with flakes as of the fallen plumage of wings The 

 — truly Aritnirod, the Silver Road, as the Milky 

 Celts of old called it. Of course it was no ay " 

 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 



