MOON EATEN BY MICE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 559, 11 January 1929, Page 12

MOON EATEN BY MICE

NATIVES’ STRANGE BELIEFS Strange beliefs regarding the dark spots that appear on the surface of the moon are held in various pans of the world. The Eskimos have an original superstition. They say that one day Aniga. the moon, chased his sister, the sun, in his wrath. Just as he was about to catch her she suddenly turned round and threw a great handful of 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. Samoan islanders regard the spots as representing a woman carrying a child. Other southern peoples have similar beliefs, the woman aud child sometimes being altered into an old woman bearing a burden on her back. In the eastern part of Asia the spots are believed to be 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 | that she is burnt up regularly and replaced by a fresh moon, explain the j dark marks by saying that they are I the ashes of the former moon. Dakota Indians have it that the j moon is eaten by mice. The PolyI nesian superstition is that the souls of the dead feed on her. According to Hottentots, the moon suffers from headache, and when it gets very bad she hides her head with her hand and covers her face from the gaze of the world.