Wanyamwezi

“ In the first he is grandson of the moon, his father is the West Wind, and his mother, a maiden, dies in giving him birth at the moment of conception. For the moon is the goddess of night, the Dawn is her daughter, who brings forth the morning and perishes herself in the act, and the West, the spirit of darkness as the East is of light, precedes and as it were begets the latter as the evening does the morning. ”

“ Elsewhere the sun is the girl, beloved by her own brother, the moon; she blackens her face to avert his affection. On the Rio Branco, and among the Tomunda, the moon is a girl who loved her brother and visited him in the dark. ”

“ The smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps--does anybody know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumour that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning--the smile that flickers on baby's lips when he sleeps.
The sweet, soft freshness that blooms on baby's limbs--does anybody know where it was hidden so long? Yes, when the mother was a young girl it lay pervading her heart in tender and silent mystery of love--the sweet, soft freshness that has bloomed on baby's limbs. ”

“ It is needless to say, that during the night of the 5th-6th of December, the travelers took not an instant's rest. Could they close their eyes when so near this new world? No! All their feelings were concentrated in one single thought:-- See! Representatives of the earth, of humanity, past and present, all centered in them! It is through their eyes that the human race look at these lunar regions, and penetrate the secrets of their satellite! ”

“ Your Moonship must look down upon many a strange sight,” said the shepherd reflectively.
The Man in the Moon smiled widely. “Humph! I look upon all kindred of the terrestrial world,” he answered gravely. “I am but the pale reflection of the great luminary, the Sun, whose slave I am. When he fadeth from the surface of the globe, I borrow his beams and become the watchman of the night. The mighty human beings, and the lowly; rich and poor; the sinful and the good, are all beneath my vision. ”

“ The moon is his wife and the stars are their children. The sun eats his children whenever he can catch them. They flee before him, and are all the time afraid when he is passing through the heavens. When he (their father) appears in the morning, you see all the stars, his children, fly out of sight—go away back into the blue of the above—and they do not wake to be seen again until he, their father, is about going to his bed. "Down deep under the ground—deep, deep, under all the ground—is a great hole. ”

“ THE MOON-MOTHER The world is a child who roams all day
Through windswept meadows of gold and gray.
The gold flowers fade; he foils to sleep,
And night is his cradle wide and deep.
The moon-mother creeps from behind God's throne
And steals up the skies to protect her own.
She leans her breast 'gainst his cradle-rim
While her small star-children gaze down on him.
Stars are his brothers; clouds his dreams ”

“ But the Sun can do nothing for her but to send her to the Moon. The same disappointment awaits her there, and the Moon sends her to the Winds. After many striking adventures she finds her husband, makes him undo his curse, and gives birth to a son who has golden locks and golden hands. ”

“ Thus do we go on making for ourselves our weal or woe: and as we go, the hounds of deeds long buried in oblivion are on our track.
Doubtless a little story might have a more delicious name than the one before us: but doubtless it never had. We may understand it either of a young woman or the moon: and in either case, it means more things than one. I. The new moon, seen for a single instant, in the sky, or on the lotus, or on the forehead of Maheshwara. II. A beauty with eyes like a great blue lotus, or the colour of heaven. ”

“ We met among the blossoms within the locust lane?
All that I can remember's the bird that sang aboon,
And with its music in our hearts we'll rove beneath the moon.
[Pg 32]
A love-word of the wind, dear, of which we'll read the rune,
While we still go a-roving beneath the summer moon:
A love-kiss of the water we'll often stop to hear—
The echoed words and kisses of our own love, my dear:
And all our path shall blossom with wild-rose sweets that swoon,
And with their fragrance in our hearts we'll rove beneath the moon. ”

