Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1886 — MOON LORE. [ARTICLE]

MOON LORE.

_XraaarX»«yss>*a ' ' Mr. Harley, the author of an interesting volume on moon loje, has collected some of the legends- associated with the lunar orb, in which the fancies of different nations have located a man,, a woman, a hare, and a toad. The banishment of the man to the moon isi variously ascribed to his having gathered sticks on the Sabbath day, having strewed brambles in the church path on. Sunday, having stolen cabbages on Christmas eve, having stolen a bundle of thorns “from a hedge, etc. According to one version, the man is Cain, “offering to the Lord the cheapest gift from the fieldwhile another suggests Isaac bearing a burden of wood for the sacrifice of himself on Mount Moriah; and a third, Judas Iscariot The woman, according to one tradition, is Pandora, whose fateful box contained all the plagues with which humanity is afflicted; but the people of Mangaia see in her Ina, the pattern wife, always busy in the preparation of resplendent cloth-white clouds. In Samoa the tradition is that a woman named Sina, during a time of famine, was working in the evening twilight, beating out some bark with which to make native cloth. “The moon was just rising, and it reminded her of a great bread-fruit. Looking up to it, she said: ‘Why cannot you come down, and let my child have a bit of you?’ The moon was indignant at the idea of being eaten, came down forthwith, and took her up —child, board, mallet, and all.” When the moon is waxing, from about the eighth day to the full, a large patch is disclosed on the western side, in which imagination has traced a resemblance to a rabbit or hare.

Some Items for Moon-Gazers. Had we a railway to the moon it would take but a year to reach it, traveling at the rate of twenty-seven miles an hour. None of the heavenly bodies, except the sun and moon, have any direct influence on the earth. Old sailors think that if the direction in which the moon is at the time of its change from old to new moon be ascertained, the direction from which the wind will blow for the next seven days can be known. The moon supplies a small amount of heat and a great deal of light. It also affects the earth in respect to magnetism. If the moon were burned up ships in harbor could no longer get out, and those without could not get in. Seen from the planet Venus the moon would appear as a companion star or planet with the earth. If the moon were destroyed, the loss of heat, while hardly perceptible, would slightly lower the temperature at night. It is a maxim of farmers out West that all plants which are to grow up, like com or wheat, must, in order to prosper, have their seed sown when the moon is waxing, but all which are to grow down, like beets, parsnips, etc., must have the seed sown in the waning of the moon.