The Man in the Moon
Sups his sowins with a cutty-spoon.
A Northumberland dish called _sowins_, is composed of the coarse parts
of oatmeal, which are put into a tub, and covered with water, and then
allowed to stand till it turns sour. A portion of it is then taken out,
and sapped with milk. It may easily be imagined that this is a substance
not very accessible to the movements of a cutty or very small spoon.
Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 412, informs us that there are three
legends connected with the Man in the Moon; the first, that this
personage was Isaac carrying a bundle of sticks for his own sacrifice;
the second, that he was Cain; and the other, which is taken from the
history of the Sabbath-breaker, as related in the Book of Numbers. The
last is still generally current in this country, and is alluded to by
Chaucer, and many early writers. The second is mentioned by Dante,
Inferno, xx., Cain sacrificing to the Lord _thorns_, the most wretched
production of the ground,—
——chè già tiene 'l confine
D'amenduo gli emisperi, e tocca l'onda
Sotto Sibilia, Caino e le spine.
It appears that sowins were not the only food of the lunary inhabitant,
for it is related by children he once favoured middle-earth with his
presence, and took a fancy to some pease-porridge, which he was in such
a hurry to devour that he scalded his mouth:
The Man in the Moon
Came tumbling down,
And asked his way to Norwich;
He went by the south,
And burnt his mouth
With supping hot pease-porridge.
His chief beverage, as everybody knows, was claret:
The Man in the Moon drinks claret,
But he is a dull Jack-a-Dandy;
Would he know a sheep's head from a carrot,
He should learn to drink cyder and brandy.