What is the origin of the pub name the Moon Under Water? George Orwell adopted it to describe his “ideal of what a pub should be”, but where did he get it from? Mike Jones, by email
Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.
Readers reply
I have a dim recollection that buried somewhere in Orwell’s correspondence is his answer to the same question, asked of him some time after that essay on the perfect pub appeared – his answer being that he had made up the name, wanting something he had never heard any actual pub being called and hoping to avoid people trying to work out which one he was describing (in days when there were still pubs on every other street corner). Eventually, nature imitated art. The great man would probably be quite amused by that. Petronius
In the National Portrait Gallery, there is a portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh by an unknown artist. The NPG description refers to representations of Elizabeth I in the form of pearls forming a “sun-in-splendour”, a common heraldic device. Additionally, conservation has revealed “a patch of wavy water beneath the crescent moon”, thought to refer to Elizabeth as the goddess Cynthia. Apparently, this is also a reference to Raleigh’s poetry. Mitch Stone
There’s a Lincolnshire folk tale called The Dead Moon (or The Buried Moon) in which the moon is trapped in a pool in a bog:
They quarrelled with each other until dawn on how to best hurt her, and as they began to scatter for fear of the light, they buried the moon in the mud beneath the water of the bog and weighed her down with a stone.
I doubt that’s where Orwell got the name, but stories that play with the idea of the moon’s reflection in the water, or the moon being under water, existed long prior to his essay. sortaottery
I’ve no evidence for it, but I’ve always thought it was linked to the tale of the Moonrakers. They were smugglers who were discovered by customs men raking the village pond where they had hidden their contraband spirits. When asked what they were doing, they said they were trying to get that big cheese out of the water, which was the reflection of the moon. The men thought they were fools and went away, leaving the smugglers to retrieve their booty. MrCassandra
Let me guess … stumbling out of a northern pub on to uneven cobbled streets one moonlit night, after a bout of rain, the moon shone in a puddle that he stepped over a bit worse for wear? A ubiquitous scene in many a film noir or a Raymond Chandler novel or film. Stechriswillgil
Surely it just means something you can see but never reach. Aesop had a fable of a fox trying to get the cheese out of a lake and drowning in the process. He had another about a fox and grapes, so he has been good for pub names. Mike345
Maybe it was Orwell’s joke that traditional pubs would struggle. He was right. stamfordman
Before I moved to France, I lived in Hitchin in Hertfordshire. When Mr Blair lived in nearby Wallington, he used to cycle in to buy roses from Woolworths. The inspiration for Animal Farm was the farm near his cottage. On one of my visits there, the owner of his home was in the front garden, so I asked if I could take a photo. She invited me in to see the room where he wrote. He got married in the church there. I lived near his home in Canonbury Square in London, too. He wrote Animal Farm there. Two nearby pubs where he drank fitted his criteria. PamelaAmboise
I don’t know the origin of the name, but one of Orwell’s stipulations was that the pub should have no radio, so no doubt he’d have been delighted to see today’s ubiquitous television screens. (As an aside, a quick Google reveals that there are several distilleries offering Victory gin for sale – some with obvious irony, others less so.) EddieChorepost
