In the old days the sight of Earthshine was considered an evil portent, a prophet of disaster

We are glad to know that our Earth is shining forth upon the heavens; but in the old days the sight of Earthshine was considered an evil portent, a prophet of disaster.

"I saw the new moon late yester'een

With the old moon in her arm

And if we gang to sea, master,

I fear we'll come to harm."

Fear and storm together may have wrecked gude Sir Patrick Spens, but the Moon had no real responsibility in the matter.

Closely allied with this superstition is another, even more absurd. When the horns of the crescent are tipped at an angle, men say that water will fall out. "It is a wet Moon, we shall have rain on Earth." When the horns point straight up to the Zenith, the Moon is said to be dry. This superstition is based on nothing more than the old analogy of the bowl, interpreted too literally. The horns of the Moon always point away from the Sun. If we were to rely on this superstition we should find that the crescent nearest the spring equinox was the only completely "dry Moon" of the year. Then there would be no showers in March and April, the grass would cease to grow and the crops would always fail.

The "wet" and "dry" Moons are fictitious, but the "Harvest" and "Hunter's" Moons are not. For several nights in autumn the Moon rises at about the same time every night. No wonder the ancients were grateful to their goddess! They needed the extra light to speed the gathering of crops.

When subjected to the scrutiny of mathematics this dispensation of providence was shown to have a genuine scientific basis. On an average the Moon rises fifty minutes later each night or day. (Somehow in speaking of the Moon which "governs the night" we are more apt to make mention of its nocturnal activities. The young Moon rises shortly after the Sun in the morning, but no one pays any attention to it until after the Sun has set.)

In the autumn the Moon is traveling northward very rapidly. Sometimes its declination changes four or five degrees in twentyfour hours. Each night during that period it stays above the horizon one and a quarter hours longer than the night before, and part of this increase results in earlier rising. Residents living just north of London, in latitude 52°, will see the Moon rise only fifteen minutes later, instead of fifty, for four or five consecutive evenings.

The next full Moon, after the harvest, is arranged for the benefit of the hunter. The same conditions prevail as during the earlier month except that now the Moon is farther north to begin with, and its orbit is so oblique to the ecliptic that when it is just past full it can stay above the horizon for more than eighteen hours at a time. At the same latitude the Sun is never visible for more than seventeen consecutive hours.

We can hardly wonder that the goddess of night was praised for her behavior, beneficial as it was to the needs of harvesters and hunters alike; but neither can we wonder that her behavior was considered erratic. All the possible inconsistencies of temperament were sacred to her. Luna lent her name to lunacy; Diana, Artemis, Ishtar and Selene all had their peculiarities. The stories of them grew so jumbled that they are sometimes impossible to tell apart. Artemis (to give one example among so many) is supposed to have rejected Endymion according to one tale, though in another version she married him and had fifty daughters. Those discrepancies occur in every mythology, but the legends of the Moon are particularly variable. The Cretan goddess of the Moon was named "sweet maiden" and went about dispensing prosperity and light; but the disaster-loving Hecate of Macbeth has the same lunar origin.