The fascination with the moon has transfixed the world for centuries

It’s 50 years since man first walked on the moon. But humanity has been bewitched by our nearest neighbour for far longer than that. David Barnett delves into lunar myth, legend and folklore

Tuesday 09 July 2019 08:56 BST
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A plane flies past the Moon at sunset in London in 2015
A plane flies past the Moon at sunset in London in 2015

Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” So long have we been fascinated by the moon, that bright, progressively changing, ever-present fixture of our night sky, that we could easily believe those lines are some ancient folkish portent, their origins lost in the mists of time.

In actual fact they were written by Curt Siodmak, the screenwriter of the 1941 movie The Wolf Man, which terrified audiences as Lon Chaney Jr, attacked by a wolf in darkest Wales, transforms in the silvery light of the full moon into a half-human, half-lupine beast.

Even by the time that movie came out, almost three decades before man would walk on the moon, our fascination with Earth’s satellite was already deep-rooted. And why wouldn’t it be? Even to the earliest people, the moon must have been a troubling thing, hanging there in the sky, its face pocked by craters and ridged with mountains, mirroring and echoing the earth, impossibly distant yet close enough to make out its contoured surface. Of the Earth, and yet beyond it, further than mankind could dream of travelling.

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