SOUTH SLAVIC MOON-MYTHS. 617 



•walking. Coining to a small bay, lie sat down and rested tliere 

 for three days, till, getting hungry, he began to catch crabs and 

 eat them. He relished them so well as to eat up nearly all there 

 were. But God would not let this come to pass, and therefore 

 raised a great wind that took the saint up into the air. He trav- 

 eled through space for three days, and reached the moon in the 

 night. Here the saint was punished by having to look down into 

 the sea all the night long and see the crabs grow. Then so great 

 hunger came upon Elias that he bit off piece after piece from the 

 moon and swallowed them ; and if God the Lord had not been 

 gracious enough to order the moon to increase, the saint would 

 have died of hunger after eating it, and have fallen to the earth 

 and been broken into a thousand pieces. Yet God spared him 

 and transplanted him to the moon ; else he would have eaten up 

 all the crabs in the sea, and at another time would have had 

 only empty disappointment. Thus the moon decreases and in- 

 creases according as the saint eats or fasts. 



If we divest the fable of its unessentials, which may be set to 

 the account of some unknown poet, there is left a feature of in- 

 ternational folk-lore, viz., that sins have to be expiated in the 

 moon. As in German superstition, so also in that of the South 

 Slavs, the man in the moon is a desecrator of the holy Sabbath 

 rest. Sometimes he is a wood-cutter, sometimes a blacksmith. 

 The story reads that a wood-cutter, having stolen some wood in 

 the forest on Sunday, was condemned to be a wood-destroyer 

 in the moon for all eternity. He can be seen at full moon, some- 

 times with an axe in his hand, sometimes with a bundle of sticks 

 on his back. 



Another version tells that there was once a blacksmith who 

 knew how to make skeleton keys with which one could open any 

 lock, and, because he did this on Sundays and holidays, was con- 

 demned to work forever in the moon. It may be in deference to 

 the conception of the ghost of Frau Mictlwoch, who was punished 

 for desecrating a holy day by spinning, that a spinner is some- 

 times substituted for a man in the moon. The Swabians also find 

 a spinner there. 



A maiden was accustomed to spin late on Saturday in the 

 moonlight. At one time the new moon on the eve of Sunday 

 drew her up to itself, and since then she has sat in the moon and 

 spun. And now, when the " gossamer days " set in late in the sum- 

 mer, the white threads float around in the air. These threads are 

 the spinnings of the lunar spinner. 



The moon is especially a weird avenger of human arrogance, 

 and has its humors, according to which things go well or ill with 

 it. In its waxing it has a special force and a certain good-will 

 for the earth and its inhabitants, while in its wane it is friendly 



