Various - Myths That Every Child Should Know

V >> Various >> Myths That Every Child Should Know

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

[Illustration: MEDEIA AND JASON WITH THE GOLDEN FLEECE]

MYTHS THAT EVERY
CHILD SHOULD KNOW

A SELECTION OF THE CLASSIC MYTHS
OF ALL TIMES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

EDITED BY
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE

ILLUSTRATED AND DECORATED
BY BLANCHE OSTERTAG

NEW YORK
Doubleday, Page & Company
1906

NOTE

The editor and publishers wish to express their appreciation of the
courtesy of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Dodd, Mead & Co., and the
Macmillan Company, by means of which they have been enabled to reprint
stories from Hawthorne's "Wonder Book" and "Tanglewood Tales," from "In
the Days of Giants," from "Norse Stories," from Church's "Stories from
Homer," and from Kingsley's "Greek Heroes."

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ix

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES 3
(Hawthorne's "Wonder Book")

II. THE POMEGRANATE SEEDS 27
(Hawthorne's "Tanglewood Tales")

III. THE CHIMAERA 65
(Hawthorne's "Wonder Book")

IV. THE GOLDEN TOUCH 92
(Hawthorne's "Wonder Book")

V. THE GORGON'S HEAD 112
(Hawthorne's "Wonder Book")

VI. THE DRAGON'S TEETH 140
(Hawthorne's "Tanglewood Tales")

VII. THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER 174
(Hawthorne's "Wonder Book")

VIII. THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN 107
(Hawthorne's "Wonder Book")

IX. THE CYCLOPS 216
(Church's "Stories from Homer")

X. THE ARGONAUTS 227
(Kingsley's "Greek Heroes")

XI. THE GIANT BUILDER 299
("In Days of Giants")

XII. HOW ODIN LOST HIS EYE 308
("In Days of Giants")

XIII. THE QUEST OF THE HAMMER 316
("In Days of Giants")

XIV. THE APPLES OF IDUN 330
("Norse Stories")

XV. THE DEATH OF BALDER 337
("Norse Stories")

XVI. THE STAR AND THE LILY 348
(Miss Emerson's "Indian Myths")

INTRODUCTION

In many parts of the country when the soil is disturbed arrow heads are
found. Now, it is a great many years since arrow heads have been used,
and they were never used by the people who own the land in which they
appear or by their ancestors. To explain the presence of these roughly
cut pieces of stone we must recall the weapons with which the Indians
fought when Englishmen, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, and Spaniards first came to
this part of the world. There may be no authentic history of Indians in
the particular locality in which these old-fashioned weapons come to
light, but their presence in the ground is the best kind of evidence
that Indians once lived on these fields or were in the habit of hunting
over them. In many parts of the country these arrow heads are turned up
in great numbers; museums large and small are plentifully supplied with
them; and they form part of the record of the men who once lived here,
and of their ways of killing game and destroying their enemies. Wherever
there are arrow heads there have been Indians.

Among every people and in every language there are found stories,
superstitions, traditions, phrases, which are not to be explained by the
thoughts or ideas or beliefs of people now living; and the same stories,
superstitions, phrases, are found among people as far apart as those of
Norway and Australia. The people of to-day tell these stories or
remember the superstitions or use the phrases without understanding
where they came from or what they meant when first used. As the ground
in some sections is full of arrow heads that have been buried no one
knows how many centuries, so the poetry we read, the music we hear, the
stories told us when we are children, have come down from a time in the
history of man so early that there are in many cases no other records or
remains of it. These stories vary greatly in details; they fit every
climate and wear the peculiar dress of every country; but it is easy to
see that they are made up of the same materials, and that they describe
the same persons or ideas or things whether they are told in Greece or
India or Norway or Brittany. Wherever they are found they make it
certain that they come from a very remote time and grew out of ideas or
feelings and ways of looking at the world which a great many men shared
in common in many places.

