Note (return) — Chapter II
Reading edition
And as some people think that women may be gotten with child by the sun, so others imagine that they can conceive by the moon. According to the Greenlanders the moon is a young man, and he "now and then comes down to give their wives a visit and caress them; for which reason no woman dare sleep lying upon her back, without she first spits upon her fingers and rubs her belly with it. For the same reason the young maids are afraid to stare long at the moon, imagining they may get a child by the bargain."178 Similarly Breton peasants are reported to believe that women or girls who expose their persons to the moonlight may be impregnated by it and give birth to monsters.179