"_Cal._ Hast thou not dropt from heaven?
"_Steph._ Out o' th' moon, I do assure thee. I was the man in
th' moon when time was.
"_Cal._ I have seen thee in her; and I do adore thee. My
mistress showed me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush."
The dog I have myself had pointed out to me by an old Devonshire
crone. If popular superstition places a dog in the moon, it puts a
lamb in the sun; for in the same county it is said that those who see
the sun rise on Easter-day, may behold in the orb the lamb and flag.
I believe this idea of locating animals in the two great luminaries of
heaven to be very ancient, and to be a relic of a primeval
superstition of the Aryan race.
There is an ancient pictorial representation of our friend the
Sabbath-breaker in Gyffyn Church, near Conway. The roof of the
chancel is divided into compartments, in four of which are the
Evangelistic symbols, rudely, yet effectively painted. Besides these
symbols is delineated in each compartment an orb of heaven. The sun,
the moon, and two stars, are placed at the feet of the Angel, the
Bull, the Lion, and the Eagle. The representation of the moon is as
below; in the disk is the conventional man with his bundle of sticks,
but without the dog. There is also a curious seal appended to a deed
preserved in the Record Office, dated the 9th year of Edward the Third
(1335), bearing the man in the moon as its device. The deed is one of
conveyance of a messuage, barn, and four acres of ground, in the
parish of Kingston-on-Thames, from Walter de Grendesse, clerk, to
Margaret his mother. On the seal we see the man carrying his sticks,
and the moon surrounds him. There are also a couple of stars added,
perhaps to show that he is in the sky. The legend on the seal reads:--
"Te Waltere docebo
cur spinas phebo
gero,"
which may be translated, "I will teach thee, Walter, why I carry
thorns in the moon."
[Illustration: {Representation of the moon in Gyffyn Church.}]
[Illustration: {The seal with the legend visible.}]
The general superstition with regard to the spots in the moon may
briefly be summed up thus: A man is located in the moon; he is a thief
or Sabbath-breaker;[34] he has a pole over his shoulder, from which
is suspended a bundle of sticks or thorns. In some places a woman is
believed to accompany him, and she has a butter-tub with her; in other
localities she is replaced by a dog.
The belief in the Moon-man seems to exist among the natives of British
Columbia; for I read in one of Mr. Duncan's letters to the Church
Missionary Society, "One very dark night I was told that there was a
moon to see on the beach. On going to see, there was an illuminated
disk, with the figure of a man upon it. The water was then very low,
and one of the conjuring parties had lit up this disk at the water's
edge. They had made it of wax, with great exactness, and presently it
was at full. It was an imposing sight. Nothing could be seen around
it; but the Indians suppose that the medicine party are then holding
converse with the man in the moon.... After a short time the moon
waned away, and the conjuring party returned whooping to their house."
Now let us turn to Scandinavian mythology, and see what we learn from
that source.
MAcni, the moon, stole two children from their parents, and carried
them up to heaven. Their names were Hjuki and Bil. They had been
drawing water from the well Byrgir, in the bucket SA"gr, suspended
from the pole Simul, which they bore upon their shoulders. These
children, pole, and bucket were placed in heaven, "where they could be
seen from earth." This refers undoubtedly to the spots in the moon;
and so the Swedish peasantry explain these spots to this day, as
representing a boy and a girl bearing a pail of water between them.
Are we not reminded at once of our nursery rhyme--
"Jack and Jill went up a hill
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down, and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after"?
This verse, which to us seems at first sight nonsense, I have no
hesitation in saying has a high antiquity, and refers to the Eddaic
Hjuki and Bil. The names indicate as much. Hjuki, in Norse, would be
pronounced Juki, which would readily become Jack; and Bil, for the
sake of euphony, and in order to give a female name to one of the
children, would become Jill.
The fall of Jack, and the subsequent fall of Jill, simply represent
the vanishing of one moon-spot after another, as the moon wanes.
But the old Norse myth had a deeper signification than merely an
explanation of the moon-spots.
Hjuki is derived from the verb jakka, to heap or pile together, to
assemble and increase; and Bil from bila, to break up or dissolve.
Hjuki and Bil, therefore, signify nothing more than the waxing and
waning of the moon, and the water they are represented as bearing
signifies the fact that the rainfall depends on the phases of the
moon. Waxing and waning were individualized, and the meteorological
fact of the connection of the rain with the moon was represented by
the children as water-bearers.
But though Jack and Jill became by degrees dissevered in the popular
mind from the moon, the original myth went through a fresh phase, and
exists still under a new form. The Norse superstition attributed
_theft_ to the moon, and the vulgar soon began to believe that the
figure they saw in the moon was the thief. The lunar specks certainly
may be made to resemble one figure, and only a lively imagination can
discern two. The girl soon dropped out of popular mythology, the boy
oldened into a venerable man, he retained his pole, and the bucket
was transformed into the thing he had stolen--sticks or vegetables.
The theft was in some places exchanged for Sabbath-breaking,
especially among those in Protestant countries who were acquainted
with the Bible story of the stick-gatherer.
The Indian superstition is worth examining, because of the connection
existing between Indian and European mythology, on account of our
belonging to the same Aryan stock.
According to a Buddhist legend, SAckyamunni himself, in one of his
earlier stages of existence, was a hare, and lived in friendship with
a fox and an ape. In order to test the virtue of the Bodhisattwa,
Indra came to the friends, in the form of an old man, asking for food.
Hare, ape, and fox went forth in quest of victuals for their guest.
The two latter returned from their foraging expedition successful, but
the hare had found nothing. Then, rather than that he should treat the
old man with inhospitality, the hare had a fire kindled, and cast
himself into the flames, that he might himself become food for his
guest. In reward for this act of self-sacrifice, Indra carried the
hare to heaven, and placed him in the moon.[35]
Here we have an old man and a hare in connection with the lunar
planet, just as in Shakspeare we have a fagot-bearer and a dog.
The fable rests upon the name of the moon in Sanskrit, ASec.aASec.in, or "that
marked with the hare;" but whether the belief in the spots taking the
shape of a hare gave the name ASec.aASec.in to the moon, or the lunar name
ASec.aASec.in originated the belief, it is impossible for us to say.
Grounded upon this myth is the curious story of "The Hare and the
Elephant," in the "Pantschatantra," an ancient collection of Sanskrit
fables. It will be found as the first tale in the third book. I have
room only for an outline of the story.