When a man sneezes, people still say in some countries, "God bless you."
They do not know why they say it; they simply repeat what they heard
older people say when they were children, and do not know that every
time they use these words they recall the age when people believed that
evil spirits could enter into a man, and that when a man sneezed he
expelled one of these spirits. It is a very old and widely spread
superstition that when a dog howls at night someone not far away is
dying or will soon die. Many people are uncomfortable when they hear a
dog howling after dark, not because they believe that dogs have any
knowledge that death is present or coming, but because their ancestors
for many centuries believed that the howling of a dog was ominous, and
the habits of our ancestors leave deep traces in our natures.

Now, every time the melancholy howling of a dog at night makes a child
uncomfortable, he recalls the old superstition which identified the
roaring or wailing of the wind with a wolf or dog into which a god or
demon had entered, with power to summon the spirits of men to follow him
as he rushed along in the darkness. In the old homes in the forests,
thousands of years ago, children crowded about the open fire and
trembled when a great blast shook the house, for fear that the gigantic
beast who made the sound would call them and they would be compelled to
follow him. We think of wind as air in motion; they thought of it as the
breath and sound of some living creature. When we say that the wind
"whistled in the keyhole," or "kissed the flowers," or "drove the
clouds" before it, we are using poetically the language our forefathers
used literally.

We speak of "the siren voice of pleasure," "the blow of fate," "the
smile of fortune," and do not remember, often do not know, that we are
recalling that remote past when people believed that there were Sirens
on the coast of Crete whose voices were so sweet that sailors could not
resist them and were drawn on to the rocks and drowned; that fate was a
terrible, relentless, passionless person with supreme power over gods
and men; that fortune was a being who smiled or frowned as men smile or
frown, but whose smile meant prosperity and her frown disaster.

There are few poems which have interested children more than Robert
Browning's "Pied Piper of Hamelin." The story runs that long ago, in the
year 1284, the old German town of Hamelin was so overrun with rats that
there was no peace for the people living in it. When things were at
their worst a strange man appeared in the place and offered, for a sum
of money, to clear it of these pests. The bargain was made and the
stranger began to pipe; and straightway, from every nook and corner in
the old town, the rats came in swarms, followed him to the river Weser
and jumped in and were drowned.

When the people found that the city was really free from rats they were
ungrateful enough to say that the piper had used magic, which was
believed to be the practice of the evil spirit, and refused to carry out
their part of the contract. The stranger went off in a great rage and
threatened to come back again and take payment in his own way. On St.
John's Day, which was a time of great festivity, he suddenly reappeared,
blew a new and beguiling air on his pipe, and immediately every child in
the city felt as if a hand had seized him and ran pell-mell after the
musician as he climbed the mountain, in which a door suddenly opened,
and through that door all, save a lame boy, passed and were never seen
again.

From this old story probably came the proverb about paying the piper;
and it is one of many stories which turn on the magical power of a voice
or a sound to draw men, women, and children to their doom. These very
interesting stories are not like the stories which are made up just to
please people and help them pass away the time; they are different forms
of one story--the story of the wind, told by people who thought that the
wind was not what we call a force but a person, and that when he called
those who heard must follow if he chose; for "the piper is no other than
the wind, and the ancients held that in the wind were the souls of the
dead."

If every time we think of a force we should think of a person, we should
see the world as the men and women who made the myths saw it. Everything
that moved, or made a sound, or flashed out light, or gave out heat was
a person to them; they could not think of the wind rushing through the
trees or the storm devastating the fields without out imagining someone
like themselves, only more powerful, behind the uproar and destruction,
any more than we can see a lantern moving along the road at night
without thinking instinctively that somebody is carrying it.

Our idea of the world is scientific because it is based on exact though
by no means complete knowledge; the myth-makers' idea of the world was
poetic because, with very incomplete knowledge, they could not imagine
how anything could be done unless it was done as they did things. When
the black clouds gather on a summer afternoon and roll up the sky in
great, terrifying masses, and the lightning flashes from them and the
crash of the thunder fills the air and the rain beats down the crops, we
feel as if we were in the laboratory of nature seeing a wonderful
experiment made; when our ancestors saw the same spectacle they were
sure that a great dragon, breathing fire and roaring with anger, was
ravaging the earth. As children to-day imagine that dolls are alive,
that fairies dance in moonlit meadows on summer nights, or beasts or
Indians make the sounds in the woods, so the people who made the myths
filled the world with creatures unlike themselves, but with something of
human intelligence, feeling and will.

