Ufie Marj ir2 tfte Moor^. 



175 



Sabbath-breaking or with the theft, the culprit loudly protested 

 his innocence, and at length exclaimed: "If I have committed this 

 crime, may I be sent to the Moon 1 " After his death this fate 

 duly befell him, and there he remains to this day. The Black 

 Forest peasants relate that a certain man stole a bundle of wood 

 on Sunday because he thought on that day he should be un- 

 molested by the foresters. However, on leaving the forest, he met 

 a stranger, who was no other than the Almighty himself. After 

 reproving the thief for not keeping the Sabbath-day holy, God said 

 he must be punished, but he might choose whether he would be 

 banished to the Sun or to the Moon. The man chose the latter, 

 declaring he would rather freeze in the Moon than burn in the 

 Sun ; and so the Broom-man came into the Moon with his faggot 

 on his back. At Hemer, in Westphalia, the legend runs that a 

 man was engaged in fencing his garden on Good Friday, and had 

 just poised a bundle of Thorns on his fork when he was at once 

 transported to the Moon. Some of the Hemer peasants, however, 

 declare that the Moon is not only inhabited by a man with a 

 Thorn-bush and pitchfork, but also by his wife, who is churning, 

 and was exiled to the Moon for using a churn on Sunday. Accord- 

 ing to other traditions, the figure in the Moon is that of Isaac 

 bearing the faggot on his shoulders for his own sacrifice on Mount 

 Moriah; or Cain with a bundle of Briars; or a tipsy man who for 

 his audacity in threatening the Moon with a Bramble he held in 

 his hand, was drawn up to this planet, and has remained there to 

 the present day. 



