer's wife snatches up the jujube fruit, avaricious for pearls. Whose mind is not led astray by the thickly-clustering moonbeams?'

Such was the 'glamour' of Glam (the moon) in ancient eyes, and still it works on lovers' hearts. The fascination has been felt and expressed by nearly all the poets, and by none better, perhaps, than by Sir Philip Sidney:

'With what sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What, may it be, that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrow tries?
Sure if that long with love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case.
I read it in thy looks--thy languish'd grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.'

The number of human beings who have, articulately or inarticulately, cried with Endymion, 'What is there in thee, Moon, that thou should'st move my heart so potently?' are not to be measured in ordinary figures.

To return, however, to the bad side of Luna's character. We read that in Assyria deadly influences were ascribed to the moon. In Vedic mythology there is a story, which Mr. Moncure Conway tells in Demonology and Devil-lore, of a quarrel between Brahma and Vishnu as to which was the first born. Siva interferes, and says he is the first born, but will recognise as his superior whoever is able to see the crown of his head or the soles of his feet. Vishnu thereupon transforms himself into a boar, pierces underground, and thus sees the feet of Siva, who salutes him on his return as the firstborn of the gods. Now, De Gubernatis regards this fable as 'making the boar emblem of the hidden moon'; and Mr. Conway thinks there is no doubt that the boar at an early period became emblematic of the wild forces of Nature. 'From being hunted by King Odin on earth, it passed to be his favourite food in Valhalla, and a prominent figure in his spectral hunt.' But it is with the moon, not with Odin, that we are at present concerned, and so note two curious items mentioned by Conway. In Sicilian legend, he says, 'Zafarana, by throwing three hog's bristles on embers, renews her husband's youth'; and in Esthonian legend, a prince, by eating pork, acquires the faculty of understanding the language of birds. All this opens up a very suggestive field of inquiry. Thus, Plutarch says that the reason why the Jews would not eat swine's flesh was because Adonis was slain by a boar, and Bacchus and Adonis, he says, were the same divinities. Now, if we turn to Herodotus, we find that wonderful narrator saying: 'The only deities to whom the Egyptians offer swine are Bacchus and Luna; to these they sacrifice swine when the moon is full, after which they eat the flesh,' which at other times they disdained. The meaning of these sacrifices is understood by those interested, and I do not propose to go further into the matter. All I wish to do is to point out the curious involvements, among so many nations, of the moon and the boar.

May we not even trace a connection with the superstition current in Suffolk, according to 'C. W. J.,' in The Book of Days? 'C. W. J.' says that in his part of the world it is considered unlucky to kill a pig when the moon is on the wane; and if it is done, the pork will waste in boiling. 'I have known,' he says, 'the shrinking of bacon in the pot attributed to the fact of the pig having been killed in the moon's decrease; and I have also known the death of poor piggy delayed or hastened so as to happen during its increase.' Truly the old superstitions die hard!

The moon's supposed influence on the weather is a matter of general knowledge. The writer last quoted mentions it as a very prevalent belief that the general condition of the atmosphere throughout the world, during any lunation, depends on whether the moon changed before or after midnight. Another superstition is, that if the new moon happens on a Saturday the weather will be bad during the month. On the other hand, in Suffolk the old moon in the arms of the new one is accounted a sign of fine weather; contrary to the belief in Scotland, where, it may be remembered, in the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, it is taken as a presage of storm and disaster.

Shakespeare has many allusions to the moon's influence on the weather, as: 'The moon, the governess of floods, pale in her anger, washes the air'; 'The moon, one thinks, looks with a watery eye; and when she weeps, weeps every little flower'; 'Upon the corner of the moon there hangs a vaporous drop profound'; and so forth. Then we have the old proverb: 'So many days old the moon is on Michaelmas Day, so many floods after.' Other beliefs are mentioned by Mr. Harley, such as, that if Christmas comes during a waning moon, we shall have a good year, and the converse; that new moon on Monday is a certain sign of good weather; that a misty moon indicates heavy rain; that the horns of the moon turned upward predict a good, and turned downward a bad, season; that a large star near the moon is a certain prognostication of storm.

In fact, the superstitions in this connection are legion, and are not confined to any country. They are as common in China, where the moon is still worshipped, as they are in England, where, in some places, old men still touch their hats and maidens still bob a courtesy in sight of the new moon. Thus the relics of moon-worship are about us still, as well as a strong popular belief that the moon is an active physical agent. That the actual influence of the moon on the tides lies at the basis of the belief in its influence on the weather is probable; and, at any rate, it is curious that the Persians held that the moon was the cause of an abundant supply of water and rain; while in a Japanese fairy-tale the moon is made to rule over the blue waste of the sea with its multitudinous salt waters. The horticultural superstitions about sowing and planting according to the age of the moon is, no doubt, a product of the fusion of the meteorological superstition and that of the old-world belief in Luna being the goddess of reproduction.

Any who have still doubts on the meteorological question cannot do better than refer to a letter of Professor Nichol's--once Professor of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow--which is quoted in The Book of Days. He asserts positively, as the result of scientific observation, that no relation whatever exists between the moon and the weather.

But does any exist between the moon and the brain? 'Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad'; and the moon was supposed to be the instrument--nay, still is, as the very word 'lunacy' implies. The old astrologers used to say that she governed the brain, stomach, bowels, and left eye of the male, and the right eye of the female. Some such influences were evidently believed in by the Jews, as witness Psalm cxxi.: 'The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.' It may be remarked that Dr. Forbes Winslow is not very decided in dismissing the theory of the influence of the moon on the insane. He says it is purely speculative, but he does not controvert it. The subject is, however, too large to enter upon here. Whether or not it be true that 'when the moon's in the full then wit's on the wane,' it certainly is not true, as appears to be believed in Sussex, that the new May Moon has power to cure scrofulous complaints.

Before leaving the subject, it is well to mention a remarkable coincidence to which Mr. Harley draws attention. In China, where moon-worship largely prevails, during the festival of Yue-Ping, which is held during the eighth month annually, incense is burned in the temples, cakes are made like the moon, and at full moon the people spread out oblations and make prostrations to the planet. These cakes are moon-cakes, and veritable offerings to the Queen of Heaven, who represents the female principle in Chinese theology. 'If we turn now to Jeremiah vii. 18, and read there, "The women knead dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto other gods," and remember that, according to Rashi, these cakes of the Hebrews had the image of the god or goddess stamped upon them, we are in view of a fact of much interest.' The interest becomes greater when we learn that in parts of Lancashire there exists a precisely similar custom of making cakes in honour of the Queen of Heaven.

From these facts, the discovery of two buns, each marked with a cross, in Herculaneum, and other evidences, we are driven to the conclusion that the 'hot-cross buns' of Christian England are in reality but a relic of moon-worship!

[The end]
Benjamin Taylor's essay: Magic Moon

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