Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

726 SKY AND STAES.
The small, almost invisible star just above the middle one in
the waggon s thill has a story to itself. It is called waggoner,
hind, in Lower Germany diimeke, thumbkin, dwarf, Osuabr.
dumlte, Meckl. duming, in Holstein Hans Diimken, Hans Diiinkl
sitt opm wagn. They say that once a waggoner, having given
our Saviour a lift,, was offered the kingdom of heaven for his
reward; but he said he would sooner be driving from east to
west to all eternity (as the wild hunter wished for evermore to
hunt) . His desire was granted, there stands his waggon
in the
sky, and the highest of the three thill-stars, the rider so-called,
is that waggoner. Another version in MiillenhoflPs Schles. Hoist,
sagen no. 484. I daresay the heathen had a similar fiction about
Wodan s charioteer. Joh. Praetorius De suspecta poli declina-
tione, Lips. 1675, p. 35: qui hanc stellam non praeteriissent,
etiamsi minor quam Alcor, das knechtgen, der du melee, das renter-
140 :
Icin, Icnechiftnlc fuisset; and again on the thief a thumb, p.
fabula de polUcari auriga, dumeke, fulirman That the same
fancy of the waggoner to this constellation prevails in the East,
appears from Niebuhr s Arabia, and the Hungarian Oontzol seems
closely related to him ; in Greek legend likewise Zeus places the
waggon s driver (yvlo%o?) or inventor Erichthonius among the
stars, though not in the Great Bear, but between Perseus and
the Twins in the galaxy. The Bohemian formdnek, wozatag
(auriga) or boivozny signify Arcturus, Bootes and Erichthonius
(Jungm. 1, 550. 3, 401), and palecky u ivozu thumblings on
waggon. But in Slovenic, it seems, hervor (Murko 85. Jarnik
and the Polar Star.
229 b
) and burovzh mean the waggoner
The cluster of brilliant stars in which the Greeks recognised
the figure of Orion l had various Teutonic names, the reasons of
which are not always clear to us now. Fir3t, the three stars in
a line that form Orion s belt are called in Scandinavia Friggjarrockr,
Friggerok (pp. 270. 302-3), and also by transfer to Mary
Maridrok, Marirok (Peter Syv in the Danske digtek. middelald.
1, 102), Mariteen; here is plain connecting of a star-group with
the system of heathen gods. The same three stars are to this
day called by the common folk in Up. Germany the three mowers,
because they stand in a row like mowers in a meadow : a homely
1 Our MHG. poets adopt Orion without translating it, MS. 1, 37 a . The
Romans, ace. to Varro and Festus, called it Jugula, it is not known why.