Moon Lore Part 8

"'He's a-going out with the tide,' said Mr. Peggotty to me, behind his hand.

"My eyes were dim, and so were Mr. Peggotty's; but I repeated in a whisper, 'With the tide?'

"'People can't die, along the coast,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'except when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born, unless it's pretty nigh in-not properly born, till flood. He's a-going out with the tide. It's ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it turns, he'll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next tide.'

"'He's coming to himself,' said Peggotty.

"Mr. Peggotty touched me, and whispered with much awe and reverence, 'They are both a-going out fast.'

"He now opened his eyes.

"I was on the point of asking him if he knew me, when he tried to stretch out his arm, and said to me distinctly, with a pleasant smile,--

"'Barkis is willin'.'

"And, it being low water, he went out with the tide." [342]

That the rise and fall of our tides twice a day, with spring and neap tides twice in the lunar month, are the effect of the combined action of the sun and moon, is never called in question. The water under the moon is drawn up from the earth, and the earth is drawn from the water on the opposite side, the consequence of which is two high tides in the two hemispheres at the same hour. The rotation of the earth bringing the same point of the ocean twice under the moon's meridian, once under the upper meridian and once under the lower, each hemisphere has two high tides in the course of the day. The spring tide is caused by the attractive force of the sun and moon acting in conjunction, or in a straight line; and the neap tide is caused by the moon being in quadrature, or when the sun and moon are at right angles to each other. They counteract each other's influence, and our tides arc therefore low. So much is science; but the connection of ebb and flow with life and death is superst.i.tion.

From a very remote antiquity, in the twilight of natural astrology, a belief arose that changes in the weather were occasioned by the moon. [343] That the notion lives on, and will not soon die, is clear to any one who is conversant with current literature and common folk-lore. Even intelligent, well-informed people lend it countenance. Professor Newcomb, of Was.h.i.+ngton, rightly says: "Thus far there is no evidence that the moon directly affects the earth or its inhabitants in any other way than by her attraction, which is so minute as to be entirely insensible except in the ways we have described. A striking ill.u.s.tration of the fallibility of the human judgment when not disciplined by scientific training is afforded by the opinions which have at various times obtained currency respecting a supposed influence of the moon on the weather. Neither in the reason of the case nor in observations do we find any real support for such a theory. It must, however, be admitted that opinions of this character are not confined to the uneducated." [344]

Mr. Edward B. Tylor holds similar language: "The notion that the weather changes with the moon's quarterings is still held with great vigour in England. That educated people to whom exact weather records are accessible should still find satisfaction in the fanciful lunar rule, is an interesting case of intellectual survival." [345] No marvel that the "heathen Chinee" considers lunar observations as forecasting scarcity of provisions he is but of the same blood with his British brother, who takes his tea and sends him opium. "The Hakkas (and also many Puntis) believe that if in the night of the fifteenth day of the eighth month (mid autumn) there are clouds obscuring the moon before midnight, it is a sign that oil and salt will become very dear. If, however, there are clouds obscuring the moon after midnight, the price of rice will, it is supposed, undergo a similar change." [346]

One of our provincial proverbs is: "So many days old the moon is on Michaelmas Day, so many floods after." Sometimes a proverb is a short saying spoken after long experience; at other times it is a small crystal left after a lengthy evaporation. In certain instances our rural apothegms are sacred relics of extinct but canonized fictions.

An equally wise prediction is that if Christmas comes during a waxing moon we shall have a very good year; and the nearer to the new moon, the better. But if during a waning moon, a hard year; and the nearer the end of the moon, so much the worse. Another sage belief is that the condition of the weather is dependent upon the day of the week upon which the new moon chances to fall. We are told that "Dr. Forster, of Bruges, well known as a meteorologist, declares that by the _Journal_ kept by his grandfather, father, and self, ever since 1767, to the present time, whenever the new moon has fallen on a _Sat.u.r.day_, the following _twenty days_ have been wet and windy, in nineteen cases out of twenty." [347] In Italy it is said, "If the moon change on a Sunday, there will be a flood before the month is out." New moon on Monday, or moon-day, is, of course, everywhere held a sign of good weather and luck.

