The Moon is made of green cheese

"The Moon is made of green cheese" is a statement referring to a fanciful belief that the Moon is composed of cheese. In its original formulation as a proverb and metaphor for credulity with roots in fable, this refers to the perception of a simpleton who sees a reflection of the Moon in water and mistakes it for a round cheese wheel. It is widespread as a folkloric motif among many of the world's cultures, and the notion has also found its way into both children's folklore and into modern popular culture.

The phrase "green cheese" in this proverb simply refers to a young cheese (indeed, sometimes "cream cheese" is used), though modern people may interpret the color reference literally.

There was never an actual historical popular belief that the moon is made of green cheese (cp. the myth of the Flat Earth). Indeed, it was typically used as an example of extreme credulity.

Fable

There exists a family of stories in comparative mythology in diverse countries that concern a simpleton who sees a reflection of the Moon and mistakes it for a round cheese:

... the Servian tale where the fox leads the wolf to believe the moon reflection in the water is a cheese and the wolf bursts in the attempt to drink up the water to get at the cheese; the Zulu tale of the hyena that drops the bone to go after the moon reflection in the water; the Gascon tale of the peasant watering his ass on a moonlight night. A cloud obscures the moon, and the peasant, thinking the ass has drunk the moon, kills the beast to recover the moon; the Turkish tale of the Khoja Nasru-'d-Din who thinks the moon has fallen into the well and gets a rope and chain with which to pull it out. In his efforts the rope breaks, and he falls back, but seeing the moon in the sky, praises Allah that the moon is safe; the Scotch tale of the wolf fishing with his tail for the moon reflection;

—G. H. McKnight

This folkloric motif is first recorded in literature during the High Middle Ages with the French rabbi Rashi, who attributes it to the Talmudic era Rabbi Meir; this may reflect the well-known beast fable tradition of French folklore or an obscure such tradition in Jewish folklore; Rashi's version already includes the fox, the wolf, the well and the Moon that are seen in later versions. The Iraqi rabbi Hai Gaon also attributed a tale sharing elements of Rashi's story to Rabbi Meir. Petrus Alphonsi, a Spanish Jewish convert to Christianity, popularized this tale in Europe in his collection Disciplina Clericalis.

One of the facets of this morphoplogy is grouped as "The Wolf Dives into the Water for Reflected Cheese" (Type 34) of the Aarne–Thompson classification of folktales, in the section devoted to tales of The Clever Fox. It can also be grouped as "The Moon in the Well" (Type 1335A), in the section devoted to Stories about a Fool.

A variation featuring Reynard the Fox appeared soon after Petrus Alphonsi in the French classic Le Roman de Renart (as "Renart et Ysengrin dans le puits" in Branch IV); the moon/cheese element is absent, but such a version is alluded to in another part of the collection. This was the first Reynard tale to be adapted into English (as "The Fox and the Wolf"), preceding Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale" and the much later work of William Caxton.

Proverb

"The Moon is made of green cheese" was one of the most popular proverbs in 16th and 17th century English literature, and it was also in use after this time. It likely originated in 1546, when The Proverbs of John Heywood claimed "the moon is made of a greene cheese." (Greene may refer here not to the color, as many now think, but to being new or unaged.) A common variation is "to make one believe the Moon is made of green cheese" (i.e., to hoax).

In French, there is the proverb "Il veut prendre la lune avec les dents" ("He wants to grab the moon in his teeth"), alluded to in Rabelais.

The characterization is also common in stories of gothamites, including the Moonrakers of Wiltshire.

Children's folklore and popular culture

• A 1902 study of childlore in the United States found that though most young children were unsure of the Moon's composition, that it was made of cheese was the single most common explanation.
• In the 1967 episode of Tom and Jerry, O-Solar Meow, Jerry ends up enjoying himself on the Moon, which is shown to contain large quantities of cheese.
• Retro NES video game DuckTales by Capcom has Uncle Scrooge obtain a chunk of the "Green Cheese of Longevity" from the Moon.^{[citation needed]}
• In Nick Park's short animated film "A Grand Day Out", Wallace and Gromit build a lunar rocket to go on a cheese-centered holiday.
  • Wallace: "Everybody knows the moon's made of cheese."
• In the short tale by Kenneth Lans, "A 'Rounders' Story about the 'Green Cheese' Moon", the story revolves around the green cheese made by giant spiders which is transported to the moon by leaf-cutting ants. It is a clever story of how the earth was formed. By using a simple narrative, giant spiders, a greedy rat, an old wise turtle, jealous mountains, and the main character "green cheese", the readers are introduced to the mountains, and volcanic eruptions, rivers and tides, the desert and the moon and stars which form the earth.
• The Milky Way is an Academy Award winning animated cartoon short subject. As "three little kittens who lost their mittens" explore a dreamland, space is made up entirely of dairy products (e.g., the Milky Way is made of milk and the moon is made of cheese).
• British television Apollo 11 coverage had interludes entitled "But What if it's Made of Cheese."
• On April 1, 2002, NASA "proved" that the moon was made of green cheese with an expiration (or "sell by") date using doctored pictures purportedly from the Hubble telescope.
• At the Science Writers' conference, Theoretical physicist Sean M. Carroll explained why there was no need to "sample the moon to know it's not made of cheese.” He said the hypothesis is "absurd", failing against our knowledge of the universe and, “This is not a proof, there is no metaphysical proof, like you can proof a statement in logic or math that the moon is not made of green cheese. But science nevertheless passes judgments on claims based on how well they fit in with the rest of our theoretical understanding.”
• The myth has spawned an apochryphal recipe for the preparation of "Moon cheese" in MouseHunt.
• Dennis Lindley used the myth to help explain the necessity of Cromwell's Rule in Bayesian probability: "If someone attaches a prior probability of zero to the hypothesis that the moon is made of green cheese, then whole armies of astronauts coming back bearing green cheese cannot convince him."^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Ipse dixit
• Normative statement
• Paradoxes of material implication
• Positive statement
• Skepticism