Star Lore Of All Ages/The Galaxy
The Galaxy
or Milky Way
or Milky Way
That leadeth upward to the gate of heaven.
Amelia.
Who, of all those who have turned their eyes to the stars, has not wondered at that mysterious cloud that twines its devious way across the sky like a river's mist, awaiting the breath of the dawn-wind! And who, realising that this veil that flutters across the heaven is woven of a myriad close-set suns, has not felt a sense of awe and reverence steal upon him, a spirit of humility that takes possession of his soul!
The ancient Akkadians regarded the Milky Way as "a Great Serpent," or "the River of the Shepherd's Hut," and "the River of the Divine Lady."
Anaxagoras, who lived 550 b.c., and Aratos knew it as "το Γάλα," "that shining wheel, men call it milk."
The Greeks called it "the Circle of the Galaxy," and during all historic time it was regarded as "the River of Heaven," and "Eridanus," the Stream of Ocean.
In mythology it represented the stream into which Phaëton and the chariot of the sun were hurled by the enraged Jupiter.
Orientals fancied here a river of shining silver, whose fish were frightened by the new moon, which they imagined to be a hook.
Aside from the resemblance of the Galaxy to a serpent, and a river, the most popular notion of it among all people and in every age has been to regard the Milky Way as a highway amid the stars, the "Via Lactea" of the ancients. Chiefly it has been the road to heaven traversed by the souls of the departed.
It may be interesting to review the peculiar ideas of the ancients respecting the Galaxy.
Anaxagoras thought that the Milky Way was a collection of stars whose light was partially obscured by the shadow of the earth.
Pythagoras said it was a vast assemblage of very distant stars.
Democritus about 460 b.c. held that the white cloudlike appearance of the Galaxy was due to the fact that, in that part of the heavens, there was a multitude of diminutive stars so close together that they illuminated each other.
It is strange that these early opinions of the Milky Way should have been confirmed in later days when the structure of this band of light could be examined in powerful telescopes, confirmed at least in the assumption that the white effect was produced by the presence of a myriad of stars.
Aristotle thought that the Galaxy was a vast mass of glowing vapour, far above the region of the ether and below that of the planets,
Parmenides believed that the milky colour was due to the mixture of dense and rare air.
Metrodorus and Oinopides conceived the strange idea that the Milky Way marked the pathway of the sun amid the stars.
Posidonius thought that it was a compound of fire less dense than that of the stars, but more luminous.
Theophrastus said it was the junction between the two hemispheres which together formed the vault of heaven, and that it was so badly made that some of the light supposed to exist behind the solid sky was visible through the cracks.
Plutarch claimed that the Galaxy was a nebulous circle which constantly appears on the sky, and, according to Blake, certain Pythagoreans asserted that when Phaēton lit the universe, one star which escaped from its proper place set light to the whole space it passed over in its circular course, and so formed the Milky Way.
Other philosophers imagined that the Galactic Circle was where the sun had been at the beginning of the world.
It was also believed that the Milky Way was but an optical phenomenon, produced by the reflection of the sun's rays from the vault of the sky as from a mirror, and comparable with the effects seen in the rainbow, and illuminated clouds.
Mythology attributed the Milky Way to the milk dropped from Juno's breasts, while she was suckling Hercules.
In Egypt Isis was said to have formed the Milky Way by the dropping of innumerable wheat heads.
There are many interesting legends concerning this celebrated pathway in the skies.
The ancients painted on the great canvas of the night skies many pastoral scenes, thus depicting features of daily life in the far east. Among the stars, as we have seen, we find the figure of a shepherd with his dogs watching his flocks, and near by twines a river, the Milky Way.
According to a French tale, the stars in the Milky Way are lights held by angel spirits to show mortals the way to heaven.
The Greeks called the Galaxy "the road to the Palace of Heaven." Along this road stand the palaces of the illustrious gods, while the common people of the skies live on either side of them.
The Algonquin Indians believed that this was the Path of Souls leading to the villages in the sun. As the spirits travel along the pathway their blazing camp-fires may be seen as bright stars.
Other Indian nations believed that the souls of the departed 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:
Which when the skies are clear is seen below
And mortals by the name of milky know;
The groundwork is of stars, through which the road
Lies open to the Thunderer's abode.
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Photo by Anderson
Juno Suckling the Infant Jove
Painting by Rubens. Gallery of the Prado, Madrid
In Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice we read:
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
There 's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed Cherubim.
Sir John Suckling says:
A meeting of gentle lights without a name.
