"But the sun had not yet learned to trace
The path that conducts to her dwelling-place
To the moon arrived was not the hour
When he should exert his mystic power
Nor to the stars was the knowledge given,
To marshal their ranks o'er the fields of heaven." [19]
We also learn that "the moon and the sun are brother and sister; they are the children of Mundilföri, who, on account of their beauty, called his son Mâni, and his daughter Sôl." Here again we observe that the moon is masculine. "Mâni directs the course of the moon, and regulates Nyi (the new moon) and Nithi (the waning moon). He once took up two children from the earth, Bil and Hiuki, as they were going from the well of Byrgir, bearing on their shoulders the bucket Soeg, and the pole Simul." [20] These two children, with their pole and bucket, were placed in the moon, "where they could be seen from earth"; which phrase must refer to the lunar spots. Thorpe, speaking of the allusion in the Edda to these spots, says that they "require but little illustration. Here they are children carrying water in a bucket, a superstition still preserved in the popular belief of the Swedes." [21] We are all reminded at once of the nursery rhyme--
"Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after."
Little have we thought, when rehearsing this jingle in our juvenile hours, that we should some day discover its roots in one of the oldest mythologies of the world. But such is the case. Mr. Baring-Gould has evolved the argument in a manner which, if not absolutely conclusive in each point, is extremely cogent and clear. "This verse, which to us seems at first sight nonsense, I have no hesitation in saying has a high antiquity, and refers to the Eddaic Hjuki and Bil. The names indicate as much. Hjuki, in Norse, would be pronounced Juki, which would readily become Jack; and Bil, for the sake of euphony and in order to give a female name to one of the children, would become Jill. The fall of Jack, and the subsequent fall of Jill, simply represent the vanishing of one moon spot after another, as the moon wanes. But the old Norse myth had a deeper signification than merely an explanation of the moon spots. Hjuki is derived from the verb jakka, to heap or pile together, to assemble and increase; and Bil, from bila, to break up or dissolve. Hjuki and Bil, therefore, signify nothing more than the waxing and waning of the moon, and the water they are represented as bearing signifies the fact that the rainfall depends on the phases of the moon. Waxing and waning were individualized, and the meteorological fact of the connection of the rain with the moon was represented by the children as water-bearers. But though Jack and Jill became by degrees dissevered in the popular mind from the moon, the original myth went through a fresh phase, and exists still under a new form. The Norse superstition attributed theft to the moon, and the vulgar soon began to believe that the figure they saw in the moon was the thief. The lunar specks certainly may be made to resemble one figure, but only a lively imagination can discern two. The girl soon dropped out of popular mythology, the boy oldened into a venerable man, he retained his pole, and the bucket was transformed into the thing he had stolen--sticks or vegetables. The theft was in some places exchanged for Sabbath-breaking, especially among those in Protestant countries who were acquainted with the Bible story of the stick-gatherer." [22]
The German Grimm, who was by no means a grim German, but a very genial story-teller, also maintains this transformation of the original myth. "Plainly enough the water-pole of the heathen story has been transformed into the axe's shaft, and the carried pail into the thornbush; the general idea of theft was retained, but special stress laid on the keeping of the Christian holiday, the man suffers punishment not so much for cutting firewood, as because he did it on a Sunday." [23] Manifestly "Jack and Jill went up the hill" is more than a Runic rhyme, and like many more of our popular strains might supply us with a most interesting and instructive entertainment; but we must hasten on with the moon-man.
We come next to Britain. Alexander Neckam, a learned English abbot, poet, and scholar, born in St. Albans, in 1157, in commenting on the dispersed shadow in the moon, thus alluded to the vulgar belief: "Nonne novisti quid vulgus vocet rusticum in luna portantem spinas? Unde quidam vulgariter loquens ait,
Rusticus in Luna
Quem sarcina deprimit una
Monstrat per spinas
Nulli prodesse rapinas." [24]
This may be rendered, "Do you not know what the people call the rustic in the moon who carries the thorns? Whence one vulgarly speaking says,
The Rustic in the moon,
Whose burden weighs him down,
This changeless truth reveals,
He profits not who steals."
Thomas Wright considers Neckam's Latin version of this popular distich "very curious, as being the earliest allusion we have to the popular legend of the man in the moon." We are specially struck with the reference to theft; while no less noteworthy is the absence of that sabbatarianism, which is the "moral" of the nursery tale.