THE MAN IN THE MOON.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1341, 31 March 1883, Page 3

THE MAN IN THE MOON.

[Coh.vhii.l Magazine.] The common account of the man in the moon that he is the individual whom the Israelites stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath, is, probably, only a modernised version of a much older story. The earliest form of the many similar stories seems to be that the moon, as a man, and a far-seeing one, has a power over mankind which he can exercise at will for their hurt or punishment, In the Eddii, the moon takes up two children, who were doing nothing more than carrying watcrpotson their shoulders. InSwabia children who look out of windows arc still sometimes cautioned against being earned off by the man in the moon, nor are they allowed, in imitation of the hare in the moon, to inako the figure of a hare on the walls with their fingers, In tho same district the sin of the man in the moon was simply that of working in Ms vinyard by moonlight ; ■ while according to another version, a woman was taken up for spinning at the window, and her flax and hair may still he seen there. To this day this primitive idea of sin against (he moon exists in Swabia, where it is still thought sinful to spin or sew in the moonlight, and it is a common thing to hear it said, ' Leave off working or you will go to the moon." Stories, therefore, oftlicmoon which connect the punishment of a residence there with offences against morality or Christian ordinances, may be supposed to have less antiquity than those which connect it with no sin at all, or sin against tho moon itself. For instance, such stories as the Bohemian one, that the moon having warned a thief against stealing peas, took him up when he. persisted in doing so ; or the Tyrolese and Herman tales, that the moon carried off a rascal who went about at night sticking sheep with a folk, or who held the brambles before the moon to conceal his theft of a horse, of cabbages, cherries, fish, or cheese—seem to be the adaptation of a more primitive belief to a changed and somewhat advanced state of thought rather than an expression of the earliest notion on the subject, The further addition to these stories, that the thief or profane Sabbath-breaker bears his load of cabbages or sticks to all eternity as an eternal warning to mankind, seems an additional corroboration of this hyphothesis,