(Continued from previous message)

term coming from a March 1946 article in Sky & Telescope (page 3).
Contacting her, I found out she had read it for her National Public Radio
program, Star Date, in late January 1980. No doubt that's where the
authors of the children's almanac heard it. Clearly, Byrd's radio
broadcast got the recent "blue Moon" ball rolling. (But Sky &
Telescope got it wrong too. See "What's a Blue Moon?".)

Our new blue Moon has something of the modern times in it, a technical
aspect that most of the earlier meanings lacked. Perhaps that's why it
caught on so quickly. It appeals to our modern sensibilities, including
our desire to have plausible origins. But any folklorist will tell you
that plausibility is the mantle that folklore wears to sneak through
history's lines. "Old folklore" it is not, but real folklore it is.
Given its present popularity, it may last a long time.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
Philip Hiscock is Archivist at the Folklore & Language Archive, Memorial
University of Newfoundland, Canada. This article is an update of
earlier versions that appeared in the Planetarian (December 1993) and
Griffith Observer (July 1996).


___
 þ OLXWin 1.00b þ Always use tasteful words.  You may have to eat them.

--- Maximus/2 3.01