otherworld to which he penetrated, a very The 

 ancient tradition of the destruction of the ^J eia ^" 

 world in some past age at the time of their 

 midnight culmination. A long way thence to 

 Sappho, who marked the middle of the night 

 by the setting of those wild-doves of the sky ! 

 Or, a century later, to Euripides, who calls 

 them Aetos, our * Altair,' the nocturnal 

 timekeepers. 



But to return to that mystery of seven. 

 Although some scholars derive the word 

 'Pleiades 1 or 'Pliades,' and in the singular 

 6 Plias,' from the Greek word plein, * to sail,' 

 because (to quote an eminent living authority) 

 ' the heliacal rising of the group in May marked 

 the opening of navigation to the Greeks, as its 

 setting in the late autumn did the close ' — and 

 though others consider that the derivation is 

 from pleios, the epic form of the Greek word 

 for * full,' or, in the plural, ' many ' — and so to 

 the equivalent ' a cluster,' corresponding to the 

 Biblical Kimah and the Arabic Al Tkuruyya, 

 the Cluster, the Many Little Ones— it is 

 perhaps more likely that a less learned and 

 ordinary classical reader may be nearer the 

 mark in considering the most probable deriva- 

 tion to be from Pleione, the nymph of Greek 

 mythology — ' Pleione, the mother of the seven 

 sisters,' as she was called of old. Such an one, 



271 



