Where did the notion the moon was made of cheese originate?

Question

We've all at one point or another heard something about the moon being made of cheese- does anyone know where this myth got started?

Answer 1

The earliest occurrence I have found of the association between Moon and cheese is in Aesop's fable "The Fox, The Moon, and the River". This is number 264 in the edition of Laura Gibbs's translations (Laura Gibbs, Aesop's Fables: a New Translation Laura Gibbs [Oxford: OUP, 2002]) and has Perry number 669. Aesop lived in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE.

A fox was out walking one night next to a river. She saw the light of the moon reflected in the water and mistook it for a piece of cheese. The fox started to lap at the water, thinking that if she could drink up all the water, she would find the cheese in the dry riverbed. The fox lapped and lapped at the water until finally she choked and died.

So every greedy man goes chasing after profit with such an intensity that he destroys himself without achieving anything.