Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/559

Rh was struck by lightning, others that it was removed into the tail of the Great Bear. There is a myth that while a terrible battle was being waged on the earth, one of the sisters hid herself behind the others. The Iroquois Indians also had a legend respecting this famous star that appears to have been lost. They imagined that the Lost Pleiad was a little Indian boy in the sky, who was very homesick. When he cried he covered his face with his hands and thus hid his light. The legend is as follows: "Seven little Indian boys lived in a log cabin in the woods, and every starlight night they joined hands and danced about singing the 'Song of the Stars.' The stars looked down and learned to love the children, and often beckoned to them. One night the children were very much disappointed with their supper, and so when they danced together and the stars beckoned to them, they accepted the invitation and betook themselves to Starland, and became the seven Pleiades, and the dim one represents one of the little Indian boys who became homesick."

According to another legend concerning the Lost Pleiad, known to be current among the blacks of Australia, this star group represented a queen and her six attendants. Long ago the Crow (our Canopus) fell in love with the queen, who refused to be his wife. The Crow found that the queen and her attendants were wont to hunt for white edible grubs in the bark of trees, and changing himself into a grub hid beneath the bark. The six maidens sought in vain to pick him out with their wooden hooks, but when the queen tried to draw him out with a pretty bone hook he came out, and assuming the shape of a giant ran away with her. Ever since that time there have been only six stars in the group.

Aratos wrote of the number of the Pleiades: