presides over the daily doings of
sublunary mortals. In the matter of birth, we find Francis Bacon
affirming that "the calculation of nativities, fortunes, good or bad
hours of business, and the like fatalities, are mere levities that have
little in them of certainty and solidity, and may be plainly confuted
by physical reasons"; [364] and yet in his Natural History he writes:
"It may be that children and young cattle that are brought forth in
the full of the moon, are stronger and larger than those that are
brought forth in the wane." [365] There surely can be no
superstition in studying the moon's conjunctions and oppositions if
her influence in a nativity have the slightest weight. And this
influence is still widely maintained by philosophers who read
Bacon, as well as by the peasants who read nothing at all. "In
Cornwall, when a child is born in the interval between an old moon
and the first appearance of a new one, it is said that it will never live
to reach the age of puberty. Hence the saying, 'no moon, no man.' In
the same county, too, when a boy is born in the wane of the moon, it
is believed that the next birth will be a girl, and vice versa; and it is
also commonly said that when a birth takes place on the 'growing of
the moon' the next child will be of the same sex." [366]

As a natural proceeding, we find that the moon has influence when
the child is weaned. Caledonian mothers very carefully observe the
lunar phases on this account. Jamieson tells us that "this
superstition, with respect to the fatal influence of a waning moon,
seems to have been general in Scotland. In Angus, it is believed,
that, if a child be put from the breast during the waning of the moon,
it will decay all the time that the moon continues to wane." [367] So
in the heart of Europe, "the Lithuanian precept to wean boys at a
waxing, but girls on a waning moon, no doubt to make the boys
sturdy and the girls slim and delicate, is a fair match for the Orkney
Islanders' objection to marrying except with a growing moon, while
some even wish for a flowing tide." [368] As to marriage, the
ancient Greeks considered the day of the full moon the most
propitious period for that ceremony. In Euripides, Clytemnestra
having asked Agamemnon when he intended to give Iphigenia in
marriage to Achilles, he replies, "When the full moon comes forth
with good luck." In Pindar, too, this season is preferred. [369]

Lunar influences over physical health and