Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/642

626 to one of the Namaqua legends, the hare has scratched the moon, and the marks remain, but the animal itself has broken away, and is now continually fleeing before the planet. Who, in the face of such stories, can be oblivious of the general connection between the moon and the hunting goddess, and its personification in identity with her, which figure in the fables of classical antiquity?

A most remarkable fact is the agreement of peoples who have never had anything to do with one another—of South African tribes and the Northern Europeans, the Samoa-Islanders and the ancient Peruvians—in the belief that the spots in the moon represent a creature of our own species. The story of the man in the moon, which may be traced in Europe for some hundred years back, and appears in the old Norse myths, and which still charms our children, prevails in many different versions. The Raratongans recognize in it a departed chief; the Ossetes of the Caucasus, a demon, which they regard with an idolatrous fear; the Namaquas, a higher being, to whom they attach great importance; the Pottawattamie Indians, an old woman; the people of Timor, a spinster; the Mangaians, a busy housewife; and the ancient Peruvians, a courtesan. The Siamese see in it, now a hare, and now a married couple, who cultivate the fields and accumulate heaps of rice.

There remain to be considered the impressions that eclipses of the sun and moon make upon primitive peoples. A large number of their explanations represent the planets as a man and a woman, and sometimes bring in a child to help in producing the phenomena. The Jesuit Le Jeune was told by an Algonquin, in Canada, that the Sun and Moon were man and wife who had a child. When the father took up the little one to caress it, there was an eclipse of the sun; when the mother held it in her arms, an eclipse of the moon. According to the Mintiras of Malacca, the Sun and Moon are two women, of whom the former eats her children, while the Moon hides hers, although she is pledged to eat them too. Enraged at this breach of faith, the Sun chases the Moon around, swallowing her own star at each dawn, while the Moon brings hers out as soon as her pursuer is far enough away. At times, the enemies approach so nearly that the Sun can strike the Moon, and then there is an eclipse. The Hos of India have the same story, with the variation that the Moon, in punishment, is cut in two by the Sun, and has to grow together again. Notwithstanding the frequent recurrence of eclipses, with nothing particularly bad happening after them, most primitive peoples aasociate with them an omen of some great danger to the earth or the moon. The Greenlanders have a personal apprehension in the matter, and believe that the Moon rummages their houses for skins or victuals, and destroys those persons who have not observed due sobriety. The South American Chiquitos try to help the darkened star against a dog that has worried it till its light has been colored red, and extinguished by its streaming