174 pPant "bore, "heQeT^f, oriil "bLjrIc/", 



direcTtly with the luminary or with the goddesses who were formerly 

 thought to impersonate or embody it. Thus we find the Chry- 

 santhemum leucanthcvium named the Moon Daisy, because its shape 

 resembles the picftures of a full moon, the type of a class of plants 

 which Dr. Prior points out, " on the Docftrine of Signatures, were 

 exhibited in uterine complaints, and dedicated in pagan times to 

 the goddess of the Moon and regulator of monthly periods, 

 Artemis, whom Horsley (on Hosea ix., lo) would identify with Isis, 

 the goddess of the Egyptians, with Juno Lucina, and with Eileithuia, 

 a deity who had special charge over the functions of women — an 

 office in Roman Catholic mythology assigned to Mary Magdalene 

 and Margaret," The Costmary, or Maudeline-wort [Balsamita vul- 

 garis) ; the Maghet, or May- weed [Pyrethrum Pavthenium) ; the Mather, 

 or Maydweed {Anthcmis Cotula); the Daisy, or Marguerite [Bellis 

 perennis); the Achillea Matricaria, &c., are all plants which come 

 under the category of lunar herbs in their connection with feminine 

 complaints. 



Ufie MaQ ir^ tRe Moon. 



Chaucer describes the Moon as Lady Cynthia: — 



" Her gite was gray and full of spottis blake, 

 And on her brest a chorle paintid ful even 

 Bearing a bush of Thornis on his bake 

 Which for his theft might climb no ner the heven." 



Allusion is here made to the Man in the Moon, bearing a 

 Thorn-bush on his shoulders — one of the most widely-diffused 

 superstitions still extant. It is curious that, in several legends 

 respecting this inhabitant of the Moon, he is represented as having 

 been engaged, when on earth, in gardening operations. Kuhn 

 relates a tradition in the Havel country. One Christmas Eve, a 

 peasant felt a great desire to eat a Cabbage; and, having none 

 himself, he slipped stealthily into his neighbour's garden to cut 

 some. Just as he had filled his basket, the Christ Child rode past 

 on his white horse, and said: "Because thou hast stolen in the 

 holy night, thou shalt immediately sit in the Moon with thy basket 

 of Cabbage." At Paderhorn, in Westphalia, the crime committed 

 was not theft, but hindering people from attending church on 

 Easter-Day, by placing a Thorn»bush in the field-gate through 

 which they had to pass. In the neighbourhood of Wittingen, the 

 man is said to have been exiled to the Moon because he tied up 

 his brooms on Maunday Thursday; and at Deilinghofen, of having 

 mown the Grass in his meadows on Sunday. A Swabian mother 

 at Derendingen will tell her child that a man was once working 

 in his vineyard on Sunday, and after having pruned all his Vines, 

 he made a bundle of the shoots he had just cut off, laid it in his 

 basket, and went home. According to one version, the Vine-shoots 

 were stolen from a neighbour's Vineyard. When taxed either with 