“ So he thought that she must have come out to see him alone. Then he talked to her in gestures, and fancied that he saw her smile or frown. Fourthly, he found out that he had been whipped oftener when the moon was visible. It was as though she were watching him and telling his guardian (he being an orphan boy) all about his bad capers. He often asked himself who she could be. At last he became sure that she was his mother, because, while his mother lived, he had never seen the moon. Afterwards, every now and then, he saw the moon and behaved well towards his friends. ”

“ RUNE XLVII. LOUHI STEALS SUN, MOON, AND FIRE. Wainamoinen, ancient minstrel,
Touched again his magic harp-strings,
Sang in miracles of concord,
Filled the north with joy and gladness.
Melodies arose to heaven,
Songs arose to Luna's chambers,
Echoed through the Sun's bright windows
And the Moon has left her station,
Drops and settles in the birch-tree;
And the Sun comes from his castle,
Settles in the fir-tree branches,
Comes to share the common pleasure,
Comes to listen to the singing,
To the harp of Wainamoinen. ”

“ But to Moon she said, "Daughter, because you remembered your mother, and kept for her a share in your own enjoyment, from henceforth you shall be ever cool, and calm, and bright. No noxious glare shall accompany your pure rays, and men shall always call you 'blessed.'"
(And that is why the moon's light is so soft, and cool, and beautiful even to this day.) ”

“ The new planet that was rushing in upon us had already torn us from our steady path about the sun, and our old familiar moon dwindled to the size of a sixpence, and, diminishing almost visibly, was within a few hours of destruction. For the moon had fled its old allegiance to the Earth and was rushing to the arms of this great stranger like some passionate, unfaithful lover. ”

“ A winter prospect shows every cottage, every farm, and the forms of distant trees, such as in summer have no distinguishing mark. On our return, Jupiter and Venus before us. While the twilight still overpowered the light of the moon, we were reminded that she was shining bright above our heads, by our faint shadows going before us. We had seen her on the tops of the hills, melting into the blue sky. ”

“ Whom mortals call the Moon,"
I said:
"Tell me, Moon, thou pale and grey
Pilgrim of Heaven's homeless way,"
didst thou know young Countess Yarnova, so full of life a few days ago, and now lying there in the cold bosom of the earth? Tell me what bitter and unbearable grief broke that young heart; speak to me, and I shall listen to thy words as to the voice of my mother, when, in the evening, she whispered weird tales to me while putting me to sleep. ”

“ But if the sky happened to be clouded, they did nothing, alleging that the planet had lost its virtue.383 A somewhat similar custom prevails among the Ovambo of South-Western Africa. On the first moonlight night of the new moon, young and old, their bodies smeared with white earth, perhaps in imitation of the planet's silvery light, dance to the moon and address to it wishes which they feel sure will be granted.384 We may conjecture that among these wishes is a prayer for a renewal of life. ”

“ I will tell you a story of the sky country and its star windows, which explains everything. It has come down in our family ever since my folks lived in the moon, which was a great many great-grandfathers back, and is true, accordingly."
"The moon, where we used to live, is a pretty small world, compared with the sky world—being about like a pea compared with a bread-bowl—and our people used to have such big families that if they hadn't found some place for them to go they would have got so thick that the moon wouldn't have begun to hold them. ”

“ All night under the moon
Plovers are flying
Over the dreaming meadows of silvery light,
Over the meadows of June,
Flying and crying —
Wandering voices of love in the hush of the night.
All night under the moon,
Love, though we're lying
Quietly under the thatch, in silvery light
Over the meadows of June
Together we're flying —
Rapturous voices of love in the hush of the night?
Contents / Contents, p. 2
Sea Change
Wind-flicked and ruddy her young body glowed
In sunny shallows, splashing them to spray ”

“ The married couple who intend to love each other during their whole life have no notion of a honeymoon; for them it has no existence, or rather its existence is perennial; they are like the immortals who do not understand death. But the consideration of this happiness is not germane to our book; and for our readers marriage is under the influence of two moons, the honeymoon and the Red-moon. ”

