Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1883 — The Sun and the Moon. [ARTICLE]

The Sun and the Moon.

•In the German language, as is well known, the genders 6f the sun and moon are respectively feminine and masculine, contrary to the rule of the Roman languages, where, as in Latin, the sun is masculine and the moon feminine. . In our own language Shakespeare speaks of the moon as “she;” and in Egypt and Peru the sun and moon were regarded both as brother and sister and as husband and - wife. In Arabic, Mexican, Litlmaniau, Slavonic and Greenlandisli, the moon and Sun, according to Grimm, are related as in German. The variation of gender imi plies, of course, a difference of thought, but the fundamental conception that gave them genders at all in language or ui legend is clearly the same in either case, namely, that the sun and moon were actual human beings like ourselves. This thought still lingers in the Upper Palatinate of Bavaria, where it is still common, or was recently, to hear the sun spoken, of of Frau Sonne and the moon as Herr Mond. But yet more strange than this is the fact that in the same district the tale should still survive, which accounts inthe following suggestive way for the genders of the luminaries in Question: The moon and sun were man and wife, but the moon proving too cold a lover and too mueh addicted to sleep, his wife one day laid him a wager, by virtue of which the right of shining by day should belong in future to whichever of them should be the first to awake. Thfe moon laughed*, but accepted the wager, and awoke next day to find that the sun had for two hoars already been lighting up the world. As it was also a condition and consequence of their agreement that unless they awoke at the same time they should shine 'at different times, the effect of the wager was a permanent separation'—much to the , affliction of the triumphant sun, who, still retaining a spouse-like love for her husband, was and always is trying to repair the matrimonial breach. Eclipses are really due to tlieir meetings for the purpose of reconciliation; but as the pair always begin with mutual reproaches, the time comes for them to part before they have ceased to quarrel; and on that account the sun goes away blood-red with anger, and the teors of blood she weeps at her departure are often marked in the sky by the redly-setting sun. —Comhill Magazine,