Moonbeams: Stories Told on a Moonlit Night

By Barbara Bergan

The moon in its many guises has for aeons fascinated storytellers. Moonbeams offers eleven richly imagined stories inspired by this
age-old fascination...each one told on a moonlit night. "Eight Maids A-Milking" features a depression-era North Carolina family whose eight females - Mama, Millie, twins Matilda and Myrtle,
Maude, Muriel, Maggie May, and Mirabelle - bring Daddy headaches, heartaches, and happiness. In "Music of the Spheres," a trip to the campground of her youth brings a lonely woman
much more than memories. From the comedic to the surreal, in each of these tales the moon works its mysterious magic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 3, 2009
• ISBN: 9781465320445

Barbara Bergan

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Barbara Bergan grew up as an "army brat" traveling the world with her mother, sister, and career offi cer father before settling in Wilmington, Delaware, with her husband, Lee, and mothering twins. Now retired, their children grown, she and her husband reside in beautiful, balmy Southeastern North Carolina, where Barbara enjoys the simple pleasures of gardening, music, reading...and writing. Her prize-winning stories, some of which are included in Moonbeams, have appeared in the online literary journals Retrozine and Toasted Cheese and in Delaware Beach Life magazine. Her fi rst novel is to be published in late-2010.

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Copyright © 2009 by Barbara Bergan.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

PREFACE

WHIPPOORWILL’S STORY

ONCE IN A BLUE MOON

GARDENS OF DELIGHT

MISTY MOONLIGHT WALTZ

EIGHT MAIDS A-MILKING

SAND PLAY

MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

MOONSHINE MELODIES

APPLES, PEACHES, PUMPKIN PIE

BENEATH THE

FROSTY MOON

MOON OF THE

POPPING TREES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In memory

For the moon never beams,

without bringing me dreams . . .

~Edgar Allan Poe

PREFACE

BEFORE ELECTRONIC devices, or even calendars hung on kitchen walls, the months of the year were tracked by that great dark measure of time, the night sky. Our full moon names, covering the entire months in which they occur, originated with American Indians who used seasonal events to name the months. And though the same names were often used by many tribes, there were variations. The first moon of the year, known as the Cold Moon to the Cherokee, in the East, was known to the Lakota, on the Plains, as the Moon of Frost in the Tepee. The last moon of the year, known as Moon of the Popping Trees to the Lakota, was known to the Cherokee as the Snow Moon.

European settlers, following the custom of the Indians, added their own full moon names. The Worm Moon of March, signaled to the Indians by earthworm castings which foretold the return of the robins, became known to the settlers as the Lenten Moon, considered the last full moon of winter. June’s full moon, the Strawberry Moon to the Indians, became known as the Rose Moon to the Europeans.

The Harvest Moon – the full moon occurring closest to the autumnal equinox – usually appears in September, but sometimes appears in October. Rising at nearly the same time over several nights, it allowed the farmers of long ago to gather their crops late into the evening. It also inspired songwriters from Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth, who in 1903 collaborated on one of the most popular moon songs of all time, Shine on Harvest Moon, to Neil Young, whose own Harvest Moon became a latter-day favorite.

Because the lunar month averages only 29 days, full moon dates shift from year to year, sometimes allowing two in the same month. On these rare occasions, the second full moon is known as a Blue Moon. But there are in fact two definitions of a Blue Moon. The older definition, as stated in early issues of the Maine Farmer’s Almanac, is the third full moon in a season that has four full moons. Complicated, yes, but necessary to determine the date of Easter using the Christian ecclesiastical calendar.

So, while the more recently-defined Blue Moon may occur in any month of the year except February, the other, older, Blue Moon may occur only in February, May, August, or November, about a month before the equinox or solstice. And while a Blue Moon seldom possesses the blue tint that dusty atmospheric conditions may sometimes impart, its lyric quality has inspired many a songwriter!

Even rarer than a Blue Moon, a Copper Moon may sometimes be seen during a full lunar eclipse. As the earth’s shadow – the umbra – moves slowly across it’s surface, the moon may appear bathed in a russet glow. Fortunate observers may even see its culmination, a Japanese lantern effect in which the spreading copper coloration is contrasted by a remaining sliver of silver.

With its many phases and colorations, a mystery from the beginning of time, the moon entrances us. It is the basis of many beliefs and legends. The inspiration for countless songs and stories. The bringer of dreams.

WHIPPOORWILL’S STORY

THEY CALLED IT removal, but the plan set before Congress by the Great Father, Andrew Jackson, and opposed by only one congressman, the Honorable David Crockett, was more a betrayal.

Early on, during the Creek War, Jacksa Chula Harjo – or Jackson Old and Terrible, as he would become known to us – defeated the Red Sticks at Horseshoe Bend . . . but only with the help of the Cherokee. We believed that we would be rewarded for our loyalty, but it was later decided that we be sent off to a remote part of the country where we would bother no one, and not even the highest court in the land could prevent this heartless decision from being carried out.

So, in the winter of 1838-39, the Cherokee Nation, uprooted and dispossessed, began a sorrowful journey of more than one thousand miles. For six long months we endured heartache, humiliation, sickness and death, as we traveled Nunna daul Tsuny, the trail where they cried, to a place promised us for as long as the grass shall grow and the rivers flow. At journey’s end we found neither . . . only red earth.

I WAS NAMED for the bird that flies by the light of the moon. Like her, I was born only days before its fullness . . .