Legends Sentence Examples
Many legends are told of his military prowess, for which there is no space in this summary.
The Osiris cycle of legends seems to belong to these people.
These legends should perhaps be interpreted as pointing to a black snake ailed muss being those most dreaded.
The bestknown name in connexion with them is that of Onomacritus, who, in the time of the Peisistratidae, made a collection (including forgeries of his own) of Orphic songs and legends.
The author had at his disposal two distinct groups of legends about Mary.
For this purpose Dimitri Donskoi formed in 1380 a coalition of Russian princes, and gained a great victory over Khan Mamai of the Golden Horde on the famous battlefield of Kulikovo, the memory of which still lives in the popular legends.
The history of Cyrus very soon became involved and quite overgrown with legends.
The romantic life of Alexander, the basis of all the Alexander legends of the middle ages, originated during the time of the Ptolemies, but in its present form belongs to the 3rd century A.D.
These legends show how closely the heroine is associated with the cult of Artemis, and with the human sacrifices which accompanied it in older times before the Hellenic spirit had modified the barbarism of this borrowed religion.
They deal chiefly with the games of the circus and works of art, and the language shows the author to have been well acquainted with the legends and antiquities of the classical period of Rome.
AdvertisementIn early days the home of the Aymaras by Lake Titicaca was a "holy land" for the Incas themselves, whose national legends attributed the origin of all Quichua (Inca) civilization to that region.
They perhaps paid tribute, and they certainly furnished Rome with 1 Their legends are connected with the sea, the name Meroveus signifying " sea-born."
But their name plays a part in medieval legends and romances.
To the early part of the 15th century may be assigned also the legends of " St Francis " and of " St Ursula," and possibly the original of the Enek Pannonia megvitelerol, an historical " Song about the Conquest of Pannonia."
The subject, taken from the age of Hungarian chivalry, is artistically worked out from medieval legends, and gives an excellent description of the times of St Ladislaus of Hungary.
AdvertisementIn this story the names make sense in Iranian, the tribes are not again mentioned except when this passage is copied, the objects are hardly such as would be held sacred by nomads, the form of ordeal is to be paralleled in Iranian legends, and the people say themselves that they are not really Scythae.
In the literature as it survives many different branches of writing are represented - homilies in prose and verse, hymns, exposition and commentary, liturgy, apocryphal legends, historical romance, hagiography and martyrology, monastic history and biography, general history, dogmatics, philosophy and science, ecclesiastical law, &c. But the whole is dominated by the theological and ecclesiastical interest.
Charpentier regarded as absurd the use of Latin in monumental inscriptions, and to him was entrusted the task of supplying the paintings of Lebrun in the Versailles Gallery with appropriate legends.
In his literature it has played a prominent part from the Nibelungenlied to the present day; and its weird and romantic legends have been alternately the awe and the delight of his childhood.
The coins of Aspendus, though of Greek character, bear legends in a barbarous dialect; and probably the Pamphylians were of Asiatic origin and mixed race.
AdvertisementMerodach here takes the place of Ea, who appears as the creator in the older legends, and is said to have fashioned man out of the clay.
Among the other legends of Babylonia may be mentioned those of Namtar, the plague-demon, of Urra, the pestilence, of Etanna and of Zu.
At the same time, some of the Greek legends seem to show that peoples, with whom the Greeks came into early contact, had vivid memories of the Hatti.
Its editor is of opinion that it was written by a Jewish Christian in Egypt in the 2nd century A.D., but that it embodies legends of an earlier date, and that it received its present form in the 9th or 10th century.
The chief seats of her legend are Delos and Delphi, and the generally accepted tradition is a union of the legends of these two places.
AdvertisementAnd, although the numerous legends and fables of the old chroniclers disguise the true history of this struggle, they serve to attest the importance of Pisa in those days.
These legends seem primarily to belong to Crete; and the Athenian element in them which connected Daedalus with the royal house of Erechtheus is a later fabrication.
More important in the West, however, was the cycle of legends gathering round the figure of Charlemagne, forming what was known as " the matter of France."
The late Charlemagne romances originated the legends, in English form, of Sowdone of Babylone, Sir Otnel, Sir Fieumbras and Huon of Bordeaux (in which Oberon, the king of the fairies, the son of Julius Caesar and Morgan the Fay, was first made known to England).
He had now become an object of boundless personal curiosity, being already difficult to find, and the centre of amusing legends.
He now put the Arthurian legends aside fiat a time, and devoted himself to the composition, in 1862, of "Enoch Arden," which, however, did not appear until 1864, and then in a volume which also contained "Sea Dreams," "Aylmer's Field" and, above all, "The Northern Farmer," the first and finest of Tennyson's remarkable studies in dialect_ In April of this year Garibaldi visited Farringford; in February 1865 Tennyson's mother died at Hampstead in her eighty-fifth year; in the ensuing summer he travelled in Germany.
Verona - of German legends, who built a castle at Verona and frequently resided there.
In all these biographies there is internal evidence of confusion; many of the incidents related are elsewhere told of other persons, and certain of them are quite irreconcilable with his character, so far as it can be judged of from his writings and from the opinions expressed of him by his contemporaries; we may safely reject, for instance, the legends that he set fire to the library of the Temple of Health at Cnidos, in order to destroy the evidence of plagiarism, and that he refused to visit Persia at the request of Artaxerxes Longimanus, during a pestilential epidemic, on the ground that he would in so doing be assisting an enemy.
