' Orion's studded belt.' It has a score of Winter 

 popular names, from the Danish Frigge Rok Stars. 

 (Freya's Distaff) to the seamen's 'Yard-arm,' 

 as, collectively, its three great stars have all 

 manner of names in different countries, from 

 the Magi, or the Three Kings or the Three 

 Marys, to The Rake of the French Rhine- 

 landers or the Three Mowers of the Silesian 

 peasant. 



Those who have studied the mythology and 

 folklore of the Pleiades will remember how 

 universally the numeral seven is associated 

 with their varying nomenclature. But there 

 was, and still is among primitive peoples, not 

 infrequent confusion in the use of ' The Seven 

 Stars' as a specific name. Although from 

 China to Arabia, from India and Persia to 

 the Latin countries of the South, the term 

 almost invariably designates the Pleiades, in 

 the folklore of many Western nations it is 

 used for the seven planets, and in many 

 Northern races it is often used for the seven 

 brilliant stars of the Great Bear. Even the 

 Biblical allusion to ' The Seven Stars,' as our 

 own Anglo-Saxon ancestral Sifunsterri, does 

 not necessarily indicate the Pleiades : many 

 consider the seven great planets to be meant. 

 There is a Shetland rune, common to all the 

 north isles and to be heard in Iceland and 



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