In Milton's Paradise Lost there is this beautiful reference to the Galaxy:
And pavement stars as stars to thee appear
Seen in the Galaxy, that Milky Way
Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest
Powdered with stars.
Longfellow thus alludes to the Milky Way in Hiawatha:
Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows.
Running straight across the heavens.
Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows,
To the kingdom of Ponemah,
To the land of the hereafter.
When Galileo directed his newly invented telescope at the Galaxy the mystery of its composition was solved. Myriads of stars strewed the fields as he swept over the misty belt, their blended light causing the white effect the unaided eye reveals.
Allen thus sums up our present knowledge of this remarkable object
"It covers more than one tenth of the visible heavens, containing more than nine tenths of the visible stars, and seems a vast zone-shaped nebula nearly a great circle of the sphere, the poles being in Coma and Cetus."
The Milky Way has been likened to sand strewn not evenly as with a sieve, but as if flung down by handfuls and both hands at once, leaving dark intervals, and all consisting of stars of the 14th, 16th, and 20th magnitudes down to nebulosity.
It is believed that the majority of stars comprising this wonderful belt of stars surpass our sun in brilliancy and splendour. In the deep recesses of this glittering way Sir Wm. Herschel was able to count five hundred stars receding in regular order behind each other, and in the interval of an hour 116,000 stars passed him in review across the field of his telescopic vision.
In the constellation Cygnus, where the Milky Way is especially brilliant, there is a region about five degrees in breadth which contains, it is said, 331,000 stars.
Prof. Russell writing of this region says: "Here the Milky Way is crossed by a dark streak which immediately suggests a passing cloud. But, year in and year out, on the clearest nights, the dark region is there. Its origin must be interstellar space—perhaps in an actual thinning of the stars of the Galaxy, perhaps in the interposition of some cosmic cloud of overwhelming vast dimensions."
Many think the Galaxy a universe by itself and our sun one of its myriad stars.
"It remains the most wonderful sight that human eyes behold. The thought of its wonderful structure, the contemplation of the splendour proximity would afford, transcends the very limits of the human intellect, and gives us a mere glimpse in imagination of the stupendous scale of a universe of which our system is but an infinitesimal atom."
The following are some of the titles bestowed on the Milky Way, and various fancies concerning it:
The Akkadians imagined it to be a Great Serpent, and the River of the Divine Lady.
The Greeks called it "the Circle of the Galaxy."
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The Milky Way in Sagittarius
as a Circle.
The ancient inhabitants of Britain called it "Watling Street."
One of the Celtic titles is "King of Fairies," and the Celts also fancied that it was the road along which Gwydyon pursued his erring wife.
In the mediaeval ages it was known as "the Way to Rome."
The ancient Germans called it "Irmin's Way"; Germans to-day call it "Jacob's Road," while the French peasants call it "St. James's Road."
The Norsemen and Scandinavians knew it as the path to Valhalla, up which went the souls of heroes who fell in battle. The Swedish peasantry call it "Winter Street."
In Japan and China it was known as "the Celestial River," and "the Silver River." The Chinese also called it "the Yellow Road."
The Arabs knew it as "the River," while the Eskimos of the far north call it "the Path of White Ashes." The Bushmen, far removed from these dwellers in the Frigid Zone, thought that the Milky Way was composed of wood ashes thrown up into the sky by a girl, that people might see their way home at night.
The Australians call it "the fire smoke of an ancient race." The Masai name for it is "the road across the sky."
The Dutch, Basutos, and Zulus call it "the neck of the sky."
The Peruvians and the Incas knew it as the "dust of stars," while the Patagonians thought that it was the road on which their dead friends were hunting ostriches.
The early Hindus knew it as "the Path of Āryamān" leading to his throne in Elysium.
In the Punjab it was "the Path of Noan's Ark," while in northern India it was "the Path of the Snake."
The Ottawa Indians believed it to be the muddy water stirred up by a turtle swimming along the bottom of the sky.
The North American Indians regarded the Galaxy as the pathway of the ghosts to the land of the hereafter, the Pawnees believing that it was the path taken by spirits as they pass along, driven by the wind which starts at the north to the star in the south at the end of the way. The Iroquois call it "the Road of Souls."
The Tahitians regard it as a shark-infested creek, and the Polynesians knew it as the "Long Blue Cloud-eating Shark."
It has also been called "Walsingham's Way," "the Road to the Virgin Mary in Heaven," "Asgard's Bridge," and "the Band."