The original text includes sixteen myth-stories from world literature that appeal to the young imagination. This edition, with its larger text and spacious margins, includes only ten. These stories come from Hawthorne’s Wonder-Book, Charles Kingsley’s Greek Heroes, Mr. Brown’s In the Days of the Giants, Mr. A. J. Church’s Stories From Homer, and Mr. Mable’s Norse Stories.
“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.” -Hamilton Wright Mabie
Table of Contents:
- THE CHIMÆRA - (Hawthorne's "Wonder Book")
- THE GOLDEN TOUCH - (Hawthorne's "Wonder Book")
- THE GORGON'S HEAD - (Hawthorne's "Wonder Book")
- THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER - (Hawthorne's "Wonder Book")
- THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN - (Hawthorne's "Wonder Book")
- THE CYCLOPS - (Church's "Stories from Homer")
- THE ARGONAUTS - (Kingsley's "Greek Heroes")
- HOW ODIN LOST HIS EYE - ("In Days of Giants")
- THE QUEST OF THE HAMMER - ("In Days of Giants")
- THE DEATH OF BALDER - ("Norse Stories")
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