with flakes as of the fallen plumage of wings The 

 truly Arianrod, the Silver Road, as the Milky 

 Celts of old called it. Of course it was no 

 more than a fantasy of the dreaming imagina- 

 tion, but it seemed to me more than once that 

 as a vast indefinite sigh came from the wind- 

 less but nevertheless troubled sea there was a 

 corresponding motion in that white mysterious 

 Milky Way, so infinitely remote. It was as 

 though the Great Snake as so many bygone 

 peoples called and as many submerged races 

 still call the Galaxy lay watching from its 

 eternal lair that other Serpent of Ocean which 

 girdles the rolling orb of our onward-rushing 

 Earth : and breathed in slow mysterious 

 response : and, mayhap, sighed also into 

 the unscanned void a sigh infinitely more 

 vast, a sigh that would reach remote planets 

 and fade along the gulfs of incalculable 

 shores. 



As winter comes, the Milky Way takes on 

 a new significance for pastoral and other lonely 

 peoples, for shepherds and fisher-folk above all. 

 Songs and poems and legends make it familiar 

 to everyone. A hundred tales own it as a 

 mysterious background, as Broceliande is the 

 background of a hundred Breton ballads, or 

 as Avalon is the background of a hundred 

 romances of the Cymric and Gaelic Celt, 



223 





