The Seven Stars Inn - Origin of Name

Origin of Name

According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, the "Seven Stars" can be a reference to the Pleiades, a cluster of stars in the constellation of Taurus, (also known as the Seven Sisters, named by the Greeks for the seven daughters of Atlas); the seven moving heavenly bodies known to the ancients: the sun, the moon, and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; or the constellation Ursa Major, "the Plough", important for its symbolism in a rural arable area, and for indicating the direction North. "The Plough" is also a common pub name.

The reference to "seven stars in the sky" in the famous Green Grow the Rushes O! Teaching Song or Dilly Song gives further, if mystical, insights. The Seven Stars could be the Seven Stars referred to in Revelations as representing the seven angels of the Seven_churches_of_Asia; or the Pleiades, or Ursa Major. The song is replete with Christian and Pre-Christian symbolism, and dates to medieval times, if not earlier. Shakespeare refers to the "seven stars" in King_Lear Act 1, v

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