The Constellations 



AS INTERPRETED BY A CLASS IN NATURE-STUDY 



Nellie H. Crosby 



I saw with its celestial keys 

 Its chords of air, its frets of fire, 

 The Samians great Aeolian lyre, 

 Rising through all its sevenfold bars, 

 From earth unto the fixed stars. 

 — Longfellow. 



It was the Persians who called this constellation of six large stars 

 a lyre. The early Christians called it King David's Harp, the 

 Britons King Arthur's Harp. To the Czecks it was a fiddle in the 

 sky and to the early Arabian star gazers it was the swooping eagle 

 as contrasted with Aquilla the soaring eagle which was nearby. 

 The legend runs thus : a celestial harp was presented to Orpheus 

 by Apollo. With this harp, when instructed by the muses, 

 Orpheus charmed wild beasts, even stones and trees, upon Olym- 

 pus, and chained the rivers in their courses. When Eurydice the 

 new bride of Orpheus was snatched from him into the Stygian 

 realms Apollo charmed the guardians of the River Styx so that 

 they allowed him to enter. Before the deities who presided over 

 the kingdom of ghosts he won favor and he was permitted to leave 

 the realm with his young bride following him * * * |^^^ 

 * * * he must not look back as he proceeded; this was too 

 much for his anxious love ; he simply must see whether she obeyed 

 and was really coming after him — Alas! He lost her again. 

 Nevertheless the magic lyre which could melt Pluto's stem heart, 

 and make the Furies weep, was deemed worthy of a place among 

 the stars. Shakespeare in The Two Gentlemen of Verona refers 

 to this legend. 



"For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets sinews 

 Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, 

 Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans 

 Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands." 



The constellation of Lyra contains one star of the third magni- 

 tude, five of the fourth and a few of the fifth magnitude. The 

 principle stars outline an equilateral triangle and a rhomboid. 

 While the star Aladfar is outside these two figures and is a con- 

 tinuation of a line drawn thru one side of the rhomboid and also a 



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