Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/485

Rh Spenser also alludes to this celestial timepiece in the Faerie Queene:

In a Blackfoot Indian myth we read: "The seven Persons [the Dipper] slowly swung around and pointed downward. It was the middle of the night." This shows that the Indians were accustomed to mark time at night by the position of the circumpolar stars.

Allen tells us that the Bears have been frequently found on the old signboards of English inns, and in a more important way are emblazoned on the shields of the cities of Antwerp and Grôningen, in the Netherlands.

The well-known talisman of good luck, the Swastika Cross, is considered the oldest cross and symbol in the world. It is said to have been familiar to primitive man as a part of the constellation of Ursa Major, the portion popularly known as "the Dipper." The stars that trace the cross form the figure of a Dipper whichever way the cross is turned.

The Arabs imagined Ursa Major and Ursa Minor to be a gazelle and its young, and the three conspicuous pairs of stars in the feet of the Great Bear represented to them the footprints of several gazelles, which, according to a legend, sprang from that spot when the Lion lashed the sky with his tail. The Lion, so the story runs, pursued the gazelles, and some of them jumped for safety into the Great Pond which is formed by a group of stars in Ursa Major.

α Ursæ Majoris is named " Dubhe," meaning the "Bear" or "She Bear." The title is derived from an Arab phrase meaning the back of the Bear. Lockyer identifies this star with the Egyptian "Āk," meaning the "Eye," the prominent one of the constellation. This star was utihsed in the alignment of the walls of the temple of Hathor at Denderah, and was the orientation point of that structure before 5000