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Lunar Legends Abound.

I file this report from the edge of Lake Superior where amidst the firs I consort with wood nymphs smoking my red stone pipe on a log where woodpeckers peck as the sun sets. And when the moon launches over the water, I will lure the fairest fairy maiden into my cabin to seduce her with The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Meanwhile, I'll summarize it for you here, but only those parts that make mention of the moon.

A moon maiden was swinging with her gal pals when a rival cut the grapevines causing Nokomis' fall to earth. She landed in a flowering meadow and there, in the moonlight, her daughter was born.

Wenonah grew to be a lovely girl and her mother constantly warned her not to lie in the meadow when Mudjekeewis, the West Wind, came along. But she didn't heed her mother and the West Wind wooed her one evening in the serious moonlight. Soon she bore a lovechild named Hiawatha. But the West Wind abandoned them, and Wenonah died of sorrow, so it was Nokomis who raised Hiawatha from birth.

"By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon..."

One night when the moon rose above the waters, its face was shadowed and puzzling to Hiawatha. He asked his grandmother what's up with that, and she told him the tale of how an angry warrior had once thrown his grandmother so far into the midnight sky that she landed on the moon and it was her imprint that he now saw.

Nokomis had an attitude about men, understandably. She told Hiawatha about his false-hearted father Mudjekeewis - the West Wind - and how he had killed the boy's mother. Hiawatha was incensed and set off for the portals of the sunset to find his father and snuff that blowhard out. As a warrior, Hiawatha was bad to the bone, yet after a long, tumultuous battle he learned that the West Wind is immortal. Hiawatha finally backed off, content to inherit the wind.

Back at the wigwam, the pallid moon - the Night-sun - rose again above the tranquil water. Hiawatha was sleeping while Nokomis toiled patiently in the moonlight preparing fish oil while hatching a plot. When the moon swapped with the sun, Nokomis sent Hiawatha on another mission of revenge: A pre-emptive strike to kill Pearl-Feather, the evil magician from whose deadly tricks no one was safe. You see, Pearl-Feather had also come down from the moon - the dark side, perhaps - and killed Nokomis' father with pestilence and fever.

Hiawatha was soon on the warpath again,

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