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CONSTELLATIONS. 731
Pleiades and Sirius. If we look to the verbal meanings, nash,
which some Arabs do change into ash, is feretrum, bier or
barrow, 1 a thing not very different from a wain ; himeli, hima
seems to signify a thick cluster of stars, much the same sense as
in that name of sieve ;
giant, hence Orion.
: Jcsilj means foolish, ungodly, a lawless
Constellations can be divided into two kinds, according to
their origin. One kind requires several stars, to make up the
shape of some object, a man, beast, etc. ; the stars then ssrve as
ground or skeleton, round which is drawn the full figure as
imagination sees it. Thus, three stars in a row form St. James s
staff, distaff, a belt ; seven group themselves into the outline of a
bear, others into that of a giant Orion. The other kind is, to my
thinking, simpler, bolder, and older : a whole man is seen in a
single star, without regard to his particular shape, which would
drew nearer to
disappear from sheer distance ; if the tiny speck
us, it might develop itself again. So the same three stars as
before are three men mowing ; the seven Pleiads are a hen and
her chickens ; two stars, standing at the same distance on each
side of a faintly visible cluster, were to the ancient Greeks two
asses feeding at a crib. Here fancy is left comparatively free
and unfettered, while those outline-figures call for some effort of
abstraction ; yet let them also have the benefit of Buttmann s apt
remark, 2 that people did not begin with tracing the complete
figure in the sky, it was quite enough to have made out a portion
of it; the rest remained undefined, or was filled up afterwards
according to fancy. On this plan perhaps the Bear was first
found in the three stars of the tail, and then the other four
supplied the body. Our Wain shews a combination of both
methods : the thill arose, like the Bear s tail, by outline, but the
four wheels consist each of a single star. One point of agree
ment is important, that the Greek gods put men among the
stars, the same as Thorr and OSinn do (pp. 375. 723 ;
see Suppl.).
The appearance of the rainbow in the sky has given rise to a
number of mythic notions. Of its rounded arch the Edda makes
a heavenly bridge over which the deities walk ; hence it is called
1 Bocharti hierorz. , ed. Kosemniiller 2, 680.
2 Origin of the Grk constell. (in Abb. der Berl. acad. 1826, p. 19-63).