"BEARings": etymythology or the real thing?

[Laurence Horn]

Over on the forensic.linguistics list, someone posted the following suggestion:

Getting Your Bearings
=====================

The two stars that form the pouring edge of the bowl of the Big
Dipper [Ursa Major = big bear] point to ...

Polaris
1. the polestar or North Star ... in the constellation
Ursa Minor [Little Bear]: the outermost star in the handle of the
Little Dipper.

This explains why, in English, the process of determining the
direction you face is called "getting one's bearings".

bearings
9. a horizontal direction expressed in degrees east
or west of ... north ...
<<

Today I did a Google search for ["getting your bearings" + email] and
found this 58-page website:

http://www.sciencenorth.on.ca/schools/teacherresources/edu_guides/IMAX/bears
.pdf
...
If you look at the two stars forming the beginning of the "bowl" and
follow along the line they make, you will see the North Star,
Polaris. The star forms part of the tail of the Lesser Bear, and was
always used by sailors as a guide to finding north. In fact, the
phrase, "getting your bearings" comes from the practice of using the
Great Bear to find the North Star. ...
<<

I thought he was bringing this up as part of a thread on plagiarism
to show that invented etymologies can be arrived at by coincidence,
and I responded as follows:
=====================
This is very clever--you did have me going there for a minute. I take
it (from the "WordPlay-L" reference) that you're not claiming that
this is also the *correct* etymology, but rather a neat and somewhat
plausible etymythology? The OED lists "bearing(s)" in this sense
among the others for the verbal noun formed from the verb "to bear",
the old Indo-European root for 'carry' that...uh, bears no relation
to the Ursus noun. Their earliest cites--indeed all the cites at this
entry--contain no allusion to the Big Dipper and involve no direct
reference to celestial navigation.

13. a. The direction in which any point lies from a point of
reference, esp. as measured in degrees from one of the quarters of
the compass; also, the direction of an arriving radio wave or radar
echo determined by a direction-finding system. In pl. the relative
positions of surrounding objects. to take one's bearings: to
determine one's position with regard to surrounding objects; also fig.

1635 N. CARPENTER Geog. Del. I. vii. 171 Great errours not only in
the situation of diuers places, but also in the bearing of places one
to the other.
1711 F. FULLER Med. Gymn. 29 When they [jockeys] design to take the
Bearings of a Running Horse.
1750 SMEATON in Phil. Trans. 5 July, To make the compass useful in
taking..the bearing of head~lands, ships and other objects.

Your point would, I gather, be that it's all the more a priori
suspicious that both you and the ScienceNorth folks (that link is now
dead, it appears) came up with the same invented etymology. This
might also apply to some of the other cases of etymythology, such as
faux acronyms (COP = 'constable on patrol', IVY league < the supposed
four original schools in the group, etc.).
======================

In addition, I assume that if there really was a "bear" in
"bearings", it would show up in other Indo-European languages in
which the root of the "bear" name is distinct from the old IE verb
from _bher-_ ('carry'), but we don't actually find e.g. French
sailors getting their "oursage".  Not that this proves anything
directly, but it is suspicious, since it's the same Ursus Major up
there for everyone.    But the original poster followed up to
indicate that he does at least in part subscribe to this proposed
derivation--

IMO, it is a *very* plausible etymology (despite my personal
disapproval of nearly all "folk-tale" etymologies). I think
the "bearings" in "getting your bearings" did not occur by
semantic shift from the verb "to bear"...

--as presumably does the owner of the above sciencenorth web site.
Does anyone have anything to support the plausibility of the proposed
connection, or alternatively to reinforce my suspicion that this is a
shaggy bear story?

Larry