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"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 modern popular culture. The phrase "green cheese" in this proverb simply refers to a young cheese (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 (''cf.'', the myth of the Flat Earth). It was typically used as an example of extreme credulity, a meaning that was clear and commonly understood as early as 1638. ==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: This folkloric motif is first recorded in literature during the High Middle Ages by the French rabbi Rashi with a Rabbinic parable in his commentary weaving together three Biblical quotations given in the main text (including one on "sour grapes") into a reconstruction of some of the Talmudic Rabbi Meir's supposed three hundred fox fables ("משלות שועלים", in later works "משלי שועלים"), in the tractate ''Sanhedrin'':〔 〕 Rashi as the first literary reference may reflect the well-known beast fable tradition of French folklore or a more obscure such tradition in Jewish folklore (see also the tradition in Berechiah ha-Nakdan); the near-contemporary Iraqi rabbi Hai Gaon also reconstructed this Rabbi Meir tale, sharing some elements of Rashi's story, but with a lion caught in a trapping pit rather than a wolf in a well — however, Rashi may have actively "adapted contemporary The 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 (it is replaced by a promise of Paradise at the bottom of the well), 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 Middle English "þe Vox and þe Wolf"), preceding Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale" and the much later work of William Caxton.〔 Later still, the Middle Scots The Fox, the Wolf and the Husbandman does include the Moon/cheese element. The German tale of The Wolf and the Fox in Grimm replaces the well with a well-stocked cellar, where a newly satiated wolf is trapped and subject to the farmer's revenge, being now too overstuffed to escape through the exit. One of the facets of this morphology is grouped as "The Wolf Dives into the Water for Reflected Cheese" (Type 34) of the Aarne–Thompson classification of folktales, where the Moon's reflection is mistaken for cheese, 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, referring to stories where the simpleton believes the Moon itself is a tangible object in the water. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Moon is made of green cheese」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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