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MYTHS OF CONSTELLATIONS.
359

Zealand either the Elbow of Maui, or they form the stern of the Canoe of Tamarerete, whose anchor dropped from the prow is the Southern Cross.[1] The Great Bear is equally like a Wain, Orion's Belt serves as well for Frigga's or Mary's Spindle, or Jacob's Staff. Yet sometimes natural correspondences occur. The seven sister Pleiades seem to the Australians a group of girls playing to a corroboree; while the North American Indians call them the Dancers; and the Lapps the Company of Virgins.[2] Still more striking is the correspondence between savages and cultured nations in fancies of the bright starry band that lies like a road across the sky. The Basutos call it the 'Way of the Gods;' the Ojis say it is the 'Way of Spirits,' which souls go up to heaven by.[3] North American tribes know it as 'the Path of the Master of Life,' the 'Path of Spirits,' 'the Road of Souls,' where they travel to the land beyond the grave, and where their camp-fires may be seen blazing as brighter stars.[4] Such savage imaginations of the Milky Way fit with the Lithuanian myth of the 'Road of the Birds,' at whose end the souls of the good, fancied as flitting away at death like birds, dwell free and happy.[5] That souls dwell in the Galaxy was a thought familiar to the Pythagoreans, who gave it on their master's word that the souls that crowd there descend, and appear to men as dreams,[6] and to the Manichæans whose fancy transferred pure souls to this 'column of light,' whence they could

  1. ↑ Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 363.
  2. ↑ Stanbridge, l.c.; Charlevoix, vol. vi. p. 148; Leems, 'Lapland,' in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 411. The name of the Bear occurring in North America in connexion with the stars of the Great and Little Bear (Charlevoix, l.c.; Cotton Mather in Schoolcraft, 'Tribes,' vol. i. p. 284) has long been remarked on (Goguet, vol. i. p. 262; vol. ii. p. 366, but with reference to Greenland, see Cranz, p. 294). See observations on the history of the Aryan name in Max Müller, 'Lectures,' 2nd series, p. 361.
  3. ↑ Casalis, p. 196; Waitz, vol. ii. p. 191.
  4. ↑ Long's Exp. vol. i. p. 288; Schoolcraft, part i. p. 272; Le Jeune in 'Rel. des Jés. de la Nouvelle France,' 1634, p. 18; Loskiel, part i. p. 35; J. G. Müller, p. 63.
  5. ↑ Hanusch, pp. 272, 407, 415.
  6. ↑ Porphyr. de Antro Nympharum, 28; Macrob. de Somn. Scip. 1. 12.
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