Such legends often arise to connect towns bearing identical or similar names (such as are common in Greece) and to justify political events or ambitions by legendary precedents; and this certainly happened during the successive political rivalries of Dorian Sparta with non-Dorian Athens and Thebes.
But in proportion as an earlier date has become more probable for Homer, the hypothesis of Ionic origin has become less tenable, and the belief better founded (I) that the poems represent accurately a welldefined phase of culture in prehistoric Greece, and (2) that this " Homeric " or " Achaean " phase was closed by some such general catastrophe as is presumed by the legends.
Arcadia, on the other hand, in the heart of Peloponnese, retained till a late date a quite different dialect, akin to the ancient dialect of Cyprus, and more remotely to Aeolic. This distribution makes it clear (r) that the Doric dialects of Peloponnese represent a superstratum, more recent than the speech of Arcadia; (2) that Laconia and its colonies preserve features alike, -n and -w which are common to southern Doric and Aeolic; (3) that those parts of " Dorian " Greece in which tradition makes the pre-Dorian population " Ionic," and in which the political structure shows that the conquered were less completely subjugated, exhibit the Ionic -a and -ov; (4) that as we go north, similar though more barbaric dialects extend far up the western side of central-northern Greece, and survive also locally in the highlands of south Thessaly; (5) that east of the watershed Aeolic has prevailed over the area which has legends of a Boeotian and Thessalian migration, and replaces Doric in the northern Doris.
The other states, such as Argos and Corinth, exhibited just such compromises between conquerors and conquered as the legends described, conceding to the older population, or to sections of it, political incorporation more or less incomplete.
The influence of the Historia Britonum may be illustrated in another way, by enumerating the more familiar of the legends to which it first gave popularity.
Towards the end of the period we note the beginnings of the triple division of medieval preaching into cloistral, parochial and missionary or popular preaching, a division based at first on audiences rather than on subject-matter, the general character of which - legends and popular stories rather than exposition of Scripture - was much the same everywhere.
The method, by which the text was thus utilized as a vehicle for conveying homiletic discourses, traditional sayings, legends and allegories, is abundantly illustrated by the Palestinian and later Targums, as opposed to the more sober translations of Onkelos and the Targum to the Prophets.
Homilies, legends, traditional sayings and explanations, in fact every form of Haggadic expansion are utilized by the Targumist, so that at times his works convey the impression more of a late Midrash than of a translation.
As indicated by its name, which means " burnt," it is of volcanic origin, and plays an important part in the folklore and in the superstitious legends of the Hungarian people.
The legends which have subsequently become connected with her name are the result of a very common development in literary history.
Many fanciful legends about Abraham founded on Biblical accounts or spun out of the fancy are to be found in Josephus, and in post-Biblical and Mahommedan literature; for these, reference may be made to Beer, Leben Abrahams (1859); Gri nbaum, Neue Beitrdge z.
In contrast to these legends, Pausanias tells us that they were regarded as the first to worship the Muses on Mt.
Their origin, lost in the dimness of remote antiquity, was invested by priestly legends with a sacred character.
Historical tradition was already dim when the hypothetical and much discussed cantilenae, which may be taken to have formed the repository of the national legends from the 8th to the 10th century, were succeeded in the 11th and the early 12th centuries by the chansons de geste.
The mythic element is practically lacking in the French legends, but in Germany some part of the Odin myth was associated with Charles's name.
This work, generally known as the chronicle of Weihenstephan, gives among other legends a curious history of the emperor's passion for a dead woman, caused by a charm given to Charles by a serpent to whom he had rendered justice.
The Spanish versions of Carolingian legends are studied by Mila y Fontanals in De la poesia heroico-popular castellana (Barcelona, 1874).
Before Prester John appears upon the scene we find the way prepared for his appearance by a kindred fable, which entwined itself with the legends about him.
The Mahommedan legends regarding him are curious, but trifling.
Nennius himself gives us the oldest legends relating to the victories of King Arthur; the value of the Historia from this point of view is admitted by the severest critics.
Its chief interest lies in the fact that (together with Dares Phrygius's De excidio Trojae) it was the source from which the Homeric legends were introduced into the romantic literature of the middle ages.
It has been maintained by some that they are the twin brothers so frequent in early religions, the Romulus and Remus of the Roman foundation legends.
The Old-Dorian Hercules is represented in three cycles of myth, the Argive, the Boeotian and the Thessalian; the legends of Arcadia, Aetolia, Lydia, &c., and Italy are either local or symbolical and comparatively late.
Jewish legends, however, suggest another sort of parallelism.
On Jewish and Mahommedan legends, see Jewish Cyclopaedia, " Adam."
Numerous indications accordingly point to a corresponding primitive zodiac. Setting aside as doubtful evidence derived from interpretations of cuneiform inscriptions, we meet, in connexion with Mithraic and Mylittic legends, reminiscences of a zodiac and religious calendar in which the Bull led the way.'
His inexorable discipline (magnified into cruelty by later legends) soon made the Gatchina corps a model for the rest of the Russian army.
He has plenty of legends to tell us, and writes altogether in a poetical style, so that his prose seems to fall into rhythm unconsciously.
For instance, there are no bilinf or legendary poems, such as are found among the Russians, although many passages in the ancient chroniclers from their poetical colouring seem to be borrowed from old songs or legends, and the first verses of some of these compositions have been preserved.
Other poets of the so-called Ukraine school, which has been so well inspired by the romantic legends of that part of Russia, are Thomas or Timko Padoura (who also wrote in the Malo-Russian, or Little-Russian, language), Alexander Groza, and Thomas Olizarowski.
