Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/524

394 entered this pathway by the door situated where it intersects the zodiac in Gemini, and left it to return to the gods by the door of Sagittarius. The ancient Greeks and Romans had this same notion.

According to a Swedish legend, there once lived on earth two mortals who loved each other. When they died they were doomed to dwell on different stars far apart. They thought of bridging the distance between them by a bridge of light, and this bridge is to be seen in the Milky Way.

This tale is similar to the Japanese legend of the Milky Way, and the Star Lovers mentioned before. The Japanese call the Galaxy "the Silver River of Heaven," and believe that on the seventh day of the seventh month, the shepherd boy-star Altair and the Spinning Maiden, the star Vega, cross the Milky Way as on a bridge to meet each other. This happens only if the weather is clear, so that is why the Japanese hope for clear weather on the 7th of July, when the meeting of the Star Lovers is made a gala day throughout the kingdom.

The Danes regard the moon as a cheese formed by the milk that has run together out of the Milky Way.

In some parts of Germany Odin was considered identical with the Saxon god Irmin. Irmin was said to possess a ponderous chariot, in which he rode across the sky along the path which we know as the Milky Way, but which the ancient Germans called "Irmin's Way."

In the history of all nations and in all ages we find the Galaxy likened to a way, a road, or a pathway to the land of the hereafter.

Allen thinks that this universal idea may have come from the fancy that the heavenly way, crowded with stars, resembled the earthly road crowded with pilgrims.

The poets of all time have sung the praises of this bright pathway of the skies. Manilius thus refers to it: