There is also an old Iroquois Indian tale which claims that at one time in the distant past the bear had a fine bushy tail but that this tail was frozen off one cold winter when the foolish animal endeavored to catch a fish by letting the long appendage hang through a hole in the ice. In those days, perhaps, the bears were vain creatures,—which might explain, in part, why the star-jeweled tails on the shadowy forms of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor are held with the upright pride of a cat with nine kittens as these mammoth plantigrades nightly promenade on their circular path around the Pole.
DRACO, THE DRAGON
A sinuous line of stars divides the figures of the Great and Little Bears. These stars lie on the huge body of Draco, the Sky Dragon, whose length coils halfway around the axis of the world.
Draco is sometimes called the "Guardian of the Stars," the stars being the golden apples which hang from the pole-tree in the Garden of Darkness. This is rather a pretty conceit as the Dragon's Eyes, represented by the stars Alwaid and Etanin, never rest, that is, never set below the northern horizon of Greece.
The above title was probably suggested by the legend which tells of Laden, the sleepless dragon, that guarded the tree of golden fruit in the Garden of the Hesperides. This garden lay near the feet of Atlas, the giant Titan, who sat on a mountain in northern Africa supporting the dome of the heavens. The bright eyes of this snake were at that time aided in their wakefulness by the silvery, lilting voices of the Hesperides, daughters of Hesperus, whose name was given to the beautiful Evening Star so often seen in this direction. According to one legend, Hercules slew this dragon in order to pick the gleaming fruit and bring it to his cousin Eurystheus as his eleventh Labor, but that this Dragon could be identical with the sky dragon, Draco, whose head lies just beyond the heel of Hercules, is somewhat discounted by other legends which claim that Hercules temporarily supported the weight of heaven while Atlas went down to the garden and got the apples from his nieces. In return for this favor, Atlas gained a little rest.
It has also been suggested that perhaps Draco was the monster "with a body more huge than any mountain pine" and "a roar like a fire among the woodlands," which was entwined around a beech tree in the Grove of Mars, the War-god, at the eastern end of the Euxine (which we now call the Black Sea). On this beech tree was nailed the golden fleece of the wondrous ram which flew into the sky and aided two persecuted children to escape. To obtain this fleece, Orpheus drugged the snake with music while Jason stepped across the mighty coils and tore the golden wool from the tree. After the Argonautic expedition, both the ram and the dragon were placed among the stars.
Still another legend relates that when the gods and the earth-born giants waged their mighty war to gain possession of Olympus, a huge crawling monster had the audacity to anger the Goddess Minerva who seized it and hurled it far into the heavens where it caught on the axis of the world, and froze into immobility before it had time to unwind its contortions. The only time on record that this dragon ever revived from its stupid torpor was when Phæthon, son of Apollo, lost control of the steeds of his sun-chariot and the heated vehicle swerved northward from the beaten path.
"Then the folded Serpent next the frozen pole,
Stiff and benumb'd before, began to roll,
And rag'd with inward heat, and threatened war."
—Ovid's Metamorphoses.