Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

PHASES OF THE MOON. 715
load the legs (Tobler 404 b
) ; set about it therefore by the mount
ing moonlight. Yuk sub v. miyena says, the Servian women will
wash never a shirt at new-moon, they declare all the linen would
get mooned (omiyeniti) in the water, i.e. bulge and pucker, and
soon tear; one might find another reason too for washing by
the waning moon, that stains and dirt should disappear with the
dwindling light (see SuppL).
Behind superstitious practices I have tried to discover a
meaning, which may possibly come near their original signifi
cation. Such symbolical coupling of means and end was at all
events not foreign to antiquity anywhere : the holy water floats
all misfortune away with it (p. 589), the spray from the millwheel
scatters all sickness (p. 593). So the sufferer stands with his
face to the waning moon, and : prays
f
as thou decreasest, let my
pains diminish (I, 245) ; he can also go on the other tack, and
cry to the new moon : may what I see increase, and what I suffer
cease (492). Turning the face toward the luminary I take to
be a relic of heathen moon-worship. 1
Superstitions of this kind have long been banished to the
narrower limits of agriculture and cattle-breeding; we should
arrive at a clearer knowledge of them, had their bearing on
public life been described for us in early times. Observation of
the lunar changes must in many ways have influenced sacrifices,
the casting of lots and the conduct of war. Some things now
appear bewildering,
because we cannot review all the circum
stances, and some no doubt were different in different nations.
German superstition (I, 856) thinks it a calamity for the master
of the house to die during the moon s decline, for then the whole
family will fall away ; the Esthonian view (41) is, that a death at
new-moon is unlucky, perhaps because more will follow ? Fruits
that grow above ground are to be sown at the waxing, those under
ground at the waning (Jul. Schmidt p. 122) ; not so Westendorp
p. 129: dat boven den grond wast, by o/hemende maan, dat
onder den grond wast, by foenemende maan. te zaaien/ Gutslaf
(Wohhanda p. 49, conf. errata) remarks, that winter-crops are
not to be sown while tlie moon stands at the idle quarter (third,
1 Whoever at play turns his back to the moon, has bad luck (I, 801). But the
seaman in his hammock takes care not to face the full-moon, lest he be struck with
blindness.