ular mythology, the boy oldened into a
venerable man, he retained his pole, and the bucket was transformed
into the thing he had stolen--sticks or vegetables. The theft was in
some places exchanged for Sabbath-breaking, especially among
those in Protestant countries who were acquainted with the Bible
story of the stick-gatherer." [22]

The German Grimm, who was by no means a grim German, but a
very genial story-teller, also maintains this transformation of the
original myth. "Plainly enough the water-pole of the heathen story
has been transformed into the axe's shaft, and the carried pail into
the thornbush; the general idea of theft was retained, but special
stress laid on the keeping of the Christian holiday, the man suffers
punishment not so much for cutting firewood, as because he did it
on a Sunday." [23] Manifestly "Jack and Jill went up the hill" is
more than a Runic rhyme, and like many more of our popular strains
might supply us with a most interesting and instructive
entertainment; but we must hasten on with the moon-man.

We come next to Britain. Alexander Neckam, a learned English
abbot, poet, and scholar, born in St. Albans, in 1157, in commenting
on the dispersed shadow in the moon, thus alluded to the vulgar
belief: "Nonne novisti quid vulgus vocet rusticum in luna portantem
spinas? Unde quidam vulgariter loquens ait,

Rusticus in Luna
Quem sarcina deprimit una
Monstrat per spinas
Nulli prodesse rapinas." [24]

This may be rendered, "Do you not know what the people call the
rustic in the moon who carries the thorns? Whence one vulgarly
speaking says,

The Rustic in the moon,
Whose burden weighs him down,
This changeless truth reveals,
He profits not who steals."

Thomas Wright considers Neckam's Latin version of this popular
distich "very curious, as being the earliest allusion we have to the
popular legend of the man in the moon." We are specially struck
with the reference to theft; while no less noteworthy is the absence
of that sabbatarianism, which is the "moral" of the nursery tale.

In the British Museum there is a manuscript of English poetry of the
thirteenth century, containing an old song composed probably about
the middle of that century. It was first printed by Ritson in his
_Ancient Songs_, the earliest edition of which was published in
London, in 1790. The first lines are as follows:

"Mon in the mone stond ant strit,
On is bot