The Moon is made of green cheese
"The Moon is made of green cheese" is a statement referring to a fanciful belief that the Moon is composed of cheese. In its original formulation as a proverb and metaphor for credulity with roots in fable, this refers to the perception of a simpleton who sees a reflection of the Moon in water and mistakes it for a round cheese wheel. It is widespread as a folkloric motif among many of the world's cultures, and the notion has also found its way into children's folklore and modern popular culture.
The phrase "green cheese" in the common version of this proverb (sometimes "cream cheese" is used),[1] may refer to a young, unripe cheese[2][3][4][5] or to cheese with a greenish tint.[6]
There was never an actual historical popular belief that the Moon is made of green cheese (cf. Flat Earth and the myth of the flat Earth).[A] It was typically used as an example of extreme credulity, a meaning that was clear and commonly understood as early as 1638.[9]
Fable
There exists a family of stories, in
... the
Zulu tale of the hyena that drops the bone to go after the moon reflection in the water; the Gascon tale of the peasant watering his ass on a moonlight night. A cloud obscures the moon, and the peasant, thinking the ass has drunk the moon, kills the beast to recover the moon; the Turkish tale of the Khoja Nasru-'d-Din who thinks the moon has fallen into the well and gets a rope and chain with which to pull it out. In his efforts the rope breaks, and he falls back, but seeing the moon in the sky, praises Allah that the moon is safe; the Scottish tale of the wolf fishing with his tail for the moon reflection;— G. H. McKnight[10]
The Wolf and the Fox story type
This
A fox once craftily induced a wolf to go and join the Jews in their Sabbath preparations and share in their festivities. On his appearing in their midst the Jews fell upon him with sticks and beat him. He therefore came back determined to kill the fox. But the latter pleaded: 'It is no fault of mine that you were beaten, but they have a grudge against your father who once helped them in preparing their banquet and then consumed all the choice bits.' 'And was I beaten for the wrong done by my father?' cried the indignant wolf. 'Yes,' replied the fox, 'the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. However,' he continued, 'come with me and I will supply you with abundant food. He led him to a well which had a beam across it from either end of which hung a rope with a bucket attached. The fox entered the upper bucket and descended into the well whilst the lower one was drawn up. 'Where are you going?' asked the wolf. The fox, pointing to the cheese-like reflection of the moon, replied: 'Here is plenty of meat and cheese; get into the other bucket and come down at once.' The wolf did so, and as he descended, the fox was drawn up. 'And how am I to get out?' demanded the wolf. 'Ah' said the fox 'the righteous is delivered out of trouble and the wicked cometh in his stead. Is it not written, Just balances, just weights'?
Rashi as the first literary reference may reflect the well-known
The variation featuring
One of the facets of this morphology is grouped as "The Wolf Dives into the Water for Reflected Cheese" (Type 34) of the
Proverb
"The Moon is made of green cheese" was one of the most popular proverbs in 16th- and 17th-century English literature,[14] and it was also in use after this time. It likely originated in this formulation in 1546, when The Proverbs of John Heywood claimed "the moon is made of a greene cheese."[B] A common variation at that time was "to make one believe the Moon is made of green cheese" (i.e., to hoax), as seen in John Wilkins'book The Discovery of a World in the Moone.[16]
In French, there is the proverb "Il veut prendre la lune avec les dents" ("He wants to take the moon with his teeth"), alluded to in Rabelais.[17]
The characterization is also common in stories of
Childlore
A 1902 survey of childlore by psychologist G. Stanley Hall in the United States found that though most young children were unsure of the Moon's composition, that it was made of cheese was the single most common explanation:
Careful inquiry and reminiscence concerning the substance of the moon show that eighteen children [of 423], averaging five years, thought it made of cheese. Sometime the mice eat it horseshoe-shaped, or that it could be fed by throwing cheese up so clouds could catch it; or it was green because the man in the moon fed on green grass; its spots were mould; it was really green but looked yellow, because wrapped in yellow cheese cloth; it was cheese mixed with wax or with melted lava, which might be edible; there were many rats, mice and skippers there; it grew big from a starry speck of light by eating cheese.[18]
Before that time, and since, the idea of the Moon actually being made of cheese has appeared as a humorous conceit in much of children's popular culture with astronomical themes (cf. the Man in the Moon), and in adult references to it.
In epistemology
At the
Dennis Lindley used the myth to help explain the necessity of Cromwell's rule in Bayesian probability: "In other words, if a decision-maker thinks something cannot be true and interprets this to mean it has zero probability, he will never be influenced by any data, which is surely absurd. So leave a little probability for the moon being made of green cheese; it can be as small as 1 in a million, but have it there since otherwise an army of astronauts returning with samples of the said cheese will leave you unmoved."[21]
In popular culture
In the 1989 film A Grand Day Out, the plot hinges on Wallace and Gromit going to the Moon to gather cheese due to a lack of it at home on a bank holiday.
