WINTER STARSII
Of all winter stars surely the most familiar is Polaris, the Pole Star or Lodestar: of all winter Constellations, the Plough, the Little Dipper (to give the common designations), Orion, and the lovely cluster of the Pleiades, are, with the Milky Way, the most commonly observed stellar groups. One of our old Scottish poets, Gawain Douglas, writing towards the close of the fifteenth or early in the sixteenth century, thus quaintly brought them into conjunction—
“Arthurys hous, and Hyades betaikning rane,Watling strete, the Home and the Charlewane,The fiers Orion with his goldin glave.â€
Here possibly he has taken Arcturus for Polaris. Of old, the Lodestar and Arcturus (or, as often given in the North, ‘Arturus’ or‘Arthur’ ... a word itself signifying the Great or Wondrous Bear) were often confused. Sometimes, too, Arcturus stood for the whole constellation of Ursa Major—or, as we commonly call it, the Plough or the Wain, as, for example, in Scott’s lines:
“Arthur’s slow wain his course doth roll,In utter darkness, round the Pole.â€
But it is obvious Gawain Douglas did not mean this to be understood, for in the second line he speaks of ‘Charlewane,’i.e., Charles’s Wain ... the Wain or Waggon being then, as it still is among country-folk, even more familiar a term than the Great Bear or than the Plough itself. Probably, then, he had in mind the Pole Star, the ‘House of Arthur’ of the ancient British. His choice of the ‘rain-betokening Hyades’ may be taken here as including the Pleiades, these ‘greater seven’ in whom centres so much poetry and old legend. A previous paper has been devoted to the Milky Way, so that there is no need to explain why Watling Street should be analogous with the Galaxy. The ‘Horne’ is the Little Dipper or Ursa Minor. Than ‘fierce Orion with his glistering sword’ there is no constellation so universally familiar. If, then, to this category of the oldScottish poet, we add the star Aldebaran, and the constellation of Taurus or the Bull, we have more than enough Winter Lights to consider in one chapter.
Having already, however, dealt with ‘the watery constellations’ we can be the more content now to ignore Alcyone, Maia, Taygeta, Electra, and the other Pleiadic stars of Taurus. This great constellation is one of the earliest in extant astronomical records: the earliest, it is believed. The stellar image of a Bull has occurred to many nations since the designation first arose among the ancient Cretans or Akkadians—if, indeed, in its origin it was not immeasurably more remote. East and West, in the deserts of the South and among the grey isles of the North, ‘the Bull’ was recognised. To-day the Scottish peasant still calls it ‘the Steer,’ as his German kinsman does inder Stier, his French kinsman inle Taureau, his Spanish or Italian kinsman inToro. When certain of the Greeks and Latins usedKeráonandCornusinstead ofTaurosandTaurus, they said merely the same thing—the Horned One. Virgil, as many will remember, utilises the image in the first ‘Georgic’:
“When with his golden horns bright Taurus opesThe year....â€
just as a poet of our own time, in a beautiful ‘Hymn to Taurus,’ writes:
“... I mark, stern Taurus, through the twilight greyThe glinting of thy hornAnd sullen front, uprising large and dimBent to the starry Hunter’s sword at bay.â€
Among our own ancestors, the Druids made Taurus an object of worship, the Tauric Festival having been one of the great events of the year, signalised when the sun first entered the imagined frontiers of this constellation. To-day, among the homesteads of our Scottish lowlands, the farm-folk tell of the Candlemas Bull who may be seen to rise in the gloaming on New Year’s Eve and move slowly to the dark pastures which await his coming.