As imaginative children personify the sounds they hear, so the men and
women of an early time personified everything that lived or moved or
gave any sign of life. They filled the earth, air, and sea with
imaginary beings who had power over the elements and affected the lives
of men. There were nymphs in the sea, dryads in the trees, kindly or
destructive spirits in the air, household gods who watched over the
home, and greater gods who managed the affairs of the world. When an
intelligent man finds himself in new surroundings, he begins at once to
study them and try to understand them. In every age this has been one of
the greatest objects of interest to men, and every generation has
endeavoured to explain the world, so as to satisfy not only its
curiosity but its reason. The myths were explanations of the world
created by people who had not had time to study that world closely nor
to train themselves to study it in a scientific way. They saw the world
with their imaginations quite as much as with their eyes, and as they
put persons behind every kind and form of life, they told stories about
the world instead of making accurate and matter-of-fact reports of it.
The change of the seasons is not at all mysterious to us; but to the
Norsemen it was a wonderful struggle between gods and giants. In the
summer the gods had their triumph, but in the winter the giants had
their way. Year after year and century after century this terrible
warfare went on until a day should come when, in a last great battle,
both gods and giants would be destroyed and a new heaven and earth
arise. These same brave and warlike men believed that the most powerful
fighter among the gods was Thor, and that it was the swinging and
crashing of his terrible hammer which made the lightning and thunder.

The sun, which vanquished the darkness, put out the stars, drove the
cold to the far north, called back the flowers, made the fields fertile,
awoke men from sleep and filled them with courage and hope, was the
centre of mythology, and appears and reappears in a thousand stories in
many parts of the world, and in all kinds of disguises. Now he is the
most beautiful and noble of the Greek gods, Apollo; now he is Odin, with
a single eye; now he is Hercules, the hero, with his twelve great
labours for the good of men; now he is Oedipus, who met the Sphinx and
solved her riddle. In the early times men saw how everything in the
world about them drew its strength and beauty from the sun; how the sun
warmed the earth and made the crops grow; how it brought gladness and
hope and inspiration to men; and they made it the centre of the great
world story, the foremost hero of the great world play. For the myths
form a poetical explanation of the earth, the sea, the sky, and of the
life of man in this wonderful universe, and each great myth was a
chapter in a story which endowed day and night, summer and winter, sun,
moon, stars, winds, clouds, fire, with life, and made them actors in the
mysterious drama of the world. Our Norse forefathers thought of
themselves always as looking on at a terrible fight between the gods,
who were light and heat and fruitfulness, revealed in the beauty of day
and the splendour of summer, and the giants, who were darkness, cold and
barrenness, revealed in the gloom of night and the desolation of winter.
To the Norseman, as to the Greek, the Roman, the Hindu and other
primitive peoples, the world was the scene of a great struggle, the
stage on which gods, demons, and heroes were contending for supremacy;
and they told that story in a thousand different ways. Every myth is a
chapter in that story, and differs from other stories and legends
because it is an explanation of something that happened in earth, sea,
or sky.

If the men who created the myths had set to work to make wonder tales as
stories are sometimes made to instruct while they entertain children,
they would have left a mass of very dull tales which few people would
have cared to read. They had no idea of doing anything so artificial and
mechanical; they made these old stories because all life was a story to
them, full of splendid or terrible figures moving across the sky or
through the sea and in the depths of the woods, and whichever way they
looked they saw or thought they saw mysterious and wonderful things
going on. They were as much interested in their world as we are in ours;
we write hundreds of scientific books every year to explain our world;
they told hundreds of stories every year to explain theirs.

This selection represents the work of several authors, and does not,
therefore, preserve uniformity of style. It is probably better for the
young reader that the Greek Myths should come from one hand, and the
Norse Myths from another. The classical work of Hawthorne has been
generously drawn upon. No change of any kind has been made in the text,
but the introductions connecting one myth with another have been
omitted.

HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE.

