Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/641

Rh of Tokelau may be nearly abreast of them in the competition.

The facts we have adduced abundantly illustrate the various interest with which primitive peoples regard the two principal stars of the earthly sky. They have also their theories, or rather their myths, respecting the periodical changes to which the appearance of these bodies is subject. The phases of the moon are particularly the subject of much concern. In the belief of the Hottentots, the living being we call Moon suffers from a chronic headache, in consequence of which it becomes greatly reduced in appearance by laying its hand on its head. The Caffres bring the Sun into play in accounting for the phenomena, and say that she pursues the Moon and reduces him, but that he is cunning enough to escape, and then recovers his strength. More curious still is the part the waning moon plays in the eyes of some Polynesians, who say that it is eaten from by departed spirits. Another extremely materialistic explanation is found in some Greenland stories to the effect that the Moon pursues his sister the Sun in love. When he has become exhausted and thin, he goes seal-hunting, and disappears from the sky. In time he reappears, well fed, fat, and shining, as the full moon.

Purely fanciful and obscure are the myths in which animals are found in confidential relations with the moon. The Dakota Indians have a fiction of mice that periodically attack the moon to satisfy their hunger, and eat of its substance. An old Slavic saga makes the ruler of the night the husband of the Sun, who faithlessly gives his heart to the Morning-Star. In punishment for this offense, he is cleft through the middle, and must exhibit himself periodically in this plight as a warning example. The Hos, in Northeastern India, also fable the moon split in two and growing together again. In some of the stories these love-attacks become very violent, and then the aggressive party is made to receive a kind of retributive justice; and we accordingly have the spots that are to be seen upon the moon explained by saying that they are the marks which the vexed solar beauty has made upon her pursuer in defending herself against his importunities. Thus, according to Mr. D. Hooker, the Khasias in Northwestern India say that the Moon, an over-ardent son-in-law of the Sun, burns with love for her at each new change, while she, in her aversion, throws ashes into his face, which stick upon it as dark spots. The Esquimaux have two opposite, yet fundamentally harmonious, explanations. One is that the Sun smuts the face of her younger brother, whose attentions have become troublesome; the other, given by Bastian, that her heart warms toward her lover during his periods of darkness, and the spots are the marks left by her sooty hand caressing his face.

A variety of sagas of another kind discover living beings, not in the whole moon, but only in the dark points of its surface. The Hindoos fancy a hare in it, or a deer; the Japanese, a rabbit. According