For many of the original songs and legends we must turn to the work of Messrs Antonovich and Dragomanov.
In addition to numerous original works she put into literary form many of the legends current among the Rumanian peasantry.
Haverhill was the birthplace of Whittier, who lived here in 1807-1836, and who in his poem Haverhill, written for the 250th anniversary of the town in 1890, and in many of his other poems, gave the poet's touch to the history, the legends and the scenery of his native city.
It embraced historical and other traditions; stories, legends, parables and allegories; beliefs, customs and all that may be called folk-lore.
The legends of his escape from a fiery furnace may have a philological basis (Ur interpreted as " fire "), but the allusion to the redemption of Abraham in Isa.
Further, the Megillath Ta'anith (" roll of fasts "), an old source with a collection of miscellaneous legends, &c.; Megillath Antiokhos, on the martyrdom under Hadrian; Seder`Olam Rabbah, on biblical history from Adam to the rebellion of Bar Kokba (Barcocheba); the " Book of Jashar "; the Chronicle of Jerahmeel," &c. Liturgical Midrash is illustrated by the Haggada shel Pesah, part of the ritual recited at the domestic service of the first two Passover evenings.
There is no doubt that there is a considerable historical element in the legend; recent discoveries in Crete (q.v.) prove the existence of a civilization such as the legends imply, and render it probable that not only Athens, but Mycenae itself, was once subject to the kings of Cnossus, of whom Minos was greatest.
Details in regard to some Judas legends and superstitions are given in Notes and Queries, 2nd series, v., vi.
Thus the legends of the Popol-Vuh confirm what is learnt from comparing the culture of Central America and Mexico proper, that, though these districts were not connected by language, the intercourse between them had been sufficient to justify the anthropologist in including both districts in one region.
As is related in the legends, Quetzalcoatl came into the land to teach men to till the soil, to work metals and to rule a well-ordered state; the two gods played their famous match at the ball-game, and Tezcatlipoca persuaded the weary Quetzalcoatl to drink the magic pulque that sent him roaming to the distant ocean, where he embarked in his boat and disappeared from among men.'
The Mexican priesthood were much concerned with the art of picture-writing, which they used systematically as a means of recording religious festivals and legends, as well as keeping Picture- calendars of years and recording the historical events writing, which occurred in them.
How closely related some of the Central-American nations were in institutions to the Mexicans appears, not only in their using the same peculiar weapons, but in the similarity of their religious rites; the connexion is evident in such points as the ceremony of marriage by tying together the garments of the couple, or in holding an offender's face over burning chillies as a punishment; the native legends of Central America make mention of the royal ball-play, which was the same as the Mexican game of tlachtli already mentioned.
The erroneous derivation from irnyrl, "a spring of water," may have given birth to the legends which connect Pegasus with water; e.g.
When, however, we turn to the numerous fragments of authentic Manichaean liturgies and hymns lately discovered in Turfan in East Turkestan, Mani's direct indebtedness to the cycle of Magian legends rather than to Chaldaic sources (as Kessler argued) is clearly exhibited.
In 1875 she conceived the plan of combining the spiritualistic " control " with the Buddhistic legends about Tibetan sages.
The extracts containing the Babylonian cosmology, the list of the antediluvian kings of Babylonia, and the Chaldaean story of the Deluge, have been shown by the decipherment of the cuneiform texts to have faithfully reproduced the native legends; we may, therefore, conclude that the rest of the History was equally trustworthy.
Here again we meet with the legends of Heracles, for this cape, together with the neighbouring coast of Trachis, was the scene of the events connected with the death of that hero, as described by Sophocles in the Trachiniae.
Evidences of volcanic action are also traceable in the legends connected with Heracles at Aedepsus and Cenaeum, which here, as at Lemnos and elsewhere in Greece, have that origin.
See under Troy, on the legends.
The legends regarding him and his brothers are various and somewhat contradictory.
The legends of the monks attribute the first religious settlements to the age of Constantine (274-337), but the hermitages are first mentioned in historical documents of the 9th century.
The Historiated Bible, the Letter from Heaven, the Wanderings through Heaven and Hell, the numerous Adam and Cross legends, the religious poems of the "Kaleki perehozhie" and other similar productions owe their dissemination to a large extent to the activity of the Bogomils of Bulgaria, and their successors in other lands.
Of the two great centres of legends, Thebes with its Cadmean population figures as a military stronghold, and Orchomenus, the home of the Minyae, as an enterprising commercial city.
For our knowledge of this subject we are indebted chiefly to Icelandic literary men of the 12th and 13th centuries, who gave accounts of many legends which had come down to them by oral tradition, besides committing to writing a number of ancient poems. Unfortunately Icelandic history is quite unique in this respect.
Andalusia is still famous for its bull-fighters; and every outlying hamlet has its legends of highwaymen and contraband.
Should the assumption be proved to be correct, and should it be found that the "Troy fragments were written first of all, followed by Alexander and Bruce or Bruce and Alexander, and that the Legends end the chapter," it will be by "evidence" other than that which has been produced to this date.
His legends are not without wit and poetical merit.
The little that is known of this prehistoric period is gathered from the legends and the more trustworthy sidelights of contemporary Chinese records.