See also
- Cheese Factories on the Moon
- Cromwell's rule[21]
- Face value
- Giant impact hypothesisfor theories on the origin and makeup of the Moon
- History of cheese
- Ipse dixit—compare
- Little Cheese(real name Chester Cheese), fictional character in the DC comic, featuring a type of cheese found on the Moon by an astronaut
- Man in the Moon
- Moon in fiction
- Moonrakers of Wiltshire
- Olivine
- Skepticism
- Splitting of the Moon
References
Notes
- ^ The myth of the flat Earth is the modern misconception that the prevailing cosmological view during the Middle Ages in Europe was that the Earth is flat, instead of spherical.[7][8]
- ^ "Ye fetch circumquaques to make me believe, Or thinke, that the moone is made of greene cheese. And when ye have made me a lout in all these, It seemeth ye would make me goe to bed at noone." – John Heywood. Greene may refer here not to the color, as many now think, but to being new or unaged.[15] Cf. green wood.
- argument — ignores completely the personal observation and collection of 382 kg (842 lb) of Moon rock by Apollo program astronauts. Compare Cromwell's rule.
Citations
- ^ Davies, Thomas Lewis Owen (1881). A Supplementary English Glossary. G. Bell and sons. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-300-18236-1. Archivedfrom the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
- ^ Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham (1900). Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Giving the Derivation, Source, Or Origin of Common Phrases, Allusions, and Words that Have a Tale to Tell. Cassell, Petter, & Galpin. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
- ^ Whitney, William Dwight; Smith, Benjamin Eli (1906). The Century dictionary and cyclopedia: a work of universal reference in all departments of knowledge with a new atlas of the world. The Century Co. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-19-933089-8. Archivedfrom the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 17 February 2020.
- ^ The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 24 March 2020.
In the saying to believe that the moon is made of green cheese ... it is not clear which sense of green cheese is intended; the likely reference is to the mottled surface of the Moon, which might be likened to any of the senses.
- ^ Russell 1991, p. 3.
- ^ Russell 1997.
- ^ Wilkins, John (1638). New World Book. Vol. 1.
You may as soon persuade some Country Peasants that the Moon is made of Green Cheese (as we say) as that 'tis bigger than his Cart-wheel.
- ^ S2CID 164130099.
- ^ "Sanhedrin 38b" (in Hebrew) (Ryzman ed.). Hebrew Books. Archived from the original on 9 October 2015. Retrieved 6 October 2015.
"Sanhedrin 39a" (in Hebrew) (Ryzman ed.). Hebrew Books. Archived from the original on 20 October 2013. Retrieved 19 October 2013. - ^ "Soncino translation of Sanhedrin" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 April 2018. Retrieved 7 October 2015.
- ^ Teitelbaum 1999, pp. 260–263.
- ^ Apperson & Manser 2003, p. 392.
- ^ Adams, Cecil (23 July 1999). "How did the moon = green cheese myth start?". The Straight Dope. Archived from the original on 26 June 2012. Retrieved 10 June 2012.
- ISBN 978-3732658992.
- ^ Rabelais, François (1691). Les oeuvres de M. Francois Rabelais Docteur en médecine... Augmentées de la vie de l'auteur et de quelques remarques sur sa vie et sur l'histoire. Avec l'explication de tous les mots difficiles [par Pierre Du Puy]. Et la clef nouvellement augmentée. Tome I. Vol. I. p. 211. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 25 September 2021.
- JSTOR 1412741.
- ^ Mirsky, Steve (19 October 2011). "Moon Not Made of Cheese, Physicist Explains". Scientific American. Flagstaff, Arizona. Archived from the original on 13 November 2011. Retrieved 10 November 2011.
- ^ Sanders, Ian (1996–2005). "Is the moon made of green cheese". Archived from the original on 8 October 2013. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
- ^ a b Lindley 1991, p. 104.
Bibliography
- Anderson, Stephen R. (30 May 2006). Doctor Dolittle's Delusion: Animals and the Uniqueness of Human Language. New Haven, Connecticut: ISBN 9780300115253.
- Apperson, George Latimer; Manser, M. (September 2003). Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs. Wordsworth Editions. p. 392. ISBN 1-84022-311-1.
- Comstock, Sarah (1929). The moon is made of green cheese. Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc. p. front cover. Archivedfrom the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 29 October 2017.
- Lindley, Dennis (1991). Making Decisions (2nd ed.). ISBN 0-471-90808-8.
- ISBN 0-275-95904-X
- Russell, Jeffrey Burton (1993), "The Flat Error: The Modern Distortion of Medieval Geography", Mediaevalia, 15: 337–353
- Russell, Jeffrey Burton (1997), "The Myth of the Flat Earth", Studies in the History of Science, American Scientific Affiliation, archived from the original on 3 September 2011, retrieved 14 July 2007
- Teitelbaum, Eli Yassif; translated from Hebrew by Jacqueline S. (1999). The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning. Bloomington, Indiana: ISBN 9780253002624.)
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