That a misty moon is a misfortune to the atmosphere is widely supposed. In Scotland it is an agricultural maxim among the canny farmers that--

"If the moon shows like a silver s.h.i.+eld, You need not be afraid to reap your field But if she rises haloed round, Soon we'll tread on deluged ground." [348]

Others say that a mist is unfavourable only with the new moon, not with the old.

"An old moon in a mist Is worth gold in a kist (chest) But a new moon's mist Will never lack thirst," [349]

is a rugged rhyme found in several places. In Cornwall the idea is that--

"A fog and a small moon Bring an easterly wind soon."

The east wind, as we know, is dry. Two of the Shepherd of Banbury's rules are:

"xii. If mists in the new moon, rain in the old.

xiii. If mists in the old, rain in the new moon." [350]

One thing is a meteorological certainty: the full moon very frequently clears the sky. But this may be partly accounted for by the fact that a full moon shows the night to be clear, which in the moon's absence might be called cloudy.

Another observation shows that in proportion to the clearness of the night is its cold. The clouds covering the earth with no thick blanket, it radiates its heat into s.p.a.ce. This has given rise to the notion that the moon itself reduces our temperature. It is _cold_ at night without doubt. But the cold moon is so warm when the sun is s.h.i.+ning full on its disk that no creature on earth could endure a moment's contact with its surface. The centre of the "pale-faced moon" is hotter than boiling water. This thought may cheer us when "the cold round moon s.h.i.+nes deeply down." We may be pardoned if we take with a tincture of scepticism the following statement "Native Chinese records aver that on the 18th day of the 6th moon, 1590, snow fell one summer night from the midst of the moon. The flakes were like fine willow flowers on shreds of silk." [351] Instead of cold, it is more likely that the white moon gives us heat, for from Melloni's letter to Arago it seems to be already an ascertained fact.

Having concentrated the lunar rays with a lens of over three feet diameter upon his thermoscopic pile, Melloni found that the needle had deviated from 0 6' to 4 8', according to the lunar phase. Other thermoscopes may give even larger indications; but meanwhile the Italian physicist has exploded an error with a spark of science.

"Another weather guide connected with the moon is, that to see 'the old moon in the arms of the new one' is reckoned a sign of fine weather; and so is the turning up of the horns of the new moon. In this position it is supposed to retain the water, which is imagined to be in it, and which would run out if the horns were turned down."

[352] On this novel idea of a lunar bason or saucer, Southey writes from "Keswick, December 29th, 1828," as follows:--"Poor Littledale has this day explained the cause of our late rains, which have prevailed for the last six weeks, by a theory which will probably be as new to you as it is to me. 'I have observed,' he says, 'that, when the moon is turned upward, we have fine weather after it; but if it is turned down, then we have a wet season; and the reason I think is, that when it is turned down, it holds no water, like a bason, you know, and then down it all comes.' There, it will be a long while before the march of intellect shall produce a theory as original as this, which I find, upon inquiry, to be the popular opinion here." [353] George Eliot has taken notice of this fancy in the burial of "poor old Thias Bede." "They'll ha' putten Thias Bede i' the ground afore ye get to the churchyard," said old Martin, as his son came up. "It 'ud ha' been better luck if they'd ha' buried him i' the forenoon when the rain was fallin'; there's no likelihoods of a drop now, an' the moon lies like a boat there, dost see? That's a sure sign o' fair weather; there's a many as is false, but that's sure." [354]

In Dekker's _Match Me in London_, Act i., the King says, "My Lord, doe you see this change in the moone? Sharp hornes doe threaten windy weather."

In the famous ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, concerning whose origin there has been so much discussion, without eliciting any very accurate information, we read:

"O ever alack! my master dear, I fear a deadly storm.

I saw the new moon late yestreen, Wi' the auld moon in her arm And if ye gang to sea, maister, I fear we'll suffer harm." [355]

Jamieson informs us that "prognostications concerning the weather, during the course of the month, are generally formed by the country people in Scotland from the appearance of the _new moon_. It is considered as an almost infallible presage of bad weather, if she _lies sair on her back_, or when her horns are pointed towards the zenith. It is a similar prognostic, when the new moon appears _wi'

the auld moon in her arm_, or, in other words, when that part of the moon which is covered with the shadow of the earth is seen through it." [356] The last sentence is a _lapsus calami_. Dr. Jamieson should have said, when that part of the moon which is turned from the sun is dimly visible through the reflected light of the earth.