“ One day they will wake here and be happy always. And we are here to intercede with the Sun, our father, that he may give to our people rain and the fruits of the earth, and all that is good for them.” Ever since these children have been worshipped as ancestral gods.
We have already had a little story in which the stars appear as the children of the sun and moon. In another one, of the Indians of British Columbia, the dark spots which we see on the moon are supposed to be a child and her little basket. According to this legend, one night a child of the chief class awoke and cried for water. ”

“ For it is a custom likewise here in Lapland, to consult the moon, as an oracle about the health and vigour of the child. If a star be seen just before the moon, we count it a sign of a lusty and well grown child, without blemish; if a star comes just after, we reckon it a token that the child will have some defect or deformity, or die soon after it is born. ”

“ The Vigil of Venus.
Tomorn who ne'er hath loved shall love, and who hath loved shall love tomorn.
Spring is young, spring now is chanting, spring is all the world reborn.
Love in spring is knit to love, bird weds with bird in springtide hours,
And the wood unbinds her rippling tresses under nuptial showers.
Tomorn who ne'er hath loved shall love, and who hath loved shall love tomorn. ”

“ If the Sun be under the earth, and Venus above, and behold the Ascendant with Sextile or Trine; the woman or wife shall be received, but with some importunity and delayes, with much adoe, and a great deale of labour, and all her Neighbours shall take notice of it. If the Moon be encreasing in light, and in any good aspect to the Ascendant, she shall returne, but with much solicitation. ”

“ Then her “visions of the night” are at times sublimely beautiful. Her star-decked vault of heaven, absolutely free from all mists and fogs and damps, seems so high and vast. The stars glisten and twinkle with wondrous clearness. The flashing meteors fade out but slowly, and the moon is so white and bright that her shadows cast are often as vivid as those of the sun in some other lands. ”

“ From the Persian shepherd to the shepherd on the hills of Argyll—in a word, from the remote East to the remote West—November is known, in kindred phrase, as the Pleiad-Month.
What a world of legend, what a greater world of poetry and old romance, centres in this little group of stars. ‘The meeting-place in the skies of mythology and science,’ as they have been called by one of our chief astronomers. From time immemorial this remote starry cluster has been associated with festivals and solemnities, with auguries and destinies. ”

“ The tawny moon begins to rise
Behind low, blue-black hills of trees,—
As rises up, in siren seas,
To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid,
A virgin-bosomed Oceanid.—
Gaunt shadows crouch by tree and scaur,
Dusk’s shaggy Satyrs waiting for
The Nymphs of moon, the Dryads white,
Who take with loveliness the night,
And glorify it with their love. ”

“ However, the moon does be kept busy throwing light on a troubled world, and sometimes as she floats through the sky I seem to see a blush on her face as though she was shocked at the badness that steals into the hearts of the young and the old at the close of day. ”

“ The sun and the moon have many children, the stars 22 and the betrothed of the masculine Lettish Morning Star is none other than the sun's own daughter, the fruit of a temporary union with Pehrkon himself—a clear personification of a thunder-storm at dawn. The moon, in shame and anger, avoids his spouse, and is visible only by night, while she appears by day in the sight of all mankind. ”

“ The Boy who had a Moon on his Forehead and a Star on his Chin
a country were seven daughters of poor parents, who used to come daily to play under the shady trees in the King's garden with the gardener's daughter; and daily she used to say to them, "When I am married I shall have a son. Such a beautiful boy as he will be has never been seen. He will have a moon on his forehead and a star on his chin." ”

“ The Moon looked at the Vesper Star, and said, “Dream on, sweet sister; for you, the noblest of all, have told me no falsehood.”
This the Moon said because she knew that [Pg 55] none of the stars had given a true reason for twinkling so gayly that night. The truth was, they were filled with envy, and were trying to be as brilliant as possible, to compete with a flaming Comet which had just appeared in the sky.
It is not for man to know how long and how peacefully the gentle stars had travelled together, doing the work which God has appointed, without a murmur. ”