During the Macedonian period Greek influences had been steadily gaining ground in Phoenicia; relations with the Greek world grew closer; the native language fell into disuse, and from the beginning of the Roman occupation Greek appears regularly in inscriptions and on coins, though on the latter Phoenician legends do not .entirely vanish till the 2nd century A.D.; while the extent to which Hellenic ideas penetrated the native traditions and mythologies is seen in the writings of Philo of Byblus.
No doubt the Phoenicians had their legends and myths to account for the origin of man and the universe; to some extent these would Myth R e!,, o logy have resembled the ideas embodied in the book of and Genesis.
Of his birth there are various legends.
Although the Hyperborean legends are mainly connected with Delphi and Delos, traces of them are found in Argos (the stories of Heracles, Perseus, Io), Attica, Macedonia, Thrace, Sicily and Italy (which Niebuhr indeed considers their original home).
A counter reformation can also be traced which attempts to revive Hinduism by purging it of its grossness and allegorizing its fables and legends.
It was too as evangelist that he became personally a subject of later interest, and of speculative legends due to this, e.g.
There are various legends as to its foundation.
The reiterated reports of the actual existence of a wandering being, who retained in his memory the details of the crucifixion, show how the idea had fixed itself in popular imagination and found its way into the 19th-century collections of German legends.
From the earliest times the mountain has naturally been the subject of legends.
The manners and sentiments of the 15th century are made to harmonize with the classical legends after the fashion of the Italian pre-Raphaelite painters, who equipped Jewish warriors with knightly lance and armour.
The locality was associated with a number of the most interesting legends of Greek mythology,.
The truth behind these legends has been revealed in recent years by the excavations of Dr Evans.
The name is taken from Merovech, one of the first kings of the Salian Franks, who succeeded to Clodio in the middle of the 5th century, and soon became the centre of many legends.
For he compiled the legends of the saints (Legendae sanctorum) in one volume, adding many things from the Historia tripartite et scholastica, and from the chronicles of many writers."
The Greeks do not mention him and the Brahmin books ignore him, but the Buddhist chronicles and legends tell us much about him.
It is a striking example of the way in which such legends grow, that it is only the latest of these authorities, Hsiian Tsang, who says that, though ostensibly approaching the Buddha with a view to reconciliation, Devadatta had concealed poison in his nail with the object of murdering the Buddha.
He is chiefly indebted to the popular ballads and legends of Armenia, and it is to the use of such materials that the work owes its permanent value.
For contemporary history and also for the century or so which preceded the lifetimes of their authors these writings are fairly trustworthy, but beyond this they are little more than collections of legends.
Mention of Cader Idris and its legends is frequent in Welsh literature, old and modern.
Many miracles were wrought at his shrine, and, in view of an expected canonization, an office was drawn up giving an account of his life and the legends connected with it.
Empedocles of Acragas is best known from the legends of his miracles and of his death in the fires of Aetna; but he was not the less philosopher, poet and physician, besides his political career.
Saint Paul's visit to Syracuse naturally gave rise to many legends; but the Christian church undoubtedly took early root in Sicily.
To what extent can it be inferred from legends on coins that Greek was a living speech in India ?
He and all later kings of the dynasty bear Greek names as well as Hebrew ones, and after Jannaeus Alexander (103-76) the Greek legends are common on the coins beside the Hebrew.
The popular legends of Sicily also inspired his muse; he was the first to introduce the shepherd Daphnis who came to a miserable end after he had proved faithless to the nymph who loved him.
In 1897 appeared The Secret Rose, a collection of Irish legends and tales in prose, with poetry interspersed, containing the stories of Hanrahan the Red.
The latter seems to be the origin of the Sesostris (q.v.) and Sesoosis of the legends.
Drachmann produced with very great success several romantic dramas founded on the national legends.
In Ireland legends of the banshee belong more particularly to certain families in whose records periodic visits from the spirit are chronicled.
From one point of view the haggada, amplifying and developing the contents of Hebrew scripture in response to a popular religious need, may be termed a rabbinical commentary on the Old Testament, containing traditional stories and legends, sometimes amusing, sometimes trival, and often beautiful.
In 980 it had a prince of its own, Ragvald (Rogvolod or Rognvald), whose daughter is the subject of many legends.
It is noteworthy that no miraculous legends are connected with Hillel's life.
Old legends represent him as having exterminated the Picts to the last man; and the Picts become, hi popular tradition, a mythical folk, hardly human, to whom great feats, including the building of Glasgow cathedral, are attributed, as the walls of Tiryns and Mycenae in Greece were traditionally assigned to the energy of the Cyclopes.
Between 680 and 670 the Cimmerians in their destructive progress over Asia Minor overran Phrygia; the king Midas in despair put an end to his own life; and from henceforth the history of Phrygia is a story of slavery, degradation and decay, which contrasts strangely with the earlier legends.
To about the same age belongs also the Divyavadana, a collection of legends about the leading disciples of the Buddha, and important members of the order, through the subsequent three centuries.
These legends are, however, of different dates, and in spite of the comparatively late period at which it was put into its present form, it contains some very ancient fragments..
The Polynesians were by no means a savage people when they entered the Pacific. Indeed their elaborate historical legends show that they possessed a considerable amount of civilization.
Those who are familiar with these legends, and have studied native manners and customs, see many unmistakable proofs that the Polynesians had, at their migration, considerable knowledge and culture, and that the race has greatly deteriorated.
There are in some places vestiges of this primitive state of society still remaining; the transition to a limited or to a despotic monarchy may be traced by means of the ancient legends in some islands, and in others it is a matter of recent history.
The legends on the coins are Greek, and a very large number of Greek vases have been found in the necropolis.