"At Whitby, when the moon is surrounded by a halo with watery clouds, the seamen say that there will be a change of weather, for the 'moon dogs' are about." [357] At Ulceby, in Lincolns.h.i.+re, "there is a very prevalent belief amongst sailors and seafaring men that when a large star or planet is seen near the moon, or, as they express it, 'a big star is d.o.g.g.i.ng the moon,' that this is a certain prognostication of wild weather. I have met old sailors having the strongest faith in this prediction, and who have told me that they have verified it by a long course of observation." [358]

"Some years ago," says a writer from Torquay, "an old fisherman of this place told me, on the morning next after a violent gale, that he had foreseen the storm for some time, as he had observed one star ahead of the moon, towing her, and another astern, chasing her. 'I know'd 'twas coming, safe enough.'" [359] The moon was simply in apparent proximity to two stars; but the old Devonian descried mischief.

The following incident from Zulu life will be of interest. "1878. A curious phenomenon occurred 7th January. A bright star appeared near the moon at noonday, the sun s.h.i.+ning brightly. _Omen_--The natives from this foretold the coming war with the Amazulu. Intense heat and drought prevailed at this time." [360]

Hitherto we have reviewed only the imaginary influences of the moon over inanimate nature and what are called irrational beings.

We have seen that this potent orb is supposed to affect the lightning and thunder of the air; the rocks and seas, the vegetables and animals of the earth; and generally to govern terrestrial matters in a manner altogether its own. Furthermore, we have found these imaginations rooted in all lands, and among men whose culture might have been expected to refuse such fruitless excrescences.

When cla.s.sical authors counsel us to set eggs under the hen at new moon, and to root up trees only when the moon is waning and after mid-day; and when "the wisest, brightest," if not the "meanest of mankind" seriously attributes to the moon the extraction of heat, the furtherance of putrification, the increase of moisture, and the excitement of animal spirits, with the increase of hedges and herbs if cut or set during certain phases of that body, we can but repeat to ourselves the saying, "The best of men are but men at the best." The half, however, has not been told; and we must now pa.s.s on to speak of lunar influences upon the birth, health, intellect, and fortune of microcosmical man.

In the system of astrology, which professed to interpret the events of human existence by the movements of the stars, the moon was one of the primary planets. As man was looked upon in the light of a microcosm, or world in miniature, so the several parts of his const.i.tution were viewed as but a reproduction in brief of the great parts of the vast organism. Creation was a living, intelligent being, whose two eyes were the sun and the moon, whose body was the earth, whose intellect was the ether, whose wings were the heavens.

Man was an epitome of all this; and as the functions of the less were held to correspond with the functions of the greater, the microcosm with the macrocosm, man's movements could be inferred by first ascertaining the motions of the universe. The moon, having dominion in the twelve "houses" of heaven, through which she pa.s.sed in the course of the year, her _aspects_ to the other bodies were considered as of prime significance, in indicating benignant or malignant influences upon human life. This system, which was based upon ignorance and superst.i.tion, and upheld by arbitrary rules and unreasoning credulity, is so repugnant to all principles of science and common sense, that it would be unworthy of notice, if we did not know that to this day there are educated persons still to be seen poring over old almanacs and peering into the darkness of divination, to read their own fortune or that of their children by the dim light of some lucky or unlucky configuration of the planets with the moon. The wheel of fortune yet revolves, and the despotism of astrology is not dead. The lunar influence is considered supreme in the hour of birth. Nay, with some the moon is potential even before birth. In Iceland it is said: "If a pregnant woman sit with her face turned towards the moon, her child will be a lunatic." [361] And this imagination obtains at home as well as abroad. We are told that "astrologers ascribe the most powerful influence to the moon on every person, both for success and health, according to her zodiacal and mundane position at birth, and her aspects to other planets. The sensual faculties depend almost entirely on the moon, and as she is aspected so are the moral or immoral tendencies. She has great influence always upon every person's const.i.tution." [362] This is the doctrine of a book published not thirty years ago. Another work, issued also in London, says, "Cynthia, 'the queen of heaven,' as the ancients termed her, or the MOON, the companion of the earth, and chief source of our evening light, is a cold, moist, watery, phlegmatic planet, variable to an extreme, in astrological science; and partaking of good or evil, as she is aspected by good or evil stars. When angular and unafflicted in a nativity, she is the promissory pledge of great success in life and continual good fortune. She produces a full stature, fair, pale complexion, round face, gray eyes, short arms, thick hands and feet, smooth, corpulent, and phlegmatic body. Blemishes in the eyes, or a peculiar weakness in the sight, is the result of her being afflicted by the Sun. Her conjunction, semi-s.e.xtile, s.e.xtile, or trine, to Jupiter, is exceeding fortunate; and she is said by the old Astrologers to govern the _brain_, _stomach_, _bowels_, _left eye_ of the male, and _right eye_ of the female. Her usual diseases are rheumatism, consumption, palsy, cholic, apoplexy, vertigo, lunacy, scrophula, smallpox, dropsy, etc.; also most diseases peculiar to young children."

