awakeSOME MOON SUPERSTITIONS
The 1865 edition of The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities lists some once-popular moon superstitions, including these: It is unlucky to kill a pig in the wane of the moon, or the pork will waste in boiling.
It is unlucky to see the new moon for the first time through glass.
A Saturday moon, / If it comes once in seven years, / Comes once too soon. (In other words, if the new moon is on a Saturday, the weather will likely be bad for the ensuing month.)
To see "the old moon in the arms of the new one" is a reckoned sign of fine weather; and so is the turning up of the horns of the new moon. In this position it is supposed to retain the water that is imagined to be in it, which would urn out and fall to earth as rain if the horns were turned down.
Rita Mae Brown (1944-)
