Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/496

Beside these two Roman star-lore knows a third appellation; the stars are called Septemtriones, the seven threshing-oxen, who are conceived to travel round and round the area, or threshing-floor, trampling out the grain. It is usually supposed that the name Boötes, or Ox-man, answers to the wagon, inasmuch as the stars represent a driver with outstretched hand. G. Thiele ("Antike Himmelsbildung," Berlin, 1898) thinks that the reference may be to the oxen, and that the comparison with the threshing-floor is thereby proved to be as ancient as that to the bear and the wagon; the three stars extending from the Wain must, he thinks, have been conceived as the pole of the cart, not as the draught-oxen. However this may be, the designations must originally have depended on obvious appearance, and been given with respect to the seven bright stars ; the astronomical figures, in which the visible aspect is subordinated to an artificial construction, must have come later. The Bear, therefore, must have been thought of as having a body formed of four stars, and with an extended tail of three stars (just as the three stars of the Dog's Tail were turned into the tail of Ursa Minor.) This tail is a puzzle; what has a bear to do with a long bushy appendage of this sort? The incongruity rather makes against the probable primitiveness of the name. It is presumably a later change, when Hesiod gives to Boötes, the Ox-goader, the name Arctouros, or Bear-ward, (subsequently also Arctophylax); the idea of a bear-keeper, perhaps a travelling performer, is decidedly more sophisticated.

To a late stage also may belong the identification of Callisto with the group. Callisto seems to have been an epithetic name of Artemis. We are told by Hesiod that she was changed into a bear by that goddess, as a penalty for her pregnancy. She becomes mother of Arkas, hero eponymous of Arkadians. Again, Atalante, also connected with the same deity, was suckled by a bear. The inference to be drawn from these stories is, that in the Arkadian Artemis, at least, we have to do with an early bear-goddess, who, in virtue of the usual complications of mythology, came to be identified with various other personages, and so became the centre of a complicated mythology. The connection of these tales with the constellation seems to have resulted from the ursine character of the goddess and her variously named doubles, and have been quite secondary and accidental. It is true that the hunter Orion is said to have been killed by Artemis; but the myths explain this as the punishment of excessive boastfulness, or of insults offered to the virginity of the deity; the true root of the tale may have been aversion, on the part of a goddess of the forest, to the hunters who destroy, without making atonement, animals of the wood, who are under her protection, and in their pursuit of these violate her sanctuary. As already remarked, the Homeric connection of Orion and the Bear has the appearance of being no more than a poetic fancy, the inspiration of the moment; the author pictures the animal as naturally suspicious of the mighty hunter. So far as appears, therefore, Greek star-lore knows nothing of a bear-hunt.

On the other hand, the American star-myth, as shown by Mr. Hagar, describes the pursuit of the bear in a manner clear, vivid, and standing in