The clans ! Greater even than Midir of the Dews, 

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

 y " 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 



