The Irish Constellation

Now that everybody’s confessing everything, I’m ready to confess that, until about five years ago, I was under the impression that the constellation Orion was the constellation O’Ryan. I thought of it as the Irish constellation, sort of the way that actors refer to “Macbeth” as “the Scottish play.” Had I never seen “Orion” in print? I had, in fact, but I suppose I thought it was pronounced “oar-e-un.” I thought it was some other constellation that had nothing to do with the constellation people were referring to when they pointed to the sky and said what I heard as “Do you see O’Ryan’s Belt?” This is not so crazy. I know somebody who, not having been read to much when he was a child, grew up thinking that “Pat the Bunny” was a book about a bunny named Pat. These things happen.