Those who have studied the mythology and folklore of the Pleiades will remember how universally the numeral seven is associated with their varying nomenclature. But there was, and still is among primitive peoples, not infrequent confusion in the use of ‘The Seven Stars’ as a specific name. Although from China to Arabia, from India and Persia to the Latin countries of the South, the term almost invariably designates the Pleiades, in the folklore of many Western nations it is used for the seven planets, and in many Northern races it is often used for the seven brilliant stars of the Great Bear. Even the Biblical allusion to ‘The Seven Stars,’ as our own Anglo-Saxon ancestral _Sifunsterri_, does not necessarily indicate the Pleiades: many consider the seven great planets to be meant. There is a Shetland rune, common to all the north isles and to be heard in Iceland and Norway, known as the rune of sevens, and of which one of the invocatory lines is ‘And by da seven shiners.’ All kinds of interpretation have explained this, from the obvious ‘seven planets,’ or else the Pleiades, to the Seven Candlesticks of Revelation and I know not what besides. I have again and again asked fisher-folk or others from the Orkneys and Shetlands, and in all but one or two instances the answer has clearly indicated the Great Bear, occasionally Polaris and the Ursine Arcturus and their nearest brilliant ‘shiners.’ Again, _Crannarain_, one of the Gaelic names for the Pleiades, is, perhaps, as often applied to the Great Bear: the curious legend of the Baker’s Shovel, implied in the Gaelic term, fitting equally. Of the Great Bear, of the North Star, however, I have already spoken. Of Polaris itself, indeed, there is more than enough to draw upon. Years ago I began an MS. book called ‘The Book of the North Star,’ and from my recollection of it (for at the moment of writing I am far from my books) I should say there is enough folklore and legend and various interest connected with this star wherefrom to evolve a volume solely devoted to it. It is strange that ‘the Lamp of the North’ should have so fascinated all the poets from the time of Homer till to-day, and yet that all have dwelled in the same illusion as to its absolute steadfastness. Nevertheless, Homer’s “Arctos, sole star that never bathes in the ocean wave” has both poetic truth and the truth of actuality.