Myths That Every Child Should Know

CHAPTER I

THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES

Did you ever hear of the golden apples that grew in the garden of the
Hesperides? Ah, those were such apples as would bring a great price, by
the bushel, if any of them could be found growing in the orchards of
nowadays! But there is not, I suppose, a graft of that wonderful fruit
on a single tree in the wide world. Not so much as a seed of those
apples exists any longer.

And, even in the old, old, half-forgotten times, before the garden of
the Hesperides was overrun with weeds, a great many people doubted
whether there could be real trees that bore apples of solid gold upon
their branches. All had heard of them, but nobody remembered to have
seen any. Children, nevertheless, used to listen, open-mouthed, to
stories of the golden apple tree, and resolved to discover it, when they
should be big enough. Adventurous young men, who desired to do a braver
thing than any of their fellows, set out in quest of this fruit. Many of
them returned no more; none of them brought back the apples. No wonder
that they found it impossible to gather them! It is said that there was
a dragon beneath the tree, with a hundred terrible heads, fifty of
which were always on the watch, while the other fifty slept.

In my opinion it was hardly worth running so much risk for the sake of a
solid golden apple. Had the apples been sweet, mellow, and juicy, indeed
that would be another matter. There might then have been some sense in
trying to get at them, in spite of the hundred-headed dragon.

But, as I have already told you, it was quite a common thing with young
persons, when tired of too much peace and rest, to go in search of the
garden of the Hesperides. And once the adventure was undertaken by a
hero who had enjoyed very little peace or rest since he came into the
world. At the time of which I am going to speak, he was wandering
through the pleasant land of Italy, with a mighty club in his hand, and
a bow and quiver slung across his shoulders. He was wrapt in the skin of
the biggest and fiercest lion that ever had been seen, and which he
himself had killed; and though, on the whole, he was kind, and generous,
and noble, there was a good deal of the lion's fierceness in his heart.
As he went on his way, he continually inquired whether that were the
right road to the famous garden. But none of the country people knew
anything about the matter, and many looked as if they would have laughed
at the question, if the stranger had not carried so very big a club.

So he journeyed on and on, still making the same inquiry, until, at
last, he came to the brink of a river where some beautiful young women
sat twining wreaths of flowers.

"Can you tell me, pretty maidens," asked the stranger, "whether this is
the right way to the garden of the Hesperides?"

The young women had been having a fine time together, weaving the
flowers into wreaths, and crowning one another's heads. And there seemed
to be a kind of magic in the touch of their fingers, that made the
flowers more fresh and dewy, and of brighter hues, and sweeter
fragrance, while they played with them, than even when they had been
growing on their native stems. But, on hearing the stranger's question,
they dropped all their flowers on the grass, and gazed at him with
astonishment.

"The garden of the Hesperides!" cried one. "We thought mortals had been
weary of seeking it, after so many disappointments. And pray,
adventurous traveller, what do you want there?"

"A certain king, who is my cousin," replied he, "has ordered me to get
him three of the golden apples."

"Most of the young men who go in quest of these apples," observed
another of the damsels, "desire to obtain them for themselves, or to
present them to some fair maiden whom they love. Do you, then, love this
king, your cousin, so very much?"

"Perhaps not," replied the stranger, sighing. "He has often been severe
and cruel to me. But it is my destiny to obey him."

"And do you know," asked the damsel who had first spoken, "that a
terrible dragon, with a hundred heads, keeps watch under the golden
apple tree?"

"I know it well," answered the stranger, calmly. "But, from my cradle
upward, it has been my business, and almost my pastime, to deal with
serpents and dragons."

The young women looked at his massive club, and at the shaggy lion's
skin which he wore, and likewise at his heroic limbs and figure; and
they whispered to each other that the stranger appeared to be one who
might reasonably expect to perform deeds far beyond the might of other
men. But, then, the dragon with a hundred heads! What mortal, even if he
possessed a hundred lives, could hope to escape the fangs of such a
monster? So kind-hearted were the maidens that they could not bear to
see this brave and handsome traveller attempt what was so very
dangerous, and devote himself, most probably, to become a meal for the
dragon's hundred ravenous mouths.

