THE MAN IN THE MOON.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 29 August 1924, Page 6

THE MAN IN THE MOON.

CARRYING STICKS FOR. PUNISH-

MENT

We all feel very wise nowadays about ohe moon, and smile indulgently as we relate tales of its lonely old male inhabitant to the young.' Our wisdom, cased as it is upon all these maps and photographs and scientific theories,, is, however, of very recent origin, points out John o’ London’s Weekly. The /noon for generations was the greatest mystery of mankind —greater even than the sun. W 7 hen Galileo in 1609 first turned his telescope upon the moon he created throughout Europe a. much greater sensation than did Columbus when he discovered America. Till then the scientific men had. believed in Aristotle’s theory that the moon is a perfectly smooth and round body, its markings being the continents of the world reflected as in a mirror. Everyone else explained away the mysterious marks with myths. There is nothing more remarkable in history than the strange resemblances which exist between the.explanations given by different races. \

Almost all of them interpreted the marks as being a man carrying a bundle of wood. Furthermore, they all seemed to regard him as one ivho, on account of a crime, was condemned to eternal isolation on the moon. He was, indeed, a horrible example to young and old alike. In European countries the story _ generally had la so-called Biblical significance. In England it was Moses who found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath and expelled him to the moon. The reference seems to be to a passage in the fifteenth chapter of Numbers, hut the resemblance is only slight. In France the man in the moon is none other than Judas [scariot, and the wood a load which be must always carry as a punishment. The German version dealt with a peasant whb was reprimanded by an angel -or gathering faggots on a Sunday. He jeplied, “Sunday on earth, or Afonday in heaven, it is all the same to me.” For this he was sent to an eternal /noonday in heaven.