Blue Moon Legends And Myths
There are legends about the Moon in every culture, but one legend in particular is very mysterious. For example, have you ever wondered what a ‘Blue Moon’ Is? Blue Moon legends abound, and have been mentioned in many songs, but what exactly is a ‘Blue Moon?’
The older definition of Blue Moon is for an extra full moon that occurs in a quarter of the year, which would normally have three full moons, but sometimes has four. Oddly, it is the third full moon in a season that has four which is counted as the “extra” full moon and named a blue moon. In some folklore, there are legends that when there is a blue moon, it has a face and talks to anything caught in its moonlight.
So a “Blue Moon” is said to occur when there is an extra full moon in a particular quarter which would usually only have three. However, confusingly, it is the third of these moons in the season that has four which is the one named “Blue Moon” and this is the one that counts as the extra one. Down through the ages, this has been noted in folklore as a mysterious and spooky event and so there are many tall tales associated with it including werewolves, moonlight madness and moons made of green cheese. Anyone who allowed the moon’s blue light to fall upon their face at this time was said to turn mad.
I wrote one of my own.
On the horizon, between the gnarled oak tree trunks of the ancient copse on the hill, the first silvery light revealed itself. Silently shivering with dread in the twilight, the ancient people fell first to their knees, then onto their faces, pressing their eyes into the dewy evening grass to protect them from what the shaman had told them was to be a Blue Moon.
Silently, minute by minute, the giant milky disc floated upward, til the point where the perfect circle of the top half of its orb cleared the brooding treeline, The low guttural incantations of the shaman intoned through hollow cloud, narrating the moon’s progress all the while to the prostrated people, and exhorting them not to look up lest the eerie blue moonlight fall upon their faces and strike their eyes. They would be made mad he reminded them, or coarse hairs would sprout from their arms, noses and faces as they shape-shifted into wolves like their kinsmen up above them on the moors – those who, even now, could be heard howling and echoing sporadically in the far distance.
As he watched it glide, resplendent , into its triumphant place high in the violet heavens, the disc did indeed, chanted the druid, glow with a luminous blue-diamond aura. Giant moths that had been beating their wings fast and furious in the honeysuckle-scented dusky air, fell away as he extinguished his light. Unable to control their sense of foreboding, a few of the older women suppressed groans at the extinguishing of the flame. However, the moon was shining as bright as day and their companions soon elbowed them sharply in the ribs for bringing down a hex upon them all by breaking the sacred silence. A cloud-like hush descended upon their prostrate bodies as the druid inspected the surface of the giant, glowing icy disc, scanning it for what felt to them all like an eternity, for portents.
All would be be well, the druid sang at last. The runes of bad omen were not visible when the moon was blue – the harvest would be spared and the hay could be safely gathered in.
