JUDY ROSE, an old friend, does a wonderful radio show for WPR -- Wisconsin Public Radio called SIMPLY FOLK. Judy and I have talked and corresponded over the years about this lunar aspect of "Sir Patrick Spens". November 5, 1999 she sent me this from the Associated Press:

If the sky is clear, a rare and startling celestial show will greet early risers Tuesday when Venus, the bright star Regulus and a crescent moon highlighted by light reflected from Earth will form a tight triangle close to the eastern horizon.
"It is so dramatic that it's almost startling, an exquisitely beautiful event," Jack Horkheime of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium said today. "It's part of the poetry of the heavenbs."The effect is created by sunlight reflected from Earth hitting the otherwise darkened moon, illuminating it with a dim glow.
The moon will appear as a thin bright crescent that seems to cradle the ghostly outline of the rest of the moon.

Judy wrote then:

Dear Art,

See the last 3 paragraphs---This is what's going on in "Sir Patric Spens", isn't it ? Seems to me the weather books talk about clear cold nights, dark of the moon, high winds aloft.-----Judy

(Personally, that does look right to me------Art Thieme