The Man in the Moon, an anonymous Medieval lyric

In this anonymous poem from the 1300s, there is a man, known as Hubert, who is living on the moon. Hubert seems to be having a terrible time up on the moon: as the poem says, he is shivering and having to work too hard, and he is always afraid of falling off. It is said that this man was ‘born and raised’ on the moon, yet he also seems to be in a state of punishment there. Hubert is a medieval peasant who is guilty of stealing thorns in order to make hedges, a form of fence to stop livestock from wandering.

This poem is found in the ‘Harley manuscript’ (Harley 2253), a rich collection of early lyric poetry in English, French, and Latin. The Harley manuscript includes love lyrics alongside religious lyrics, as well as lyrics that have a sharp political or satirical message. The manuscript is formed of multiple ‘booklets’; this poem about the man on the moon is in Booklet 6 and found between two French lyrics. One of the French lyrics is spoken by an outlaw in the forest voicing a political protest; the other French lyric is a comic piece about a knight and his beloved lady. It is very difficult to define what a medieval lyric is, because medieval lyrics are on many different subjects and use many different forms. But it might be useful to think of lyrics as relatively short poems that often (but not always) use stanzas and the first-person voice.

The speaker of the poem is a man on earth viewing Hubert and trying to help him. The speaker devises a plan: he and his wife will invite the hayward (the legal official) to their house, get him drunk and take the ‘pledge’ (the penalty) in order to free Hubert. But unfortunately, Hubert is unable to hear the speaker of the poem, and the speaker grows increasingly frustrated. This is perhaps designed to make the audience laugh, as the speaker’s attempt to help the man in the moon (and consequent frustration when the plan does not work) seem so ridiculous. It is possible that this was intended as classist ‘humour’, with an upper-class audience invited to laugh at the lower-class characters in the poem.

Let us take the poem stanza by stanza to explore the arc of its narrative. The first stanza gives us a glimpse into the miserable life of the man on the moon. The second shows how the man in the moon is labouring continually. The third stanza describes the man as a worn-out and burdened figure, saying he is leaning on his pitchfork as a ‘grey friar’. ‘Grey friar’ refers to those who were part of the Franciscan order (the Franciscan order refers to a religious group who emphasized poverty and were inspired by St Francis of Assisi). The fourth stanza brings us back to earth, detailing the plan to release the man in the moon. The fifth stanza shows that the communication has failed, as Hubert (the first time we’re given the man in the moon’s name) cannot hear the speaker on Earth. It is notable that the poem shifts between referring to Hubert in the third-person and the second-person (he versus you), which perhaps results in the speaker, and by extension us as the audience, being both close to yet distant from the man in the moon. This apparently simple poem thus tells us something about the expansiveness of the medieval lyric imagination: the lyric imagination allows us to form a complex, shifting connection with the wider cosmos of which we are part.  

This poem is one example of a story from European folklore: the story of a man banished to the moon for committing a theft or other crime. There are various versions of this story in English, German, and Dutch. The nature of the ‘crime’ varies depending on the version. In our English poem, it is for stealing thorns to make hedges. In another version the man is guilty of placing thorns on the way to church to prevent people from going to Sunday Mass. In other versions, the man is guilty of stealing sheep or vegetables. As part of this wider tradition, our poem is one example of how medieval people found ways to connect imaginatively with—even speak to—the moon and its inhabitants. 

—Ayoush Lazikani