BESPANGLE • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Bespangle

... dreams. Perhaps it may also partly account for the association of the stars with the souls of the dead. For if the dead appear to the living mainly in the hours of darkness, it seems not unnatural to imagine that the bright points of light which then bespangle the canopy of heaven are either the souls of the departed or fires kindled by them in their home aloft. For example, the Central Australian aborigines commonly suppose the stars to be the camp-fires of natives who live on the banks of the great river which we civilised ...

— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer