"... Tell, I pray thee, whence the gloomy spots
Upon this body, which below on earth
Give rise to talk of Cain in fabling quaint?"
_Paradise_, cant. ii.
Chaucer, in the "Testament of Cresside," adverts to the man in the
moon, and attributes to him the same idea of theft. Of Lady Cynthia,
or the moon, he says,--
"Her gite was gray and full of spottis blake,
And on her brest a chorle painted ful even,
Bering a bush of thornis on his backe,
Whiche for his theft might clime so ner the heaven."
Ritson, among his "Ancient Songs," gives one extracted from a
manuscript of the time of Edward II., on the Man in the Moon, but in
very obscure language. The first verse, altered into more modern
orthography, runs as follows:--
"Man in the Moon stand and stit,
On his bot-fork his burden he beareth,
It is much wonder that he do na doun slit,
For doubt lest he fall he shudd'reth and shivereth.
...
"When the frost freezes must chill he bide,
The thorns be keen his attire so teareth,
Nis no wight in the world there wot when he syt,
Ne bote it by the hedge what weeds he weareth."
Alexander Necham, or Nequam, a writer of the twelfth century, in
commenting on the dispersed shadows in the moon, thus alludes to the
vulgar belief: "Nonne novisti quid vulgus vocet rusticum in luna
portantem spinas? Unde quidam vulgariter loquens ait:--
"Rusticus in Luna,
Quem sarcina deprimit una
Monstrat per opinas
Nulli prodesse rapinas,"
which may be translated thus: "Do you know what they call the rustic
in the moon, who carries the fagot of sticks?" So that one vulgarly
speaking says,--
"See the rustic in the Moon,
How his bundle weighs him down;
Thus his sticks the truth reveal,
It never profits man to steal."
Shakspeare refers to the same individual in his "Midsummer Night's
Dream." Quince the carpenter, giving directions for the performance of
the play of "Pyramus and Thisbe," orders: "One must come in with a
bush of thorns and a lantern, and say he comes in to disfigure, or to
present, the person of Moonshine." And the enacter of this part says,
"All I have to say is, to tell you that the lantern is the moon; I the
man in the moon; this thorn-bush my thorn-bush; and this dog my dog."