Castor and Pollux
. What we call comazants. Electric flames sometimes seen in stormy weather playing about the masts of ships. If only one flame showed itself, the Romans called it Helen, and said that it portended that the worst of the storm was yet to come; but two or more luminous flames they called Castor and Pollux, and said that they boded the termination of the storm.
But when the sons of Leda shed
Their star-lamps on our vessel’s head,
The storm-winds cease, the troubled spray
Falls from the rocks, clouds flee away,
And on the bosom of the deep
In peace the angry billows sleep. E. C. B.
Horace: Odes xii., 27–32.
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Entry taken from
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,
edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.