In Schaumburg-Lippe,[31] the story goes, that a man and a woman stand in the moon, the man because he strewed brambles and thorns on the church path, so as to hinder people from attending Mass on Sunday morning; the woman because she made butter on that day. The man carries his bundle of thorns, the woman her butter-tub. A similar tale is told in Swabia and in Marken. Fischart[32] says, that there "is to be seen in the moon a manikin who stole wood;" and Prætorius, in his description of the world,[33] that "superstitious people assert that the black flecks in the moon are a man who gathered wood on a Sabbath, and is therefore turned into stone." The Dutch household myth is, that the unhappy man was caught stealing vegetables. Dante calls him Cain:-- "... Now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine, On either hemisphere, touching the wave Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight The moon was round." _Hell_, cant. xx. And again,-- "... Tell, I pray thee, whence the gloomy spots Upon this body, which below on earth Give rise to talk of Cain in fabling quaint?" _Paradise_, cant. ii. Chaucer, in the "Testament of Cresside," adverts to the man in the moon, and attributes to him the same idea of theft. Of Lady Cynthia, or the moon, he says,-- "Her gite was gray and full of spottis blake, And on her brest a chorle painted ful even, Bering a bush of thornis on his backe, Whiche for his theft might clime so ner the heaven." Ritson, among his "Ancient Songs," gives one extracted from a manuscript of the time of Edward II., on the Man in the Moon, but in very obscure language. The first verse, altered into more modern orthography, runs as follows:-- "Man in the Moon stand and stit, On his bot-fork his burden he beareth, It is much wonder that he do na doun slit, For doubt lest he fall he shudd'reth and shivereth. ... "When the frost freezes must chill he bide, The thorns be keen his attire so teareth, Nis no wight in the world there wot when he syt, Ne bote it by the hedge what weeds he weareth." Alexander Necham, or Nequam, a writer of the twelfth century, in commenting on the dispersed shadows in the moon, thus alludes to the vulgar belief: "Nonne novisti quid vulgus vocet rusticum in luna portantem spinas? Unde quidam vulgariter loquens ait:-- "Rusticus in Luna, Quem sarcina deprimit una Monstrat per opinas Nulli prodesse rapinas," which may be translated thus: "Do you know what they call the rustic in the moon, who carries the fagot of sticks?" So that one vulgarly speaking says,-- "See the rustic in the Moon, How his bundle weighs him down; Thus his sticks the truth reveal, It never profits man to steal."