gathering sticks on the Sabbath; and, as an example to
mankind, he is condemned to stand forever in the moon, with
his bundle on his back. Instead of a dog, one German version
places with him a woman, whose crime was churning butter on
Sunday. She carries her butter-tub; and this brings us to
Mother Goose again:--

"Jack and Jill went up the hill To get a pail
of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after."

This may read like mere nonsense; but there is a point of view
from which it may be safely said that there is very little
absolute nonsense in the world. The story of Jack and Jill is
a venerable one. In Icelandic mythology we read that Jack and
Jill were two children whom the moon once kidnapped and
carried up to heaven. They had been drawing water in a bucket,
which they were carrying by means of a pole placed across
their shoulders; and in this attitude they have stood to the
present day in the moon. Even now this explanation of the
moon-spots is to be heard from the mouths of Swedish peasants.
They fall away one after the other, as the moon wanes, and
their water-pail symbolizes the supposed connection of the
moon with rain-storms. Other forms of the myth occur in
Sanskrit.

The moon-goddess, or Aphrodite, of the ancient Germans, was
called Horsel, or Ursula, who figures in Christian mediaeval
mythology as a persecuted saint, attended by a troop of eleven
thousand virgins, who all suffer martyrdom as they journey