The Two Bears

Ken Tapping, 7th August, 2013

Almost everybody in the Northern Hemisphere has to be familiar with the grouping of seven stars known in North America as "The Big Dipper". Other names for this grouping include "The Saucepan", "The Plough" and Charles’ Wain (wagon). The star group does look like all these things, although as a wagon wheels and horses are lacking. A Chinese name for these stars is "The Celestial Bureaucrat", a senior civil servant being carried in his little wagon. These stars are actually the brightest bit of a large constellation called Ursa Major, "The Great Bear". The handle of the dipper represents the bear’s tail. However, no bear has a tail that long.

One widespread use of the Dipper is to help us find Polaris, the North (or Pole) Star, which tells us which direction is north and also our latitude. We start with the two stars opposite the handle, named Dubhe and Merak. The pair is known as "The Pointers", because if we follow their line upwards we reach Polaris. This star is not spectacularly bright, so some help in finding it is useful.

Polaris is the brightest star in the constellation of Ursa Minor, "The Little Bear", and marks the end of this bear’s improbably long tail. On the way from The Pointers to Polaris, the line passes close to a pair of stars, one of them reddish in colour, known as "The Guardians of the Pole". More than anything else, this constellation looks like a box swinging on the end of a long rope, with The Guardians making one side of the box. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor are two characters in a Greek legend. This legend also suggests why the two bears have such unusually long tails.

The Olympian gods were not known for their moral code, and Zeus, the King of the Gods, made no effort to set a good example. He was perpetually pursuing earthly maidens and trying to hide his activities from Hera, his very suspicious wife. Once upon a time he became infatuated with the nymph, Callisto. Then he saw Hera coming, and quickly hid the unfortunate girl by turning her into a bear. This was a bad move, because Callisto’s son, Arcas, was hunting in the woods, and started to pursue her. To prevent a tragedy while at the same time trying not to make his wife even more suspicious, he quickly turned Arcas into a bear too, and swung mother and son into the sky, where he installed them as the two constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. It has been suggested that Zeus swung them up by their tails, giving them anatomies very different from their cousins who still live on the ground.

In one of the legends of North American aboriginal peoples, the bowl of the Dipper represents a bear and the stars of the handle hunters in hot pursuit. During the summer the hunters pursue it, catching it in the autumn. The bear’s blood makes the leaves go red. The bear dies, but in the spring it comes back to life and the cycle starts over.

There is a bit of real history that is more touching than any legend. In the 19th Century escaped slaves would head north for the northern states or for Canada. They called the Big Dipper the "Drinking Gourd", and by following the Drinking Gourd, they could navigate their way north to freedom. They hid these instructions in the song "Follow the Drinking Gourd".

We have filled the sky with heroes, monsters and other things from our legends. Imagine what it must have been like, sitting around a fire, surrounded by the mysterious darkness with the stars overhead, and being told these old stories.