# Stars of the Wain



## reem (Feb 2, 2003)

page 179 "...only fromthe map did Bolbo know that away up there, where the stars of the Wain were already..."
what's the Wain??
reem


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## Aulë (Feb 2, 2003)

"...the stars of the Wain were already twinkling..." 
The Hobbit, _10 A Warm Welcome_ 


The seven stars of the Wain 

The name in the northern lands of Middle-earth for the constellation we know today as the Plough or the Big Dipper. In Tolkien's mythology, these seven stars were set in the sky by Varda in the shape of a mighty sickle, as a warning to Melkor and his underlings. The Men and Hobbits of the northern lands seem to have been ignorant of this, though: they gave these stars the more prosaic name of 'the Wain', meaning a wagon or cart.


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## Ithrynluin (Feb 4, 2003)

See my avatar.

EDIT: Oops guess I don't have it anymore. Well here it is:

http://www.allthesky.com/constellations/ursamajor/preview.jpg


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## jallan (Mar 2, 2003)

“The Wain” is actually a common name in English for those stars, more used in the United Kingdom and Ireland than in North America.

It is not clear whether Tolkien means us to understand that the Hobbits called this asterism by a word meaning “wagon” or that he is just using what to him was a normal English word for it, not indicating anything about what the meaning of the true Hobbit word might have been.

Of course, when he was writing _The Hobbit_ Tolkien was not thinking about such things as Hobbit month names or constellation names and such.


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