“Evening gray and morning red,
Brings down rain on the traveller’s head;
Evening red and morning gray,
Sends the traveller on his way.”
Science having finally accepted what vulgar philosophy so long maintained, namely that the moon exerts an undoubted influence upon the tides of the sea, all the various popular beliefs concerning her influence upon the weather that have been wafted to us over, we know not how many centuries, find ready credence. If the mysterious luminary could perform one miracle, why not others? Thus reasoned the ignorant multitude.
The popular fallacy that the moon is made of “greene cheese,” as sung by Heywood, and repeated by that mad wag Butler, in “Hudibras,” may be considered obsolete, we suppose, but in our youth we have often heard this said, and, it is to be feared, half believed it.
Cutting the hair on the waxing of the moon, under the delusion that it will then grow better, is another such.
As preposterous as it may seem, our worthy ancestors, or some of them at least, firmly believed that the Man in the Moon was veritable flesh and blood.
In “Curious Myths,” Mr. Baring-Gould refers the genesis of this belief to the Book of Numbers.[3]
An old Scotch rhyme runs thus:—
“A Saturday’s change and a Sunday’s prime,
Was nivver gude mune in nae man’s time.”
If the horns of the new moon are but slightly tipped downward, moderate rains may be looked for; if much tipped, expect a downpour. On the other hand, if the horns are evenly balanced, it is a sure sign of dry weather. Some one says in “Adam Bede,” “There’s no likelihood of a drop now an’ the moon lies like a boat there.” The popular notion throughout New England is that when the new moon is turned downward, it cannot hold water. Hence the familiar sayings of a wet or a dry moon.