“Who found all the sky people?”
“Well,” said Uncle Henry, “now that’s a long story. They were all found and named so long ago that nobody knows who did it. The inventors of the star people naturally thought they saw pictures in the sky of the things they were familar with in everyday life—the bear, the bull, the serpent, the archer, and so on. If they had had any steam engines then somebody would have drawn lines from star to star until they had a picture of one in the sky. In England the Great Bear or Dipper is usually called the ‘Plough’ and you can see why
“It is also called ‘Charles’ Wain’ or wagon.
“We only know that the constellations are very, very old, and that an ancient people living in the valley of the Euphrates river probably named most of them. The Babylonian Tablets, the oldest records known, show that the Zodiac constellations were known over 3000 years before the birth of Christ, which is now nearly 5000 years ago.”
“Can’t we have just one more poem before we go to bed?” said Paul.
“Yes,” said Uncle Henry, “but not one of mine. I’ll give you a little bit of a long poem that was written by a man named Aratos about 280 years before the wise men followed the star that told them where to find the new-born Christ. It has been running through my mind all the evening. This is it:
“And all the signs through which Night whirls her car,
From belted Orion back to Orion and his dauntless Hound,
And all Poseidon’s, all high Zeus’s stars,
Bear on their beams true messages to man.”