Tonight, if the sky is clear, you'll be able to look up and see a Blue Moon.
No, not a Smurf-blue moon…in spite of my header photo. That's a fake. Well, the moon image is real, but it's an ordinary warm silvery full moon, identical in color to all those other full moons we see hanging up there every 29.5 days…er, nights. I just borrowed a bottle of hair-color from an octogenarian up the road and gave it a snazzy tint job.
The term "Blue Moon" has been around for upwards of 500 years. Each of our seasons—spring, summer, autumn, winter—typically host only three full moons. But sometimes, because the lunar cycle is a tad shorter than the average number of days per month—and since we start and end our seasons on equinoxes and solstices, not months—there's sometimes an extra moon full moon in a given season; making thirteen full moons in a year instead of the expected twelve. Historically, the term "Blue Moon" was applied to the third moon of a four moon season.
Because this extra third-out-of-four moon didn't happen all that often, the term "Blue Moon" became synonymous with rarity. And after awhile "Blue Moon" stepped outside of astronomy folklore and came to mean any sort of rare event. For example, someone might say: "A politician speaking for more than ten minutes without skewing the facts or outright lying happens once in a blue moon."
Country folks, while often poorly-educated were nevertheless quite nature-cognizant, and naturally had no trouble understanding and employing the original and correct definition of a Blue Moon. For a couple hundred years your average hay-gnawing rube could have told told you it meant the third moon out of four in a particular season.
However, as you might also guess, once it reached our Twentieth Century nature-oblivious, city-atrophied hands, we promptly managed to mess it up.
Apparently an amateur astronomer, James Hugh Pruett, writing for Sky & Telescope magazine back in 1946, got confused by the historic simplicity and thought the term meant the second of two full moons occurring within the same month. An event not all that uncommon. If left there, the mistake might have eventually sank beneath the ignominy of ignorance. But, unfortunately, it received a major 1980s technological boost when Deborah Byrd failed to research the matter and simply parroted Pruett's old mistake on her popular SkyWatch radio broadcast…and from then on, the error became embedded.
So tonight's Blue Moon won't be blue and won't be a genuine Blue Moon as originally defined. There will only be the usual three full moons this season: one full moon back in July, plus two in August. No full moon occurred in June after summer's solstice start, and no full moon will arise in September before summer ends with the equinox. We're therefore a full moon short of being able to claim true Blue Moon status…unless you're willing to concede to our modern mangled misinterpretation.
Still, that big ol' silver dollar moon will be up there tonight, shining bright and rolling across the star-spattered heavens. Pretty enough to please anyone except a Smurf.
18 comments:
Grizz: Convoluted indead! And this morning the setitng moon over the mountains at Roundtop was a decided shade of orange!
Carolyn H…
Yup. A fine and dandy mess.
Here along the river, last night's moon was just a faint gold as it climbed through the sycamores. Tonight's will likely be invisible as the edge of Isaac's depression will be moving in bringing several days of rain. It's already scattered clouds.
Huh--I must be one of those city folk (though I don't think my hands are atrophied...) as I used the term in its latter meaning.
Thanks for educating me.
Think I'll go off somewhere now and find me some hay to chew.
Isn't it am amazing sight!!!!! I love it.
Cheers from Cottage Country!
KGMom…
Yeah, you're one of those moderns with "city-atrophied" hands…of course, I qualify, too. Neither of us, I suspect, could buck a rick of wood, hoe a long row of corn, boil wash, shuck a week's worth of corn for the stock, or do about a thousand other things our great-grandparents did as a matter of daily course, without raising blisters or contemplating flinging ourselves off yonder cliff.
On the other hand (no pun intended) from time to time, one should absolutely indulge in a bit of hay-chewing. I reccomend alfalfa.
Jenn…
Alas, when we got home about 10:00 p.m. last night (after a nice dinner celebrating my blond-haired blue-eyed daughter's birthday) the inauthentic blue moon was visible only as a pale smudge behind a scrim of clouds as Isaac's vanguards crept in. So, no photo of the latest impostor.
Thanks for clearing that up, Grizz. I had bought into the whole "two full moons in one month" thing. Now, here's your next assignment: why were such moons called "blue"?
Legit or not, it was a gorgeous moon!
Great post.
Scott…
I'm not sure if I can answer your assignment question satisfactorily, but here's what I've gleaned from various sources, and my own books including several old natural histories and/or folklore and rural matters.
First off, I mistakenly said in the post (now changed) that the term "Blue Moon" had been around 200 years. Actually, it's more than twice that old. What has been around about 200 years, or more accurately was in use 200 years ago, was the "Maine Rule." (When I edited the piece before posting, I ended up leaving the 200 yr. date where the 500 yr. one should have been, and edited out the "Maine Rule" part entirely.) But I'll come back to it in a minute.