Apart from these Trojan tales, Neoptolemus is a prominent figure in the legends of Epirus and of Delphi.
He is the central figure of legends in the Aitareyabrahmana, Mahabharata and the Markandeyapurana.
The tablet itself was in October 1907 removed by Chinese officials into the city proper, and placed in the Pei Lin or "forest of tablets," a museum in which are collected tablets of the Han, Tang, Sung, Yuen and Ming dynasties, some of which bear historical legends, notably a set of stone tablets having the thirteen classics inscribed upon them, while others are symbolical or pictorial; among these last is a full-sized likeness of Confucius.
In the canon of Pope Gelasius (494) George is mentioned in a list of those " whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God," a statement which implies that legends had already grown up around his name.
The man became within a few years after his death the hero of many legends of piracy and necromancy.
Hence Argos was perhaps the earliest town of importance in Greece; the legends indicate its high antiquity and its early intercourse with foreign countries (Egypt, Lycia, &c.).
In 469 B.C. it was conquered by the Athenians under Cimon,- and it was probably about this time that the legends arose which connect it with the Attic hero Theseus, who was said to have been treacherously slain and buried there.
An entirely different cycle of legends relate the conquest of Scyros by Achilles.
The actual worship on the island of a hero or god named Achilles, and the probable kinship of its inhabitants with a Thessalian people, whose hero Achilles also was, form the historical foundation of the legends.
Christian era with the events detailed in the great epic of the Mahabharata; but by the sober historian these can only be regarded as legends.
Our earliest glimpses of India disclose two races struggling for the soil, the Dravidians, a dark-skinned race of aborigines, and the Aryans, a fair-skinned people, descending from Legends.
There are legends of persecutions instigated by Brahman reformers, such as Kumarila Bhatta and Sankar-Acharjya.
Vikramaditya, whose court and administration are described by the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien, and who is supposed to have been the original of the mythical king Vikramaditya, who figures largely in Indian legends.
The goal of this expedition was the temple dedicated to Siva at Somnath, around which so many legends have gathered.
Their only object was to set down, in plain and simple language, all that seemed worthy of note in reference to the legends, history, constitution, religion and civilization of Attica.
The story was first amplified by the Greek tragedians, who probably drew their inspiration from local legends, which glorified the services rendered by Athens to the rulers of Peloponnesus.
The destruction of Worms and the Burgundian kingdom by the Huns in 436 was the subject of heroic legends afterwards incorporated in the Nibelungenlied (q.v.) and the Rosengarten (an epic probably of the late 13th century).
In another division of the religious literature of Babylonia which is largely represented in Assur-bani-pal's collection - the myths and legends - tales which originally symbolized the change of seasons, or in which historical occurrences are overcast with more or less copious admixture of legend and myth, were transferred to the heavens, and so it happens that creation myths, and the accounts of wanderings and adventures of heroes of the past, are referred to movements among the planets and stars as well as to occurrences or supposed occurrences on earth.
The impetus to the purification of the old Semite religion to which the Hebrews for a long time clung in common with their fellows - the various branches of nomadic Arabs - was largely furnished by the remarkable civilization unfolded in the Euphrates valley and in many of the traditions, myths and legends embodied in the Old Testament; traces of direct borrowing from Babylonia may be discerned, while the indirect influences in the domain of the prophetical books, as also in the Psalms and in the so-called "Wisdom Literature," are even more noteworthy.
For other Semitic legends of this early period, see Cuneiform Texts in the British Museum, pt.
Among other legends which have at various timesbeen attached to Erigena are that he was invited to France by Charlemagne, and that he was one of the founders of the university of Paris.
The result is instructive when we turn to the numerous serpent myths and legends from the Old World and the New, to the stray notices in old writers, or to the fragmentary scraps of popular superstition everywhere.
The ammonite, here an instrument in a nature " marriage," has elsewhere given rise to legends of the destruction of serpents, viz.
This is said also of the villages and districts of Armenia, and Buddhist legends affirm it for India.
Mingled with all these were the ancient legends of gods and heroes, accepted as inspired scripture by the people, and by philosophers in part explained away by an allegorical exegesis and in part felt increasingly as a burden to the intelligence.
The name is, however, also applied to the alphabet on the coins of the Parthian or Arsacid dynasty, which in its beginnings was clearly under Greek influence; while later, when a knowledge of Greek had disappeared, the attempts to imitate the old legends are as grotesque as those in western Europe to copy the inscriptions on Roman coins.
When the great Aryan immigration from Europe commenced is unknown, but it was dying out in the 11th and 10th centuries B.C. In Phrygia the Aryans founded a kingdom, of which traces remain in various rock tombs, forts and towns, and in legends preserved by the Greeks.
For all we know, the intercourse of the Angles with Scandinavia, which enabled their poets to obtain new knowledge of the legends of Danes, Gautar and Swedes, may not have ceased until their conversion to Christianity in the 7th century.
Again, comparing the " epigrams " with the legends and anecdotes told in the Lives of Homer, we can hardly doubt that they were the chief source from which these Lives were derived.
It may be urged, too, that the story of the Iliad is singularly free from the exaggerated and marvellous character which belongs as a rule to the legends of primitive peoples.
This great and significant change in the treatment of the heroic legends is ac..0 npanied by numerous minor differences (such as the ancients remarked) in belief, in manners and institutions, and in language.
