FABULOUS ASTRONOMY. 195 



of figures, distributed according to a geographical rule, have pre- 

 dominated in these fancies. In Eastern Asia, it is a hare or rab- 

 bit. The Chinese and Japanese make it a hare, sitting on its hind- 

 quarters, pounding rice in a mortar. The Hindus see a hare or 

 roe ; the Siamese, a hare, or, some of them, a man and woman cul- 

 tivating their field. The North American and Mexican Indians 

 symbolize the moon by a hare or rabbit ; and some of the Central 

 American monuments represent it by a jar or spiral shell with a 

 rabbit coming out from under it. In South America, a human 

 figure took the place of the hare. The Incas related that a light 

 young woman, walking in the moonlight, was charmed by the 

 beauty of the star, and sprang forward to embrace it. The moon 

 took her up, and has kept her ever since. Some tribes, in both 

 North and South America, make of the spots a woman bent with 

 age. In Samoa, they see a woman and her child ; on the Book 

 Islands, men ; in Timor, an old woman spinning. The Scandi- 

 navian Edda relates that Mane, who regulates the course of the 

 moon in its quarters, placed there two children whom he saw car- 

 rying a jug of water hung between them from a pole. The Eski- 

 mos say that Anninga, the moon, brother of the beautiful Mal- 

 nia, the sun, was pursuing his sister and about to overtake her, 

 when she turned round and smutted his face and clothes with 

 her fingers, which she had blackened with the soot of a lamp. 

 The Khasias say that the spots are the cinders resulting from the 

 monthly burning up of the moon by the sun. 



French peasants variously believe that they see in the moon 

 the traitor Judas, hanging from an elder-branch ; turnip-Jack 

 wheeling a barrow of stolen turnips ; Cain leaning on his spade 

 and looking at the murdered Abel ; a peasant who has been caught 

 by the moon stealing wood in his lord's domain ; a peasant com- 

 pelled to freeze in the moon with his bundle of sticks for making 

 fence on Sunday ; a hunter and his dog ; or a she-goat and her 

 keeper by a bush. 



Eclipses of the moon attract more attention than those of the 

 sun, because total ones are more frequently seen than those of the 

 sun, and the darkness is of longer duration. The Peruvians sup- 

 posed that they were an illness of the moon, and if total were a 

 sign of its death, when it would fall to the earth and put an end 

 to the world. When one occurred, they would beat upon every- 

 thing that would make a noise, and chastise their dogs, in the faith 

 that the star, witnessing the sufferings of the creatures it loved, 

 would revive itself to save them. All would call upon the heav- 

 enly powers not to allow the star to die ; and, when the light re- 

 turned, praise was given to the great god Pache-camac, supporter 

 of the universe, for having restored the moon, and thereby pre- 

 vented the winding up of human existence. 



