[29] These Annals were written in 1135.
The Man in the Moon.
[Illustration: From L. Richter.]
Every one knows that the moon is inhabited by a man with a bundle of
sticks on his back, who has been exiled thither for many centuries,
and who is so far off that he is beyond the reach of death.
He has once visited this earth, if the nursery rhyme is to be
credited, when it asserts that--
"The Man in the Moon
Came down too soon,
And asked his way to Norwich;"
but whether he ever reached that city, the same authority does not
state.
The story as told by nurses is, that this man was found by Moses
gathering sticks on a Sabbath, and that, for this crime, he was doomed
to reside in the moon till the end of all things; and they refer to
Numbers xv. 32-36:--
"And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a
man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day. And they that found him
gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the
congregation. And they put him in ward, because it was not declared
what should be done to him. And the Lord said unto Moses, The man
shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him
with stones without the camp. And all the congregation brought him
without the camp, and stoned him with stones till he died."
Of course, in the sacred writings there is no allusion to the moon.