Appalachian History

Ring out the old
Ring in the new
Ring out the false
Ring in the true.

New calendar today; get out your Farmer's Almanac and check the heavens for a preview of the year ahead. Once in a blue moon there is one on New Year's Eve. Revelers ringing in 2010 last night were treated to a so-called blue moon. The next ones will not appear until Aug. 2, 2010 and Aug. 31 2010.

As to where the phrase 'Once in a blue moon' comes from, one explanation connects it with the word "belewe" from the Old English, meaning, "to betray." Perhaps, then, the moon was "belewe" because it betrayed the usual perception of one full moon per month. "Yf they saye the mone is belewe, We must beleve that it is true," says William Barlow, the Bishop of Chichester [England], in the Treatyse of the Buryall of the Masse, 1528. There are twelve full moons in most years, which means that three full moons occur during most seasons. One season in ten contains four full moons; hence the third moon that occurs in such a season would be the 'belewe,' or 'blue,' moon.

Meantime, the full moon this month is actually called the 'Old Moon,''Moon After Yule,' or 'Wolf Moon.' The Cherokee called it 'The Cold Moon--Unolvtani.' They usually hold a Cold Moon Dance in the community, marking the passing or ending of one cycle of seasons and welcoming the beginning of the new cycle. The Shawnee called it the 'Severe Moon--Ha'kwi kiishthwa.'For these Native Americans, Pepoonwi rules this half of the year. This grandfather sits in the north at ice mountain. He carries the cold weather, but flees before the mild warm winds of Shawaki.

sources: www.starsandscopes.net/glossary.php?class=MoonName
www.farmersalmanac.com/what-is-a-blue-moon
www.shawnee-traditions.com/ShawneeMoons.html

Well, it's a new year, and one with a blue moon in it to boot, though you'll have to wait a bit on that: the blue moon doesn't make its appearance till December 31. Although we had a blue moon last May, don’t take it too much for granted: just under 3% of all full moons are blue moons.

Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining,
Shine on the one that's gone and proved untrue;
Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining,
Shine on the one that's gone and left me blue.

It was on a moonlight night, the stars were shining bright;
And they whispered from on high, your love had said goodbye.
Blue moon of Kentucky, keep on shining,
Shine on the one that's gone and said goodbye.
---Bill Monroe, Blue moon of Kentucky (1947)

Monroe wrote the song he’s most known for right on the cusp of an expansion in public understanding of just what a blue moon is. In the 1940's, astrologists and meteorologists started using the term to describe when the moon takes on a blue coloration. This happens when small atmospheric particles interfere with light, causing a bluish tint to the moon's appearance from earth. The particles can come from things such as forest fires and volcanic eruptions. However, this only occurs "once in a blue moon."

More traditionally, a blue moon was referred to as the 4th full moon in a season. Each of the 4 seasons of the year has 3 months, and will usually have 3 full moons. Each of these 12 moons has a name like "Harvest Moon," "Hunter's Moon" and so on. When a season occurs that contains 4 full moons, the 4th becomes the blue moon.

Blue moon is different from the monthly or seasonal moon names as it isn't restricted to a time of year. It is a movable feast that occurs because the moon and our calendar are not in sync and all the months but February are longer than the moon's cycle.

So just how often is "once in a blue moon?" There are 1,200 calendar months in a century. In the same century, there are, on the average, 1,236.83 full moons. The difference is the average number of blue moons in a century: 36.83, or an average of one per 2.72 years.

Actually, about one year each 19 has two blue moons, because its shortest month, February, has no full moon at all; for the Eastern Time Zone, the complete list of such years from 1951 through 2050 is 1961, 1980, 1999, 2018, and 2037. Between these years, blue moons happen at intervals such as 2 years and 7, 8, 9, or 10 months.

There's a pretty fair chance that the jilted lover of Monroe's blue moon song was singing in October, August or July, historically the months with the most blue moons.

So was it the coloration of the moon that reminded the singer of how sad and blue they felt, was the singer comparing the inconstancy of a blue moon to the lover's inconstancy, or both? Kentucky's General Assembly offered no answer to this question when, in 1989, it passed KRS 2.100, designating the song "Blue moon of Kentucky" as the official state bluegrass song.


sources:www.kdla.ky.gov/resources/kybgsong.htm#BlueMoon
www.ips-planetarium.org/planetarian/articles/folkloreBlueMoon.html
www.farmersalmanac.com/full-moon-names
www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/moon/3304131.html?page=1&c=y



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