Man in The Moon - Traditions

Traditions

• There is a tradition that the Man in the Moon enjoyed drinking, especially claret. An old ballad runs (original spelling):

"Our man in the moon drinks clarret,

With powder-beef, turnep, and carret.

If he doth so, why should not you

Drink until the sky looks blew?"

Plutarch, in his treatise, Of the Face appearing in the roundle of the Moone, cites the poet Agesinax as saying of that orb,

"All roundabout environed

With fire she is illumined:

And in the middes there doth appeere,

Like to some boy, a visage cleere;

Whose eies to us doe seem in view,

Of colour grayish more than blew:

The browes and forehead tender seeme,

The cheeks all reddish one would deeme."

In the renaissance, the man in the moon was known as Moonshine and carries a lantern as a traditional accessory.

Ay, or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and

A lantern, and say he comes to disfigure, or to present,

The person of Moonshine.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (3.1.51-53)

There is a traditional Mother Goose nursery rhyme featuring the Man in the Moon:

"The man in the moon came down too soon,

and asked his way to Norwich,

He went by the south and burnt his mouth

By supping on cold plum porridge."

The Traditional English verse reads

"The man in the moon came down too soon,

and asked his way to Norwich,

They sent him south and he burnt his mouth

By eating cold pease-porridge."

J.R.R. Tolkien elaborates on this by having Gondor's townspeople most inhospitable to the man in the moon, who is robbed and fed stale porridge in a kitchen corner.