Man in the Moon (The)

Some say it is a man leaning on a fork, on which he is carrying a bundle of sticks picked up on a Sunday. The origin of this fable is from Num. xv. 32–36. Some add a dog also; thus the prologue in Midsummer Night’s Dream says, “This man with lantern, dog, and bush of thorns, presenteth moonshine;” Chaucer says “he stole the bush” (Test. of Cresseide). Another tradition says that the man is Cain, with his dog and thornbush; the thorn-bush being emblematical of the thorns and briars of the fall, and the dog being the “foul fiend.” Some poets make out the “man” to be Endymʹion, taken to the moon by Diana.