Hello, this is Mary Stewart Adams with “The Storytellers’ Guide to the Night Sky.”
Because there are not a lot of stars in the region of the sky appearing overhead this week, it might seem like there’ s not a lot going on up there, but with the right imagination, you can find one of the nursery rhymes of Mother Goose unfolding overhead, hidden in the constellations Andromeda and Pegasus. You might know Andromeda as the ‘woman in chains’, while Pegasus is the winged white horse.
But in the nursery rhyming of Mother Goose, Andromeda becomes the fine lady whose chains become rings on her fingers and bells on her toes! Pegasus becomes a hobby horse. And the rhyme goes like this:
Ride a cock horse
To Banbury cross
To see a fine lady
Upon a white horse.
With rings on her fingers
And bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes.
The history of this particular rhyme dates back to at least the early 1700s, but is sometimes believed to refer to the fashion of women in the 15th century to wear bells on the ends of their shoes.
The constellations Andromeda and Pegasus rise up in the East this month and come to the ‘zenith’ or highest place overhead around midnight. You will find the fine lady Andromeda riding her white horse Pegasus just below the Milky Way as it arcs from the northeast to the southwest across Northern Michigan Skies.
I’m Mary Stewart Adams, from Emmet County’s International Dark Sky Park at the Headlands.