The Final Frontier

Oot ower the dark o space

Stravaigin

The moon had always been a symbol of the impossible but, in 1969, the moon landing represented man overcoming this final frontier. The word moon appears in Anglo-Saxon in the form ‘mōna’ and is thought to derive, in turn, from early Germanic ‘mænan’. This was the equivalent of the Latin word ‘mēnsis’ meaning ‘month’. These forms are supposed to have derived from an early Indo-European word ‘mē’ which eventually gave rise to the Latin for measure (mētīrī’ – hence ‘metric’ and ‘meter’) as the moon was the heavenly body by which time was measured.

In the Scots language, which is of course largely derived from Anglo-Saxon, the old form ‘mōna’ developed into ‘mone’ by the 14th century and the spellings ‘mune’ and ‘moon’ by the 15th century. By the 19th century we also have the north east form ‘meen’. In modern Scots the usual written form of the word is ‘muin’ which is pronounced either as ‘min’ or ‘moon’, depending on dialect. The related word ‘month’ appears in Anglo-Saxon as ‘mōnað’ and then later in Scots as ‘moneth’ during the period 14th to 18th centuries. In modern Scots ‘month’ is the usual form.

The English phrase ‘a month of Sundays’ (meaning a long time) is rendered in Scots as ‘a month o muins’.

The 1969 expedition to the moon was launched 16 July 1969 with Michael Collins remaining in orbit around the moon while Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed in a capsule near the Mare Tranquillitatis (‘peaceful sea’) and, on 21 July 1969, Armstrong stepped onto the moon. His historic statement ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ was slightly wrong as he meant to say ‘One small step for A man, one giant leap for mankind’.

Below are two audio poems in Scots about space, 'Stravaigin' by Liz Niven, and 'Oot ower the dark o space' by John Burns , to mark this historic anniversary.