invention. Some say the figure is
Isaac bearing a burthen of wood for the sacrifice of himself on
Mount Moriah. Others that it is Cain carrying a bundle of thorns on
his shoulder, and offering to the Lord the cheapest gift from the
field. [32] This was Dante's view, as the succeeding passages will
show:

"For now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine
On either hemisphere, touching the wave
Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight
The moon was round."
(_Hell_. Canto xx., line 123.)

"But tell, I pray thee, whence the gloomy spots
Upon this body, which below on earth
Give rise to talk of Cain in fabling quaint?"
(_Paradise_, ii. 50.) [33]

When we leave Europe, and look for the man in the moon under
other skies, we find him, but with an altogether new aspect. He is
the same, and yet another; another, yet the same. In China he plays a
pleasing part in connubial affairs. "The Chinese 'Old Man in the
Moon' is known as _Yue-lao_, and is reputed to hold in his hands
the power of predestining the marriages of mortals--so that
marriages, if not, according to the native idea, exactly made in
heaven, are made somewhere beyond the bounds of earth. He is
supposed to tie together the future husband and wife with an
invisible silken cord, which never parts so long as life exists." [34]
This must be the man of the Honey-moon, and we shall not meet his
superior in any part of the world. Among the Khasias of the
Himalaya Mountains "the changes of the moon are accounted for by
the theory that this orb, who is a man, monthly falls in love with his
wife's mother, who throws ashes in his face. The sun is female."
[35] The Slavonic legend, following the Himalayan, says that "the
moon, King of night and husband of the sun, faithlessly loves the
morning Star, wherefore he was cloven through in punishment, as
we see him in the sky." [36]

"One man in his time plays many parts," and the man in the moon is
no exception to the rule. In Africa his _role_ is a trying one; for "in
Bushman astrological mythology the moon is looked upon as a man
who incurs the wrath of the sun, and is consequently pierced by the
knife (_i.e._ rays) of the latter. This process is repeated until almost
the whole of the moon is cut away, and only a little piece left; which
the moon piteously implores the sun to spare for his (the moon's)
children. (The moon is in Bushman mythology a male being.) From
this little piece