Long ago, far away in the east, there lived a great hunter called Nimród. He had two sons, Hunor and Magor, who had grown up with bows in their hands and the wide grasslands under their feet.
One morning, as the brothers rode out to hunt with their companions, a stag stepped out of the mist in front of them. It was whiter than snow. Old Hungarian songs say its antlers had a thousand branches, and on every branch a candle was burning, though no hand had ever lit them.
The brothers forgot all about hunting. They only wanted to follow it.
The stag ran, and they rode after it. It led them across rivers, through reeds taller than a rider, and over marshes where a careless horse could sink to its knees. Whenever they were sure they had lost it, they would see its lights again, flickering between the reeds, as if it were waiting for them to catch up.
They followed it for days. Then one evening, just as the sun went down, they came to a quiet land by the sea. The stag looked back at them once, and then it was gone, as though it had walked straight into the dusk.
Hunor and Magor looked around them. The grass came up to their stirrups. The rivers were full of fish, the reeds were full of birds, and the meadows were soft enough to sleep on.
“We were never chasing it,” said Hunor. “It was leading us.”
They rode home to ask their father’s blessing, then came back to the marshes to stay. One night they heard music drifting across the water and found the daughters of King Dul dancing in a moonlit clearing. The brothers joined the dance, and by the end of the story the two eldest daughters had become their wives.
From Hunor and his family, the old chronicles say, came the Huns. From Magor and his came the Magyars, the people of Hungary. And the story is still told in Hungary today, of a white stag with lights in its antlers that showed two brothers the way to a new home.
So the next time you see a cluster of bright stars on a dark night, take a moment to look for the antlers. And if you would like to find pictures in the stars yourself, Constellations will show you how.
