The Man In The Moon

: CUSTOM RHYMES
: Popular Rhymes And Nursery Tales

The Man in the Moon

Sups his sowins with a cutty-spoon.



A Northumberland dish called sowins, is composed of the coarse parts

of oatmeal, which are put into a tub, and covered with water, and then

allowed to stand till it turns sour. A portion of it is then taken out,

and sapped with milk. It may easily be imagined that this is a substance

not very accessible to the movements of a cutty or very small spoon.



Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 412, informs us that there are three

legends connected with the Man in the Moon; the first, that this

personage was Isaac carrying a bundle of sticks for his own sacrifice;

the second, that he was Cain; and the other, which is taken from the

history of the Sabbath-breaker, as related in the Book of Numbers. The

last is still generally current in this country, and is alluded to by

Chaucer, and many early writers. The second is mentioned by Dante,

Inferno, xx., Cain sacrificing to the Lord thorns, the most wretched

production of the ground,--



----che gia tiene 'l confine

D'amenduo gli emisperi, e tocca l'onda

Sotto Sibilia, Caino e le spine.



It appears that sowins were not the only food of the lunary inhabitant,

for it is related by children he once favoured middle-earth with his

presence, and took a fancy to some pease-porridge, which he was in such

a hurry to devour that he scalded his mouth:



The Man in the Moon

Came tumbling down,

And asked his way to Norwich;

He went by the south,

And burnt his mouth

With supping hot pease-porridge.



His chief beverage, as everybody knows, was claret:



The Man in the Moon drinks claret,

But he is a dull Jack-a-Dandy;

Would he know a sheep's head from a carrot,

He should learn to drink cyder and brandy.



Another old ballad commences,--



The Man in the Moon drinks claret,

With powder-beef, turnip, and carrot.