[363] Such teaching is not a whit in advance of Plutarch's odd dictum that the moon has a "special hand in the birth of children."

If this belief have disciples in London, it is not by any means confined to that city. In Sweden great influence is ascribed to the moon, not only in regulating the weather, but as affecting all the affairs of man's daily life. The lower orders, and many of the better sort, will not fell a tree for agricultural purposes in the wane of that orb, lest it should shrink and decay; nor will the housewife then slaughter for her family, lest the meat should shrivel and melt away in the pot. The moon is the domestic deity, whom the household must fear: the Fortuna who presides over the daily doings of sublunary mortals. In the matter of birth, we find Francis Bacon affirming that "the calculation of nativities, fortunes, good or bad hours of business, and the like fatalities, are mere levities that have little in them of certainty and solidity, and may be plainly confuted by physical reasons"; [364] and yet in his Natural History he writes: "It may be that children and young cattle that are brought forth in the full of the moon, are stronger and larger than those that are brought forth in the wane." [365] There surely can be no superst.i.tion in studying the moon's conjunctions and oppositions if her influence in a nativity have the slightest weight. And this influence is still widely maintained by philosophers who read Bacon, as well as by the peasants who read nothing at all. "In Cornwall, when a child is born in the interval between an old moon and the first appearance of a new one, it is said that it will never live to reach the age of p.u.b.erty. Hence the saying, 'no moon, no man.' In the same county, too, when a boy is born in the wane of the moon, it is believed that the next birth will be a girl, and vice versa; and it is also commonly said that when a birth takes place on the 'growing of the moon' the next child will be of the same s.e.x." [366]

As a natural proceeding, we find that the moon has influence when the child is weaned. Caledonian mothers very carefully observe the lunar phases on this account. Jamieson tells us that "this superst.i.tion, with respect to the fatal influence of a waning moon, seems to have been general in Scotland. In Angus, it is believed, that, if a child be put from the breast during the waning of the moon, it will decay all the time that the moon continues to wane." [367] So in the heart of Europe, "the Lithuanian precept to wean boys at a waxing, but girls on a waning moon, no doubt to make the boys st.u.r.dy and the girls slim and delicate, is a fair match for the Orkney Islanders' objection to marrying except with a growing moon, while some even wish for a flowing tide." [368] As to marriage, the ancient Greeks considered the day of the full moon the most propitious period for that ceremony. In Euripides, Clytemnestra having asked Agamemnon when he intended to give Iphigenia in marriage to Achilles, he replies, "When the full moon comes forth with good luck." In Pindar, too, this season is preferred. [369]

Lunar influences over physical health and disease must be a fearful contemplation to those who are of a superst.i.tious turn. There is no malady within the whole realm of pathology which the moon's destroying angel cannot inflict; and from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot the entire man is at the mercy of her beams. We have all seen those disgusting woodcuts to which the following just condemnation refers: "The moon's influence on parts of the human body, as given in some old-fas.h.i.+oned almanacs, is an entire _fallacy_; it is most untrue and absurd, often indecent, and is a discredit to the age we live in." [370] Most of these inartistic productions are framed upon the a.s.sumption of the old alchymists that the physiological functions were regulated by planetary influence. The sun controlled the heart, the moon the brain, Jupiter the lungs, Saturn the spleen, Mars the liver, Venus the kidneys, and Mercury the reproductive powers. But even with this distribution among the heavenly bodies the moon was allowed plenipotentiary sway. As in mythology it is the G.o.d or G.o.ddess of water, so in astrology it is the embodiment of moisture, and therefore rules the humours which circulate throughout the human system. No wonder that phlebotomy prevailed so long as the reign of the moon endured.