The particular stellar glory of this constellation is Aldebaran. This beautiful star has appealed to the imagination of all peoples. I do not know what were its earliest Celtic or Anglo-Saxon names. But as in Gaelic it is sometimes called ‘the Hound,’ this term may well be a survival from ancient days. If so, there is an interesting relation with the primitive Arabic name by which it is all but universally known. Aldebaran isAl DabarÄn, the Follower: and, figuratively, a follower could hardly be better symbolised than by a hound. I recall a Gaelic poem on a legendary basiswhere the analogy is still further emphasised, for there Aldebaran is called ‘the Hound of the Pleiades,’ which is exactly what the Arabian astronomers implied in ‘the Follower.’ Another interesting resemblance is between ‘the red hound’ of the Gaelic poet and legend and theRohinÄ«of the Hindûs, that word signifying ‘a red deer’ ... in each case the ruddy gleam of the star having suggested the name. Probably it was this characteristic which led Ptolemy to apply to the star the name ‘Lampadias’ or the Torch-Bearer. In the narration of folk-tales I have more than once or twice heard Aldebaran alluded to as the star of good fortune, of ‘the golden luck.’ With us it is pre-eminently a winter-star, and may be seen at its finest from the latter part of January till the approach of the vernal equinox. Some idea of its luminosity may be gained from the fact that this is thrice the outflow of the Pole Star. How often I have stood on a winter’s night, and watched awhile this small red ‘torch’ burning steadfastly in the unchanging heavens, and thought of its vast journeys, of that eternal, appalling procession through the infinite deeps: how often I have felt the thrill of inexplicable mystery when, watching its silent fire in what appears an inexorable fixity, I recall what science tellsus, that it is receding from our system at an all but unparalleled velocity, a backward flight into the unknown at the rate of thirty miles a second.
It would be hopeless to attempt here even the briefest account of the primitive and diverse nomenclature, the mythology, the folklore of Orion ... the Winter-Bringer, as this constellation is called in an old Scandinavian saga, identical thus with the marginal reading in the Geneva Bible relative to the reference to Orion in Job—‘which starre bringeth in winter,’ an allusion to its evening appearance at the season of cold and storms. For these things are writ in the records of a hundred nations. They are alive in the poetry of all peoples. Centuries before our era, when Thebes was the greatest city of Greece, the poetess Corinna sang of this great Warrior, the Great Hunter, whose nightly course was so glorious above the dusky lands and waters of Hellas. Long after Pindar and the Greek poets, Catullus and Horace gave it a like preeminence in Latin literature. In our own poetry, many surely will recall fromParadise Lost:
“... when with fierce winds Orion arm’dHath vext the Red-sea coast, whose waves o’erthrewBusiris and his Memphian chivalry....â€
or Tennyson’s beautiful line inLocksley Hall:
“Great Orion sloping slowly to the west....â€
or, it may be, that epic of ‘Orion’ upon which is based Richard Hengist Horne’s claim to remembrance—or, once more, Matthew Arnold’s fine allusion to Sirius and Orion inSohrab and Rustum:
“... the Northern Bear,Who from her frozen height with jealous eyeConfronts the Dog and Hunter in the South.â€
Before Catullus or Pindar the Egyptians had identified Orion both with Horus and Osiris. Among the peoples of Israel the poets acclaimed the constellation as Nimrod, ‘the mighty Hunter’ (or by another term signifying the Giant), ‘bound to the sky for rebellion against Jehovah.’ Among the Celtic races it has had kindred names, sometimes abstract, sometimes personal, as the Gaelic Fionn. A year or so ago I was told a sea-tale of the Middle Isles, in which was an allusion to this constellation as The Bed of Diarmid. This is of especial interest, because of its connection with Fionn or Finn, the Nimrod, the great Hunter of the Gael. But in this story (a modern, not an ancient tale, though with more than one strange old survival) the majorposition is not held by Fionn, but by the Alban-Gaelic hero Diarmid, who is represented as succumbing under the spear thrust in his left side by the enraged Fionn, at last in grips with the daring chieftain who had robbed him of Grania. When questioned, my informant said he had heard a variant of this attribution, and that the constellation was an image of Diarmid with Grania hanging to his side in a swoon, because she and her lover have been overtaken by the wrath of Fionn ... though from the description I could not make out whether the latter indicated the star Sirius, or the rival constellation of the Great Bear. The Gaels of old called OrionCaomai, a name said to signify the Armed King: while theGall(the Scandinavian races) applied the nameOrwandil, but with what signification I do not know, though I have read somewhere that it stood for Hero, or for an heroic personage.
