WINTER STARS 



II 



Of all winter stars surely the most familiar is 

 Polaris, the Pole Star or Lodestar : of all 

 winter Constellations, the Plough, the Little 

 Dipper (to give the common designations), 

 Orion, and the lovely cluster of the Pleiades, 

 are, with the Milky Way, the most commonly 

 observed stellar groups. One of our old 

 Scottish poets, Gawain Douglas, writing 

 towards the close of the fifteenth or early in 

 the sixteenth century, thus quaintly brought 

 them into conjunction — 



" Arthurys hous, and Hyades betaikning rane, 

 Watling strete, the Home and the Charlewane, 

 The fiers Orion with his goldin glave." 



Here possibly he has taken Arcturus for 

 Polaris. Of old, the Lodestar and Arcturus 

 (or, as often given in the North, * Arturus' or 



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