"This lunar planet," says La Martiniere, "is damp of itself, but, by the radiation of the sun, is of various temperaments, as follows: in its first quadrant it is warm and damp, at which time it is good to let the blood of sanguine persons; in its second it is warm and dry, at which time it is good to bleed the choleric; in its third quadrant it is cold and moist, and phlegmatic people may be bled; and in its fourth it is cold and dry, at which time it is well to bleed the melancholic."

Whatever the moon's phase may be, let blood be shed! We are reminded here of that sanguifluous theology, which even Christians of a certain temperament seem to enjoy, while they sing of fountains filled with blood: as though a G.o.d of love could take delight in the effusion of precious life. La Martiniere continues, and physicians will make a note of his words: "It is a thing quite necessary to those who meddle with medicine to understand the movement of this planet, in order to discern the causes of sickness. And as the moon is often in conjunction with Saturn, many attribute to it apoplexy, paralysis, epilepsy, jaundice, hydropsy, lethargy, catapory, catalepsy, colds, convulsions, trembling of the limbs, etc., etc. I have noticed that this planet has such enormous power over living creatures, that children born at the first quarter of the declining moon are more subject to illness, so that children born when there is no moon, if they live, are weak, delicate, and sickly, or are of little mind or idiots. Those who are born under the house of the moon which is Cancer, are of a phlegmatic disposition." [371]

That the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans believed in the deleterious influence of the moon on the health of man, is very evident. The Talmud refers the words, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" (Ps. xxiii. 4) "to him who sleeps in the shadow of the moon." [372] Another Psalm (cxxi. 6) reads, literally, "By day the sun shall not smite thee, and the moon in the night." In the Greek Testament we find further proof of this belief.

Among those who thronged the Great Teacher (Matt. iv. 24) were the seleniaxomenoi (_lunatici_, Beza; _i lunatici_, Diodati; _les lunatiques_, French version; "those who were lunatick"). The Revised Version of 1881 reads "epileptic," but that is a comment, not a translation. So again (Matt. xvii. 15) we read of a boy who was "lunatick"--seleniaxetai. On which Archbishop Trench remarks, "Of course the word originally, like mania (from mene) and lunaticus, arose from the widespread belief of the evil influence of the moon on the human frame." [373] Jerome attributes all this superst.i.tion to daemons, of which men were the dupes. "The _lunatics_," he says, "were not really smitten by the moon, but were believed to be so, through the subtlety of the daemons, who by observing the seasons of the moon sought to bring an evil report against the creature, that it might redound to the blasphemy of the Creator." [374] Demons or no demons, faith in moonstroke is clear enough. Pliny was of opinion that the moon induced drowsiness and stupor in those who slept under her beams. Galen, in the second century, taught that those who were born when the moon was falciform, or sickle-shaped, were weak and short-lived, while those born during the full moon were vigorous and of long life. He also took notice of the lunar influence in epilepsy [375] of which fearful malady a modern physician writes, "This disease has been known from the earliest antiquity, and is remarkable as being that malady which, even beyond insanity, was made the foundation of the doctrine of possession by evil spirits, alike in the Jewish, Grecian, and Roman philosophy." [376] The terrible disorder was a fact; and evil spirits or the moon had to bear the blame.

In modern times the moon is no less the deity of insalutary disaster.

Of Mexico, Brinton says: "Very different is another aspect of the moon-G.o.ddess, and well might the Mexicans paint her with two colours. The beneficent dispenser of harvests and offspring, she nevertheless has a portentous and terrific phase. She is also the G.o.ddess of the night, the dampness, and the cold; she engenders the miasmatic poisons that rack our bones; she conceals in her mantle the foe who takes us unawares; she rules those vague shapes which fright us in the dim light; the causeless sounds of night or its more oppressive silence are familiar to her; she it is who sends dreams wherein G.o.ds and devils have their sport with man, and slumber, the twin brother of the grave." [377] So farther south, "the Brazilian mother carefully s.h.i.+elded her infant from the lunar rays, believing that they would produce sickness; the hunting tribes of our own country will not sleep in its light, nor leave their game exposed to its action. We ourselves have not outgrown such words as lunatic, moon-struck, and the like. Where did we get these ideas? The philosophical historian of medicine, Kurt Sprengel, traces them to the primitive and popular medical theories of ancient Egypt, in accordance with which all maladies were the effects of the anger of the G.o.ddess Isis, the moisture, the moon." [378] Perhaps Dr.