The numerous legends which have grown up round his name yield very little that can fairly be regarded as authentic. It seems that he carried on the democratic tradition of his house by helping to overthrow an oligarchic government which succeeded the tyranny in Agrigentum, and was invited by the citizens to become their king.
Legends stranger still told of his disappearance from among men.
Polano (in the Chandos Classics); Chenery, Legends from the Midrash; I.
Remigius and Maxentius, now lost; on the annals of Arles and Angers, now lost; and on legends, either collected by Gregory himself from oral tradition, or cantilenes or epics written in the Latin and Germanic languages.
In the later legends of the Trojan War, Eris, lot having been invited to the marriage festival of Peleus and Thetis, flings a golden apple (the "apple of discord") among the guests, to be given to the most beautiful.
Many motives have worked to bring these legends into their present form, and while they depict the character of Israel's wilder neighbours, they represent the recurrent alternating periods of hostility and fellowship between it and Edom which mark the history.
It seems to have been originally included, along with the greater part of north-eastern Bengal, in the old Hindu territory of Kamrup. Its early legends point to great religious revolutions between the rival rites of Krishna and Siva as a source of dynastic changes.
Other collections of Esthnische Volkslieder have been published by Neuss (1850-1852) and Kreutzwald and Neuss (1854); while Kreutzwald (1866) and Jannsen (1888) have published collections of legends and national tales.
A similar idea also occurs in legends of world-wide currency, the best known of these being the Greek, and the medieval Norse, Celtic and Arab legends which describe an earthly Paradise in the Western or Atlantic Ocean (see Atlantis).
Very numerous are the legends common to both nations.
These legends have lived and flourished in Iran at every period of its history; and neither the religion of Zoroaster, nor yet Islam, has availed to suppress them.
Henceforward Greek culture practically vanishes and gives place to Aramaic; it is significant that in future the kings of Mesene stamped their coinage with Aramaic legends.
They bear in themselves irrefutable proofs of their authenticity, bringing us face to face not with the Zoroaster of the legends but with a real person, announcing a new doctrine and way of salvation, no supernatural Being assured of victory, but a mere man, struggling with human conflicts of every sort, in the midst of a society of fellow-believers yet in its earliest infancy.
Some writers, both in prose and verse, turned from the exhausted fields of the national glory of Persia, and chose their subjects from the chivalrous times of their own Bedouin conquerors, or even from the Jewish legends of the Koran.
But lately this narrow range of dramatic subjects has been considerably widened, Biblical stories and even Christian legends have been brought upon the Persian stage; and there is a fair prospect of a further development of this most interesting and important movement.
The legends of his work in Ireland probably arise from the influence exercised in that country by the church of Whithorn.
In 1825 he published Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley, and in 1839 appeared his Algic Researches, containing Indian legends, notably, "The Myth of Hiawatha and other Oral Legends."
According to the legends which grew up under the care of the monks, the first church of Glastonbury was a little wattled building erected by Joseph of Arimathea as the leader of the twelve apostles sent over to Britain from Gaul by St Philip. About a hundred years later, according to the same authorities, the two missionaries, Phaganus and Deruvianus, who came to king Lucius from Pope Eleutherius, established a fraternity of anchorites on the spot, and after three hundred years more St Patrick introduced among them a regular monastic life.
The Vandals figure in the earliest legends both of the Goths and the Lombards, both of whom they are said to have encountered unsuccessfully.
Besides these there was a vast throng of dependents who lived by the temple and its services - theologi, who may have expounded sacred legends, hymnodi, who composed hymns in honour of the deity, and others, together with a great crowd of hieroi who performed more menial offices.
According to later legends, on account of his inflexible integrity he was made one of the judges of the dead in the lower world, together with Aeacus and Minos.
Orestes appears also as a central figure in various legends connected with his madness and purification, both in Greece and Asia.
These legends belong to an age when higher ideas of law and of social duty were being established;, the implacable blood-feud of primitive society gives place to a fair trial, and in Athens, when the votes of the judges are evenly divided, mercy prevails.
The annals of his reign have been encum Alphonso 1., bered with a mass of legends, among which must be g g included the account of a cortes held at Lamego in 1143; probably also the description of the Valdevez tournament, in which the Portuguese knights are said to have vanquished the champions of Leon and Castile.
His contribution is a mass of legends destitute of foundation or critical sense, but both here and in the Chronica de Cister he writes a good prose.
Apart from the legends of Arthur and his limestone block (shown in the market-place), the first event of note in its history is its connexion with the de Grey de Ruthyn family (the first lord died 1 353).
According to Arabic lore, based on Jewish legends, at this spot Nimrod sought to throw Abraham into a fiery furnace, from which he was saved by the grace of God.
Nowhere has the taste for marvellous legends been kept so green as in Brittany; and an entire folkliterature still flourishes there, as is manifested by the large number of folk-tales and folk-songs which have been collected of late years.
The earliest genuine documents of the Bohemian language comprise several hymns and legends; of the latter the legend of St Catherine and that of St Dorothy have the greatest value.
According to legends, which may or may not have a substantial basis, Delhi or its immediate neighbourhood has from time immemorial been the site of a capital city.
Calpurnius Piso, tribune in 149 B.C. and consul in 133 B.C., prided himself on reducing the old legends to the level of common sense, and importing into them valuable moral lessons for his own generation.
The more conspicuous of these legends are included in the Mozarabic Breviary and Missal, and are given in the thirty-third sermon of Peter Damien, but the best-known story is that which is given in the Golden Legend of Jacopus de Voragine.