Of the chief stars in Orion there is not space here to speak. But of the splendid Rigel—as affluent in the mysterious science of the astrologer as in nocturnal light—pearly Anilam, of the Belt or Sword—ominous Bellatrix—ruddy-flamed Betelgeuze—of these alone one might write much ... as one might write much of the Girdle or Staff itself, what Scott inThe Lay of the Last Minstrelcalls‘Orion’s studded belt.’ It has a score of popular names, from the Danish Frigge Rok (Freya’s Distaff) to the seamen’s ‘Yard-arm,’ as, collectively, its three great stars have all manner of names in different countries, from the Magi, or the Three Kings or the Three Marys, to The Rake of the French Rhinelanders or the Three Mowers of the Silesian peasant.
Those who have studied the mythology and folklore of the Pleiades will remember how universally the numeral seven is associated with their varying nomenclature. But there was, and still is among primitive peoples, not infrequent confusion in the use of ‘The Seven Stars’ as a specific name. Although from China to Arabia, from India and Persia to the Latin countries of the South, the term almost invariably designates the Pleiades, in the folklore of many Western nations it is used for the seven planets, and in many Northern races it is often used for the seven brilliant stars of the Great Bear. Even the Biblical allusion to ‘The Seven Stars,’ as our own Anglo-Saxon ancestralSifunsterri, does not necessarily indicate the Pleiades: many consider the seven great planets to be meant. There is a Shetland rune, common to all the north isles and to be heard in Iceland andNorway, known as the rune of sevens, and of which one of the invocatory lines is ‘And by da seven shiners.’ All kinds of interpretation have explained this, from the obvious ‘seven planets,’ or else the Pleiades, to the Seven Candlesticks of Revelation and I know not what besides. I have again and again asked fisher-folk or others from the Orkneys and Shetlands, and in all but one or two instances the answer has clearly indicated the Great Bear, occasionally Polaris and the Ursine Arcturus and their nearest brilliant ‘shiners.’ Again,Crannarain, one of the Gaelic names for the Pleiades, is, perhaps, as often applied to the Great Bear: the curious legend of the Baker’s Shovel, implied in the Gaelic term, fitting equally.
Of the Great Bear, of the North Star, however, I have already spoken. Of Polaris itself, indeed, there is more than enough to draw upon. Years ago I began an MS. book called ‘The Book of the North Star,’ and from my recollection of it (for at the moment of writing I am far from my books) I should say there is enough folklore and legend and various interest connected with this star wherefrom to evolve a volume solely devoted to it. It is strange that ‘the Lamp of the North’ should have so fascinatedall the poets from the time of Homer till to-day, and yet that all have dwelled in the same illusion as to its absolute steadfastness. Nevertheless, Homer’s
“Arctos, sole star that never bathes in the ocean waveâ€
has both poetic truth and the truth of actuality.
It is a relief to put aside notes and pen and paper, and to go out and look up into the darkness and silence, to those ‘slow-moving palaces of wandering light’ of which one has been writing. How overwhelmingly futile seems not only the poor written word, but even the mysterious pursuit of the far-fathoming thought of man. By the sweat of the brow, by the dauntless pride of the mind, we mortal creatures have learned some of the mysteries of the coming and going in infinitude of these incalculable worlds, of their vast procession from the unknown to the unknown. Then, some night, one stands solitary in the darkness, and feels less than the shadow of a leaf that has passed upon the wind, before these still, cold, inevitable, infinitely remote yet overwhelmingly near Children of Immortality.