Brinton's own Mexican myth is a better elucidation of this origin of nocturnal evil than that which traces it to Egypt. According to an ancient tradition in Mexico, "it is said that in the absence of the sun all mankind lingered in darkness. Nothing but a human sacrifice could hasten his arrival. Then Metzli, the moon, led forth one Nanahuatl, the leprous, and building a pyre, the victim threw himself in its midst. Straightway Metzli followed his example, and as she disappeared in the bright flames, the sun rose over the horizon. Is not this a reference to the kindling rays of the aurora, in which the dark and baleful night is sacrificed, and in whose light the moon presently fades away, and the sun comes forth?" [379] We venture to think that it is, and that it is nearest to a natural explanation of purely natural effects.

Coming next to Britain, we find that "no prejudice has been more firmly rivetted than the influence of the moon over the human frame, originating perhaps in some superst.i.tion more ancient than recorded by the earliest history. The frequent intercourse of Scotland with the north may have conspired to disseminate or renew the veneration of a luminary so highly venerated there, in counteracting the more southern ecclesiastical ordinances." [380]

Forbes Leslie surely goes too far, and mixes matters up too much, when he writes: "An ancient belief, adhered to by the ignorant after being denounced and apparently disproved by the learned, is now admitted to be a fact; viz. the influence of the moon in certain diseases. This, from various circ.u.mstances, is more apparent in some of the Asiatic countries, and may have given rise to the custom which extended into Britain, of exposing sick children on the housetops." [381] We know that the _solar_ rays, from the time of Hippocrates, the reputed "father of medicine," were believed by the Greeks to prolong life; and that the Romans built terraces on the tops of their houses called _solaria_, where they enjoyed their solar baths. "Levato sole levatur morbus," was one of their medical axioms. But who ever heard of the _lunar_ rays as beneficial? If sick children were exposed on the housetops, it must have been in the daytime; and, unless it were intended as an alterative, it is difficult to see what connection this had with the belief that disease was the product of the lunar beam. Besides, is the moon's influence in disease an admitted fact? The "certain diseases" should be specified, and their lunar origin sustained.

The following strange superst.i.tion is singularly like that interpolated legend in the Gospel of John, about the angel troubling the pool of Bethesda. In this case the medicinal virtue seems to come with the change of the moon. But in both cases supernatural agency is equally mythical. "A cave in the neighbourhood of Dunskey ought also to be mentioned, on account of the great veneration in which it is held by the people. At the change of the moon (which is still considered with superst.i.tious reverence), it is usual to bring, even from a great distance, infirm persons, and particularly ricketty children, whom they often suppose bewitched, to bathe in a stream which pours from the hill, and then dry them in the cave." [382]

Those who are in danger of apoplexy, or other cerebral disease, through indulgence too freely in various liquids, vinous and spirituous, should cherish Bacon's sapient deliverance: "It is like that the brain of man waxeth moister and fuller upon the full of the moon; and therefore it were good for those that have moist brains, and are great drinkers, to take sume of _lignum aloes_, rosemary, frankincense, etc., about the full of the moon. It is like, also, that the humours in men's bodies increase and decrease as the moon doth; and therefore it were good to purge some day or two after the full; for that then the humours will not replenish so soon again." [383]

All this sounds so unphilosophical that it is almost incredible that the learned Bacon believed what he wrote. Darker superst.i.tions, however, still linger in our land. "In Staffords.h.i.+re, it is commonly said, if you want to cure chin-cough, take out the child and let it look at the new moon; lift up its clothes and rub your right hand up and down its stomach, and repeat the following lines (looking steadfastly at the moon, and rubbing at the same time):--

'What I see, may it increase; What I feel, may it decrease;