The term "Blue Moon" first appeared in print in 1524, in a religious pamphlet. There's some question as to whether or not it was actually in use before this date, and was thus quoted because of this familiarity, or if it was coined at the time of this writing. To further muddle the waters, its usage here could simply mean an absurdity: "The clergy might tell us the moon is blue and we're supposed to believe them!" Others feel it might be interpreted as coming from the Middle English ""belewe" which could mean either the color blue or "betray."
If the latter is the case, it might then be referring to trusting the clergy to get the date of the true spring full moon correct. Why was this such a big deal? Because in those medieval days, before the Gregorian calendar reform, the computus—the calculation for determining the date of Easter—was occasionally out of sync with the moon phases and actual season. As you probably know, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon on or after the 21 of March. But since calendar and moon phases could get out of sync, spring could begin and a full moon pass a month before the actual Easter-determining moon. As you also know, back them most moons were given nominal names—Harvest Moon, Planters Moon, etc. This was called a "belewe moon" meaning a "false" or "betrayer" moon. And folks relied on the clergy to tell them when it occurred. A big deal because if they got it wrong, they'd have to keep fasting for a second month to be in accordance with Lent. So the blue moon reference in the pamphlet might have been calling the clergy betrayers.
All that said, most scholars seem to think the term—even back five centuries ago, and possibly earlier—also meant an absurdity. As in, "I'll take you to my secret brook trout hole when pigs fly!" Which is more or less how we apply it today.
But…it might also have originally stemmed from fact—from those rare but real historical occasions when the moon did indeed turn blue. As it did for nearly two years following the eruption of Krakatoa. The same might have been true following earlier volcanic events. So a blue moon might have been both a reality and a phrase based in reality to denote a rare but not impossible happening.
Now, back to the Maine Rule. Several almanacs from the early 1800s do give the meaning of a blue moon as being the third full moon of a four full moon season. This was possible first printed in a publication called the Maine Farmer's Almanac, and thus was known a the "Maine Rule." Which was the contention point of my post. That's the real original meaning at least since the term lodged itself on our shores. And in its favor, so far as I'm concerned, is also the fact the four-moons-in-a-season rarity is less common than two-moons-in-a-month, which can happen twice in a single year, though we can never have more than 13 moons in a year. So while you could have two modern blue moons per year, historically calculated—correctly!—you could only ever have one. Rarer is better when it come to blue moons.
So that's what I know. Not the absolute, definitive answer…but probably way more details than you ever wanted.
Samantha…
I don't doubt it—though I'll have to take your word since it was all but obscured by clouds here. However, I have been watching it ripen to fullness all this week, and it was quite a lovely sight rolling up and over the treetops.
I'm amazed at the number of people who seem confused that it's "not blue." LOL! Great explanation of how the blue moon came to be my friend, and love your "tint job!"
Jayne…
Hey, I guess if the right volcano erupts, it can actually appear blue—so maybe there's hope. (Or would that be dread?) Anyway, a man's gotta poke fun at such craziness every so often. Glad you liked the tint job. Who knows…maybe about 40 years from now you'll be wearing the same shade! ;-D
This is great to know the facts and history.... May I post this blog page to my Facebook page to educate all the rest of my "friends"? I know your blog is proprietary, so I respect your wishes....
Giggles…
Sure, you can do that. Might even draw in a new Riverdaze reader…or else scare potential ones away. FYI, there's a lot more of the older history in the comment answer to Scott above. Hope you've had a good summer.
How interesting, I'd no idea that originally a Blue Moon was the third of a four moon season. Sadly the sky has been cloudy the last few nights but the moon was absolutely beautiful on Thursday night even though it was a touch short of full.
Rowan…
Though we can trace "Blue Moon" back to at least the early-1500s, who knows how long before that the term came into usage? Sadly, so many word-spewers who call themselves writers—and I mean those from all walks of communication media—are simply too lazy (incapable?) to properly research this stuff…they just "borrow" whatever they find without question, error thus being compounded upon error, and meanings become garbled and changed, history gets forgotten or ignored, and the rich heritage of folklore and language is lost—leaving us all the poorer.
I'd say you saw about the same phase of this moon as I did, on Thursday night, since Friday and every night thereafter has been cloudy.
Thanks for the origin of the "blue" in "blue moon." Next time we have one, you won't have to research all this information again.
Scott…
You're welcome—and I'm glad you found it interesting…though honesty compels me to say this material, along with considerably more moon lore, was already in my files and had—at least in part—been used in previous articles and columns. It was really more a case of opening the file, plucking, and shaping into paragraphs.
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