“Blue Moon“

I was listening to this classic and wonderfully mood-expressive song on the radio yesterday evening while cooking, when a lyric I had never noticed before leaped out at me – that the moon turned from blue to gold when the protagonist was no longer alone.

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Rodgers & Hart, 1934

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Messrs Rodgers and Hart must have felt that blue was a lonely colour too.

In case you are wondering, a Blue Moon is a second full moon in a calendar month – a very rare occurrence and even more rarely is the moon actually Blue.  Hence the use of the phrase to describe something which rarely happens.

The first known literary reference to the term occurs in a text of 1528 entitled “Rede me and Be nott wrothe, For I faye no thynge but troth.”, ‘wrothe’ meaning angry, and was intended as a diatribe against the ‘ambicion of the clergye’.  ‘Yf they say the mone is belewe / We must believe that it is true’, indicated the clergy’s power to manipulate.

So, I think that’s enough blue for a while …