Dear Folks,

My great-uncle Roy, who lived in the Virginia hills, used to tell tall tales about the constellations. He also had a song about the one called "The Great Bar" (read Bear for Bar). It may have been something he made up all by himself, but I had the sense that it was something he learned earlier in life. The song was a very funny take on the wildly exaggerated adventures and misadventures of the constellation come-to-life and roaming the Blue Ridge. In the chorus of every verse, it turns out that, for one or another reason, the Bar (Bear), though giving much evidence of its extraordinary feats and powerful presence, was never actually SEEN.

In spite of the humour of the song, as a child, I was too gullible to realise that this "Bar" couldn't really exist. I fully expected it to jump out of the woods and eat me up. This perception was enhanced by the fact that great-uncle Roy always told the story after dark and whispered the most frightening parts in a dramatic and conspiratorial stage whisper. It always produced both giggles and gasps of delicious terror. Never mind Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. I dreamt of that mythical "Bar" leaping out of the dark woods and across a star-filled sky, looking for naughty children who wouldn't stay properly in bed, for many years.

Is there such a song that anyone knows of?

Thanks,

Shula