In the 19th century, the Mudcat discussion forum was called Notes and Queries. The Following note appeared in Notes and Queries, 10th Series, May 14th, 1904, page 395:


In Ireland, sixty years ago, children, at their first glimpse of the new moon, were taught, in order to escape bad luck or some dire calamity, to use the following invocation:-

   I see the moon,
   And the moon sees me.
   God bless the moon,
   And God bless me.
                 HENRY SMYTH.
Harborne.


Underneath Mr. Smyth's note is an anonymous note in brackets, presumably from the editor: "These lines were familiar in the West Riding a couple of generations ago."

The chronological indication, "sixty years ago", agrees fairly closely with the date of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps's The Nursery Rhymes of England, Obtained Principally from Oral Tradition, Third Edition with Additions, London and Boston, 1843, in which the same rhyme appears (#299, page 169) though as an English, rather than an Irish rhyme.

T.