Brewer's: Castor

A hat. Castor is the Latin for a beaver, and beaver means a hat made of the beaver's skin.

Tom Trot Took his new castor from his head.

Randall: Diary.

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.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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