The too, may remember that certain Greek poets 

 Pleiad- a ll llc i ec i to the Pleiades as the seven doves that 

 carried ambrosia to the infant Zeus. 1 To this 

 day, indeed, a common English designation for 

 the group is ' the Seven Sisters ' : and lovers of 

 English poetry will hardly need to be reminded 

 of kindred allusions, from Chaucer's ' Atlantes 

 doughtres sevene ' to Milton's ' the seven 

 Atlantic sisters' (reminiscent here, of course, 

 of Virgil's 'Eoae Atlantides') or to Keats' 

 * The Starry Seven, old Atlas' children.' The 

 mediaeval Italians had ' the seven doves ' again 

 (sette palommide), and to-day their compatriots 

 speak of the 'seven dovelets.' It would be 

 tiresome to go through the popular Pleiad- 

 nomenclature of all the European races, and a 

 few instances will equally indicate the preval- 

 ence, since the Anglo-Saxon sifunsterri. Miles 

 Coverdale, in the first complete English Bible, 

 comments on the passage in Job, 'these vii. 

 starres, the clocke henne with her chickens ' ; 

 and to-day in Dorset, Devon, and other 

 English counties ' the Hen and her Chickens ' 

 is a popular term, as it is, in effect, with the 



1 On reading recently a work on mythological ornithology by 

 Mr. D'Arcy Thompson I noticed that he traces the word Botrus, 

 equivalent to a Bunch of Grapes (as the younger Theon likened 

 the Pleiades) to olvds, a dove, so called from its purple-red breast 

 like wine, ofroj, and naturally referred to a bunch of grapes ; or 

 perhaps because the bird appeared in migration at the time of the 

 Vintage. [And see his further evidence of Cilician coins.] 

 272 



