Winter just as a poet of our own time, in a beautiful 

 Stars. < Hymn to Taurus/ writes : 



"... I mark, stern Taurus, through the twilight grey 

 The glinting of thy horn 

 And sullen front, uprising large and dim 

 Bent to the starry Hunter's sword at bay." 



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 constel- 

 lation. 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 constel- 

 lation 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 primi- 

 tive Arabic name by which it is all but uni- 

 versally known. Aldebaran is AlDabaran, the 

 Follower : and, figuratively, a follower could 

 hardly be better symbolised than by a hound. 

 I recall a Gaelic poem on a legendary basis 



304 



