Rest Days; A Sociological Study 63 



part of the forest to avoid the kinar rays.^ ■Moonshine may also 

 be considered injurious for adults. Certain Queensland abo- 

 rigines will not stare long at the moon, for by doing so a heavy 

 rain is likely to result.'' When an English traveller in Arabia 

 was noticed gazing at the clear beauty of the moon the Bedouins 

 said : " Look not so fixedly on him ; it is not wholesome."^ 

 Possibly the same idea found expression in one of the most beau- 

 tiful of the Psalms: " The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor 

 the moon by night. "^ The well-known fancy attributing lunacy 

 to the rays of the moon is sufficiently illustrated by two passages 

 in the New Testament where epilepsy is regarded as caused by 

 the moon.^ 



Some primitive folk have apparently noticed that monthly 

 periodicity belongs to women and moon alike, and joining these 

 observations, have supposed that the lunar changes cause men- 

 struation.^*' Such beliefs were also held in classical antiquity. ^^ 

 The influence of the moon on the tides, recognized by so primi- 



^ Spix and Martius, Reise in Brasilicn, i. 381, iii. 1186. On the other 

 hand, children of the Bageshu, a Bantu race of British East Africa, are 

 expected to take part in new-moon dances, since it is believed that they 

 derive benefit from the moon (Roscoe, in Journal of the Royal Anthro- 

 pological Institute, 1909, xxxix. 193). 



°W. E. Roth, North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin no. 5, Brisbane, 

 1903. P- 7- 



' C. M. Dought}', Travels in Arabia Deserta, Cambridge. 1888, i. 444. 



^Psalms, cxxi. 6. This passage has been very unsatisfactorily explained 

 as a reference to the blinding that results from sleeping in the moonlight 

 with uncovered face. The meaning of another Biblical passage (Hosea, 

 V. 7) is most obscure. 



^Matthew, iv. 24, xvii. 15. The Greek verb used here is a-eX-nvid^o/jLou. 



" Beardmore, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1890, xix. 460 

 (British New Guinea) ; Seligmann., in Reports of the Cambridge Anthro- 

 pological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. 206. At Sabai and Yam the 

 word for moon, ganumi, may be used instead of nanamud, the proper 

 word for menstrual blood (ibid.). The Greenlanders believe the moon, 

 conceived as a masculine divinity, to possess the power of impregnation; 

 young girls as a consequence are afraid to look long at the luminary (Hans 

 Egede, Description of Greenland, London, 1845, p. 209). 



" Roscher, op. cit., 55-61; idem, AusfUhrliches Lexikon der gricchischeu 

 and romischen Mythologie, s. v. " Mondgottin," cols. 3150 sqq. 



63 



