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"once in a blue Moon." But it isn't true! The term "blue
Moon" has been
around a long time, well over 400 years, but its calendrical meaning
has become widespread only in the last 20 years.

A Variety of Meanings

In fact, the very earliest uses of the term were remarkably like saying
the Moon is made of green cheese. Both were obvious absurdities, about
which there could be no doubt. "He would argue the Moon was blue" was
taken by the average person of the 16th century as we take "He'd argue
that black is white."

The concept that a blue Moon was absurd (the first meaning) led
eventually to a second meaning, that of "never." The statement "I'll
marry you, m'lady, when the Moon is blue!" would not have been taken as
a betrothal in the 18th century.

But there are also historical examples of the Moon actually turning blue.
That's the third meaning - the Moon appearing blue in the sky. When the
Indonesian volcano Krakatoa exploded in 1883, its dust turned sunsets
green and the Moon blue all around the world for the best part of two
years. In 1927, the Indian monsoons were late arriving and the extra-long
dry season blew up enough dust for a blue Moon. And Moons in
northeastern North America turned blue in 1951 when huge forest fires in
western Canada threw smoke particles up into the sky.

So, by the mid-19th century, it was clear that visibly blue Moons, though
rare, did happen from time to time - whence the phrase "once in a blue
Moon." It meant then exactly what it means today, a fairly infrequent
event, not quite regular enough to pinpoint. That's meaning number
four, and today it is still the main one.

But meaning is a slippery substance, and I know of a half dozen songs
that use "blue Moon" as a symbol of sadness and loneliness. The poor
crooner's Moon often turns to gold when he gets his love at the end of
the song. That's meaning number five: check your old Elvis Presley or
Bill Monroe records for more information.

And did I mention a slinky blue liquid in a cocktail glass, one that
requires curacao, gin, and perhaps a twist of lemon? That's number
six.

The Second full Moon in a Month

Finally we arrive at the most recent meaning of all, the second full Moon
in a month. I first heard it in 1988. At the end of May that year, when
a second full Moon occurred, radio stations and newspapers everywhere
carried an item on this bit of "old folklore," as they called it,
drawing on an international wire story. Across North America the blue
Moon caught the public's imagination. In the following months,
restaurants, clothing stores, and bookstores opened under the name "Blue
Moon." An artist I know did a set of night landscapes that month; he
calls them his Blue Moon series. At the Memorial University of
Newfoundland Folklore & Language Archive we get calls from all over,
from people wondering about bits of folklore. And that month we got
calls about blue Moons.

I searched high and low for an earlier example of this usage, or any
other name for two full Moons in a single calendar month. But the search
was in vain - this meaning seemed to have no history. I did find
information on the other meanings of "blue Moon," but not this one,
number seven.

Then in December 1990, with another "blue Moon" coming on, I started
getting more calls and decided to write about it in the local
newspaper. I searched harder this time, exhausting all the usual sources:
specialized dictionaries, indexes of proverbial sayings, and regional
collections of folklore. A brand-new edition of the huge Oxford English
Dictionary had recently come out, but even it omitted this particular
meaning. "Blue Moon" seemed to be a truly modern piece of folklore,
masquerading as something old.

Still Unresolved

Then my brother-in-law reminded me that the term was a question in one of
the Trivial Pursuit boxes, the Genus II edition published in 1986. I
hope the manufacturer of this game is still the fine company for scholars
it was then. They had kept all their files and were able to tell me
their source had been a children's book published the previous year, The
Kids' World Almanac of Records and Facts (New York, 1985: World Almanac
Publications). Where the authors, Margo McLoone-Basta and Alice Siegel,
got it, no one seemed to know.

Used in this way, the term was certainly very, very local before they
included it in their book. It seemed never to have been written down
before. Of course, authors sometimes "invent" information to protect
themselves against plagiarists. Well, if that were the case they'd
already lost, because the new "blue Moon" almost immediately entered the
folklore of the modern world. It became as living a meaning as any of its
predecessors.

During my search it hadn't occurred to me that radio might have played a
role. My newspaper column had just gone to the printer when I got a
copy of the December 1990 Astronomy. There, Deborah Byrd mentioned the
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 þ OLXWin 1.00b þ Always use tasteful words.  You may have to eat them.

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