"Go back," cried they all--"go back to your own home! Your mother,
beholding you safe and sound, will shed tears of joy; and what can she
do more, should you win ever so great a victory? No matter for the
golden apples! No matter for the king, your cruel cousin! We do not wish
the dragon with the hundred heads to eat you up!"

The stranger seemed to grow impatient at these remonstrances. He
carelessly lifted his mighty club, and let it fall upon a rock that lay
half buried in the earth, near by. With the force of that idle blow, the
great rock was shattered all to pieces. It cost the stranger no more
effort to achieve this feat of a giant's strength than for one of the
young maidens to touch her sister's rosy cheek with a flower.

"Do you not believe," said he, looking at the damsels with a smile,
"that such a blow would have crushed one of the dragon's hundred heads?"

Then he sat down on the grass, and told them the story of his life, or
as much of it as he could remember, from the day when he was first
cradled in a warrior's brazen shield. While he lay there, two immense
serpents came gliding over the floor, and opened their hideous jaws to
devour him; and he, a baby of a few months old, had griped one of the
fierce snakes in each of his little fists, and strangled them to death.
When he was but a stripling, he had killed a huge lion, almost as big as
the one whose vast and shaggy hide he now wore upon his shoulders. The
next thing that he had done was to fight a battle with an ugly sort of
monster, called a hydra, which had no less than nine heads, and
exceedingly sharp teeth in every one.

"But the dragon of the Hesperides, you know," observed one of the
damsels, "has a hundred heads!"

"Nevertheless," replied the stranger, "I would rather fight two such
dragons than a single hydra. For, as fast as I cut off a head, two
others grew in its place; and, besides, there was one of the heads that
could not possibly be killed, but kept biting as fiercely as ever, long
after it was cut off. So I was forced to bury it under a stone, where it
is doubtless alive to this very day. But the hydra's body, and its eight
other heads, will never do any further mischief."

The damsels, judging that the story was likely to last a good while, had
been preparing a repast of bread and grapes, that the stranger might
refresh himself in the intervals of his talk. They took pleasure in
helping him to this simple food; and, now and then, one of them would
put a sweet grape between her rosy lips, lest it should make him bashful
to eat alone.

The traveller proceeded to tell how he had chased a very swift stag for
a twelvemonth together, without ever stopping to take breath, and had at
last caught it by the antlers, and carried it home alive. And he had
fought with a very odd race of people, half horses and half men, and had
put them all to death, from a sense of duty, in order that their ugly
figures might never be seen any more. Besides all this, he took to
himself great credit for having cleaned out a stable.

"Do you call that a wonderful exploit?" asked one of the young maidens,
with a smile. "Any clown in the country has done as much!"

"Had it been an ordinary stable," replied the stranger, "I should not
have mentioned it. But this was so gigantic a task that it would have
taken me all my life to perform it, if I had not luckily thought of
turning the channel of a river through the stable door. That did the
business in a very short time!"

Seeing how earnestly his fair auditors listened, he next told them how
he had shot some monstrous birds, and had caught a wild bull alive and
let him go again, and had tamed a number of very wild horses, and had
conquered Hippolyta, the warlike queen of the Amazons. He mentioned,
likewise, that he had taken off Hippolyta's enchanted girdle and had
given it to the daughter of his cousin, the king.

"Was it the girdle of Venus," inquired the prettiest of the damsels,
"which makes women beautiful?"

"No," answered the stranger. "It had formerly been the sword belt of
Mars; and it can only make the wearer valiant and courageous."

"An old sword belt!" cried the damsel, tossing her head. "Then I should
not care about having it!"

"You are right," said the stranger.

Going on with his wonderful narrative, he informed the maidens that as
strange an adventure as ever happened was when he fought with Geryon,
the six-legged man. This was a very odd and frightful sort of figure, as
you may well believe. Any person, looking at his tracks in the sand or
snow, would suppose that three sociable companions had been walking
along together. On hearing his footsteps at a little distance, it was no
more than reasonable to judge that several people must be coming. But it
was only the strange man Geryon clattering onward, with his six legs!

Six legs, and one gigantic body! Certainly, he must have been a very
queer monster to look at; and, my stars, what a waste of shoe leather!

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24