Such antique gems as were adopted for matrices in the middle ages were usually set in metal mounts, on which the legends were engraved.
Afterwards, when the use of seals became common, and when they were as often toys as signets, fanciful legends or mottoes appropriate to the devices naturally came into vogue.
We close this portion of the present article with specimens of the legends or mottoes which are to be found on the innumerable personal seals of the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries.
Therefore, although much of the past has been handed down to us in epic, in ballad and in the legends of folk-lore, we must turn from them to what became history in the narrower sense.
The striking character of this single appearance of Joseph of Arimathaea led to the rise of numerous legends.
The Rion is the Phasis of the ancients and flows through the classic land of Colchis, associated with the legends of Medea and the Argonauts.
It is pointed out by Farnell that this cult of Aphrodite, as the patroness of married life, is probably a native development of the Greek religion, the oriental legends representing her by no means as an upholder of the purer relations of man and woman.
Their criticism amounts to nothing more than a crude attempt to rationalize the current legends and traditions connected with the founding of cities, the genealogies of ruling families, and the manners and customs of individual peoples.
The attention of antiquarians to the charms against the Evil Eye used by the inhabitants of the Neapolitan provinces was first drawn in 1888, when it was shown that they were all derived from the survival of ancient classical legends which had sprung from various sources in connexion with classical sites in the neighbourhood.
The evidence of the young man's predilections and curiosities is contained in the legends which tell of lost works produced by him in youth.
He had a special fondness for records of human devotion and self-sacrifice, whether they were monkish legends, Indian tales, Norse drcipas or bits of American history.
They have no gods, though certain legends are preserved.
It seems, however, that the prevalent Greek tradition concerning him was derived from the versions of the Corinthian aristocracy, who had good reasons for giving a prejudiced account, and the conflicting character of the various legends further shows that their historical value is slight.
The legends indicate a close connexion between Lipara and Surrentum, as though the latter had been a colony of the former; and even through the Imperial period Surrentum remained largely Greek.
He modified the legends, not with a view to rationalizing them, but rather to adjust them to popular beliefs.
In the latter, which is his greatest work, Dositheiu uses not only Greek texts, but also Slavonic legends and other MS. material; and he includes a goodly number of the apocryphal legends of saints.
The legends of the saints of the Pecherskaya in Kiev were translated by Alexander Dascalul.
It rests mostly upon a Sloveno-Greek text and is of the utmost interest for the study of this cycle of legends.
Next comes the legend of Constantine, of his town and his exploits - a remarkable collection of purely Byzantine legends.
The history of Bertoldo, which, though of Italian origin, reached Rumania through a Greek translation, belongs to the same cycle of rustic wisdom and cunning, and is the last representative of an old series of legends clustering round the figures of Solomon and Ashmodai, or Solomon and Markolph.
They include the History of Adam and Eve, the Legend of the Cross, The Apocalypse of Abraham, the History of the Sibyl, the Legends of Solomon; numerous New Testament apocryphal tales, starting with legends of St John the Baptist; a very remarkable version of the Gospel of Nicodemus; and the Epistle of Pilate.
Printed in tens of thousands of copies are certain apocalyptic legends dealing with eschatological problems. The ancient Apocalypse of Peter appears here under the name of Paul, then there is an Apocalypse of the Virgin Mary, who, like Peter, is carried by the Archangel through the torments of Hell and the bliss of Paradise, and through whose intervention sufferers are granted pardon on certain days of the year.
It is thus possible that the warlike legends which have gathered around the name of Turpin are due to some confusion of his identity with that of his martial predecessor.
It is, however, entirely legendary, being rather the crystallization of earlier Roland legends than the source of later ones, and its popularity seems to date from the latter part of the 12th century.
Apollo himself is spoken of as a keeper of flocks, and the legends of his service as a herdsman with Laomedon and Admetus point in the same direction.
The transition is easy to Apollo as a warlike god; in fact, the earlier legends represent him as engaged in strife with Python, Tityus, the Cyclopes and the Aloidae.
The next seven days were spent alone in a grove of mango trees 2 The various legends of Mara are the subject of an exhaustive critical analysis in Windisch's Mara and Buddha (Leipzig, 1895).
They are either connected with genuine memories of the Prophet and his times, or have spurious legends to conceal the fact that they were originally holy stones, wells, or the like, of heathen sanctity.
The triviality of these rites is ill concealed by the legends of the sa'y of Hagar and of the tawaf being first performed by Adam in imitation of the circuit of the angels about the throne of God; the meaning of their ceremonies seems to have been almost a blank to the Arabs before Islam, whose religion had become a mere formal tradition.
The Arabic historians are largely occupied with fabulous matter as to Mecca before Islam; for these legends the reader may refer to C. de Perceval's Essai.
While in Hartford Whittier issued in prose and verse his first book, Legends of New England (1831), and edited the writings of the poet John Gardiner C. Brainard.
The surface was plain, inscribed with dedicatory or other legends, or adorned with symbolical carving.
Legends of the part played by Joseph of Arimathea in the conversion of Britain are closely connected with Glastonbury, the monks of which foundation showed, in the 12th century, considerable literary activity, and it seems a by no means improbable hypothesis that the present form of the Grail legend may be due to a monk of Glastonbury elaborating ideas borrowed from Fecamp. This much is certain, that between the Saint-Sang of Fecamp, the Volto Santo of Lucca, and the Grail tradition, there exists a connecting link, the precise nature of which has yet to be determined.
