The Man in the Moon

Chambers explains that the Man in the Moon was not the faint face of the full moon but a dusky figure seen on the western side of the moon when it is eight days old. It looks like a man climbing with a bundle of thorns on his back, with his dog going on ahead. The old popular story made him the man in the Book of Numbers who was stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath, set in the moon for ever to climb without getting any higher. Shakespeare’s Moonshine in A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes on with a lantern, a thorn bush and a dog, and Chaucer also knew the thief with his bush of thorns.