It was believed in Antiquity that the heavens above, including the moon, were perfect, and made of an unearthly material, so the ancient Greeks tried to make sense of the vague markings visible on the surface of the moon. Some suggested that the moon might be a perfect mirror and that its features were reflections of earthly features, but this explanation didn’t really work because the face of the moon never changes as it moves about the Earth.
When Galileo examined the moon through a telescope, he discovered that it was not perfectly smooth – the lunar surface seemed to have mountains and valleys. He saw many smaller spots never seen before. The patchy areas on the moon we now know to be large basaltic plains, perhaps caused by the impact of asteroids, but they were at first mistaken for seas, and were named maria (Latin for ‘seas’) – such as the Sea of Tranquillity (Mare Tranquillitatis).
A full moon sometimes resembles a big yellow wheel of cheese, the craters in the surface like the holes in Swiss cheese, which was why it was said that the moon was made of cheese. To Europeans, the markings on the moon resembled a face, thus the Man in the Moon. To moon-gazers in India it represented a pair of hands, and to Germans, it looked like an old man carrying a bundle of sticks on his back, sometimes carrying a forked stick and lantern, and accompanied by a little dog. One legend explains that the man was chopping wood on a Sunday, the day of rest, and was banished to the moon for his sins.
To the people of East Asia, a rabbit could be seen pounding in a mortar and pestle, but the contents of the mortar differ among Chinese, Japanese, and Korean folklore. In Chinese folklore, the rabbit is often portrayed as a companion of the moon goddess Chang’e, constantly pounding the elixir of life for her, but in Japanese and Korean versions, it is pounding the ingredients for rice cake. You might wonder if singer Cat Stevens had any of these legends in mind when he wrote Moonshadow, but he has since explained it thus:
“I was on a holiday in Spain. I was a kid from the West End (of London) – bright lights, etc – I never got to see the moon on its own in the dark, there were always streetlamps. So there I was on the edge of the water on a beautiful night with the moon glowing, and suddenly I looked down and saw my shadow. I thought that was so cool, I’d never seen it before.”
What are your favourite moon legends?
Happy Puzzling!
