In Inuit tradition the Moon is a man who pursues his sister the Sun across the sky, and he governs the tides, the weather and the animals that are hunted.

The chase began with an offence at a feast in the dark; she fled with a torch and he followed with his going out, which is why he is dimmer. Attributing the tides to the Moon is a genuinely acute piece of observation from a culture living on a coast with large ones, arrived at without any theory of gravity.