MAN IN THE MOON: THE MOST ANCIENT OF SUPERSTITIONS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19529, 11 July 1925, Page 17

MAN IN THE MOON: THE MOST ANCIENT OF SUPERSTITIONS.

Wo all feel very wise nowadays! about the moon, and smile indulgently as we relate tales of its lonely old male inhabitant to tho young. Our wisdom, based as it is upon all these maps and photographs and scientific theories, is, however, of very recent origin. The moon for generations was the greatest mystery of mankind —greater even than the sun. When 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 hud beHcrved in Aristofilo’s theory, that the moon is a perfectly smooth and round body, its markings being tho continents of tho world, reflected, os 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 tho marks as being a man carrying a bundle of wood. Furthermore, they all seemed to regard him as one who, on account of a crime, was condemned to eternal isolation on tho moon. Ho was, indeed, a horrible example to young and old alike.

In European countries the story generally had a so-called Biblical significance. In England it was Moses who found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath, and expelled him to the moon. Tho reference seems to be a passage in the fifteenth chapter of Numbers, but tho resemblance is only slight. In France the man in the moon is none other than Judas Iscariot, and the wood a load which be must always carry as a punishment.

Tho earliest English record appears in tho writings of a St. Albans monk. It is a sfihjht variation of the usual theme; A rustic in the moon, Whose burden weighs him down, This changeless truth reveals, He profits not who steals.

The German version dealt with a, peasant who was reprimanded by an angel for gathering faggots on a Sunday. Ho replied: “ Sunday on earth, or Monday in heaven, it is all the same to me.” For this he was sent to an eternal moon-day in heaven. * » *

A unique version is the Scandinavian. It attracted tho attention of the late Rev. Baring-Gould, who traced it to its origin. In Norway, not only was there a man in the moon, but some other of tho marks were deciphered as a woman. Their names were respectively Iljuki (pronounced Juki) and Till. The myth is that first Hjuki disappeared, or fell, and then Bil. When the moon was in this phase there was supposed to be much rain. In our nursery rhyme Hjuki becomes Jack, Bil becomes Jill, and the rain is nothing more than the upsetting of a pail of water. In certain races the man in the moon, far from being a criminal, is a ueing who, on account of great wisdom, was transferred to the moon, from which he could see all. To the Chinese he is Yuetao, who arranges all marriages. The medicine men of the old Red Indian tribes receive I their power by departing into the middle of a lake and holding consultation with the man in the moon.