otherworld to which he penetrated, a very The 

 ancient tradition of the destruction of the 5» e * a< ?~ 

 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 Aetox, our ' Altair,' the nocturnal 

 timekeepers. 



But to return to that mystery of seven. 

 Although some scholars derive the word 

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

 '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 Thuruyya, 

 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 



