Winter of ' the Pointers ' has impressed me so much 

 Stars, as what I learned as a child of 'the Hounds 

 of Angus,' nor, in later and fuller knowledge 

 of Polaris, has the child's first knowledge of 

 the mystery and wonder of 'the Star of 

 Wisdom,' as pointed out and tale-told by an 

 old Hebridean fisherman, or of 'the House of 

 Dreams,' as sung to me in a forgotten ballad 

 by a Gaelic woman of Argyll, been surpassed. 

 It was they — herdsmen and mariners, the 

 wayfarer, the nomad, the desert- wanderer — 

 who, of old, gave these names to which the 

 nations have grown used. It was with the 

 nomad that astronomy began. The Chaldeean 

 shepherd, the Phoenician mariner, studied the 

 stars and named them and the great constella- 

 tions which group themselves from horizon to 

 horizon in the nocturnal skies. They perceived 

 strange symmetries, symbolic images, grotesque 

 resemblances. The same instinct made the 

 Arab of the Desert call the Pleiades the Herd 

 of Camels, made the Akkadian call them the 

 Wild Doves, made the Celtic hunter call them 

 the Pack of Hounds, made the Teuton peasant 

 call them the Hen and Chickens, made the 

 Australian savage call them (in conjunction 

 with the Bear) Young Girls playing to Young 

 Men dancing : the same instinct, this, as made 

 the ancient poet of the Zend-Avesta call them 



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