Huntsman's Moon

Gammerstang commented on the word Huntsman's Moon

October's full moon was nicknamed the "huntsman's moon" by Celtic tribes and called the "blood moon" in medieval England, as it signaled the beginning of hunting season. Eliezer Edwards' Words, Facts, and Phrases, (1882) explained the name: "Sportsmen do not hunt by moonlight. The obvious meaning therefore is hunter's month--the crop being harvested, there is nothing to interfere with the sport of the hunter."

The anonymous English book of etiquette, Manners and Rules of Good Society (1901), offered this fine point of hunting behavior: "It is difficult to make a would-be sportsman comprehend the strict etiquette maintained between the owners of manors; that is to say, he would think nothing of crossing the boundary of his host's manor, gun in hand, if he felt inclined to follow a bird or hare he had wounded, oblivious of the fact that in the first place the greatest punctiliousness is observed between gentlemen in the matter of trespassing on each other's land when out shooting. Unless the greatest intimacy existed, a sportsman would hardly venture to pick up his dead bird if it had fallen on a neighbour's manor, and would on no account look for a wounded bird, but for a dead one only."

January 19, 2018