The clans ! Greater even than Midir of the Dews, 

 Rainy one f ^ e g rea t Lords of Death : greater than 

 ' the Greek Poseidon or the Gaelic Manan, 

 heaven-throned among the older gods though 

 seen of mortals only on gigantic steeds of 

 ocean, vast sea-green horses with feet of 

 running waves and breasts of billows. For he 

 is no other than one of the mightiest of the 

 constellations, Capricorn itself ! The name, in 

 a word, is but one of several more or less 

 obscure or forgotten analogues of this famous 

 constellation, concerning which the first printed 

 English astrological almanac (1386) has ' whoso 

 is born in Capcorn schal be ryche and wel 

 lufyd ' ! 



Imbrifer himself ... or itself ... is 

 certainly not 'wel lufyd' on many of these 

 October and November days of floods and 

 rains ! Imbrifer . . . the very name is a kind 

 of stately, Miltonic, autumnal compeer of our 

 insignificant (and, in Scotland, dreaded !) rain- 

 saint of July, S within of dubious memory ! 

 It would add dignity to the supplication or 

 imprecation of the sleet- whipt citizen of 

 Edinburgh or the rain-and-mud splashed way- 

 farer in London, during the wet and foggy 

 days of November, if, instead of associating 

 the one or the other with 'the weather' or 

 'our awful climate' he could invoke or abjure 



280 



