BELIEFS ABOUT THE MOON

Hokitika Guardian, 10 December 1928, Page 7

BELIEFS ABOUT THE MOON

FROM MANY COUNTRIES. Strange beliefs regarding the dark sjkjls that appear on the surface of the moon are hold in various part of the world. The Eskimos have an original superstition. They sav that one day Aniga (the moon) chased his sister (the sun) in his wrath. Just as lie was about to catch her she suddenly turned round and threw a handful ot soot in his face and escaped him; and of the soot he bears the traces to this day. South American Indians believe that a girl who had fallen in love with the moon, sprang toward it was caught and kept by it, and that it is her figure which is seen on the moon’s face. Samoa islanders regard the spots as representing a woman carving a child. Other southern peoples have similar beliefs, the woman and the child sometimes being altered into an old woman Iwaring a burden on her hack. In the eastern part of Asia the spots are believed to he a rabbit or a hare. The Chinese, in particular, regard them as a hare sitting up and pounding rice in a mortar. Siamese take the same view. Others see in the moon a man and woman working in a field. Curiously, the North American Indians have almost the same superstition as the Chinese. On old monuments in Central America the moon appears as a jug or vessel, out of which an animal like a rabbit is jumping. The inhabitants of North Western India, who account for the moon’s monthly disappearance by declaring tnat she is burnt up regularly and replaced by a fre.sli moon, explain tho hark marks by saying that they are the ashes of the former moon. Dakota Indians have it that the moon is eaten by mice. The Polynesian superstition is that the souls of the dead feed on her. According to Hottentots, the moon suffers from headache, and when it gets very had she hides her head with her hand and covers her face from the gaze of the world.