For the Fecamp legend see Leroux de Lincey's Essai sur l'abbaye de Fescamp (1840); for the Volto Santo and kindred legends, Ernest von Dobschiitz, Christus-Bilder (Leipzig, 1899).
It is impossible to estimate how far this legend commemorates some actual but imperfectly recorded discovery, and how far it is a reminiscence of the ancient idea of an elysium in the western seas which is embodied in the legends of the Isles of the Blest or Fortunate Islands.
The copious additional information given by later writers is all by way either of interpretation of local legends in the light of Ephorus's theory, or of explanation of the name "Pelasgoi"; as when Philochorus expands a popular etymology "stork-folk" (w€Xaa'yoi-- it €Xap'yoi) into a theory of their seasonal migrations; or Apollodorus says that Homer calls Zeus Pelasgian "because he is not far from every one of us," 6TL Tiffs ryes 7rEXas EaTCV.
Of these the Brocken (q.v.) is celebrated for the legends connected with it, immortalized in Goethe's Faust.
The Harz was the last stronghold of paganism in Germany, and to that fact are due the legends, in which no district is richer, and the fanciful names given by the people to peculiar objects and appearances of nature.
In the Talmud he plays a great part in the legends concerning Solomon.
It is in the Arcadian and Athenian rites and legends, however, which are certainly earlier than Homer, that the original conception of the goddess is to be found.
From the reference to Asia in the tales of Tantalus, Niobe and Pelops it has been conjectured that Asia was the original seat of these legends, and that it was only after emigration to Greece that the people localized a part of the tale of Pelops in their new home.
The site of lolcus, the centre of so many poetic legends, is at no great distance from the modern Volo.
The Amazons appear in connexion with several Greek legends.
Rimur on sacred subjects was called "diktur "; of these, on the legends of the saints' lives, many remain.
Early work in this direction was done by Jon Gudmundsson, Olaf the Old and John Olafsson in the 17th century, who all put traditions on paper, and their labours were completed by the magnificent collection of Jon Arnason (1862-1864), who was inspired by the example of the Grimms. Many tales are but weak echoes of the sagas; many were family legends, many are old fairy tales in a garb suited to their new northern home; but, besides all these, there are a number of traditions and superstitions of indigenous origin.
All classes delight in hearing or intoning the endless romances which celebrate the feats of their national heroes; for every true Serb lives as much in the past as in the present, and medieval wars still constantly furnish themes of new legends and ballads.
They took shape most likely, not through one stroke of invention, but incidentally, as legends developed and astrological persuasions became defined.
For a collection of legends about the roc, see Lane's Arabian Nights, chap. xx.
Concerning this there are several legends which state that the relics of Andrew were brought under supernatural guidance from Constantinople to the place where the modern St Andrews stands (Pictish, Muckross; Gaelic, Kilrymont).
The native literature of the islands consists of the Faereyinga Saga, dealing with the period of Sigmund Bresterson, and a number of popular songs and legends of early origin.
Its history is indissolubly interwoven with that of the Stokavci, which ultimately superseded it, and became the literary language of all the SerboCroats, as it had long been the language of the best national ballads and legends.
In the Peloponnesian legends, another suitor of Daphne, Leucippus, son of Oenomaiis of Pisa, disguised himself as a girl and joined her companions.
Mythology is also used as a term for these legends themselves.
Thus when we speak of " the mythology of Greece " we mean the whole body of Greek divine and heroic and cosmogonic legends.
The earliest attempts at a crude science of mythology were efforts to reconcile the legends of the gods and heroes with the religious sentiment which recognized in these beings objects of worship and respect.
Thus, in the 6th century before Christ, Xenophanes of Colophon severely blamed the poets for their unbecoming legends, and boldly called certain myths " the fables of men of old."
Very probably portions of the legends of real men have been attracted into the mythic accounts of gods of another character, and this is the element of truth at the bottom of Euemerism.
One student, like Theagenes, would see a physical philosophy underlying Homeric legends.
It is his opinion, apparently, that whatever story is told of Athene must have originally been told of the dawn, and that we must keep this before us in attempting to understand the legends of Athene.
The science of mythology has to account, if it can, not only for the existence of certain stories in the legends of certain races, but also for the presence of stories practically the same among almost all races.
The objection rests on the theory that myths are a disease of language, a morbid offshoot of language, and that the legends in unconnected languages must therefore be kept apart.
In examining the myths of the gods we shall begin with the conceptions of the most backward tribes, and advance to the divine legends of the ancient civilized races.
So far the peculiar mark of the wilder American tribe legends is the bestial character of the divine beings, which is also illustrated in Australia and Africa, while the bestial clothing, feathers or fur, drops but slowly off Indra, Zeus and the Egyptian Ammon, and the Scandinavian Odin.
The " sacred legends " which the priests or temple servants freely communicated to Herodotus are lost through the pious reserve of the traveller.
Plutarch remarked the fact that the Greek myths of Cronus, of Dionysus, of Apollo and the Python, and of Demeter, " all the things that are shrouded in mystic ceremonies and are presented in rites," " do not fall short in absurdity of the legends about Osiris and Typhon."
But we apply no such explanation to similar savage legends, and our theory is that the Osirian myth is only one of these retained to the time of Plutarch by the religious conservatism of a__race which, to the time of Plutarch, preserved in full vigour most of the practices of totemism.
Our argument is, that all these legends about Indra, of which only a sample is given, have no necessary connexion with the worship of a pure nature-god as a nature-god would now be constructed by men.
The legends are survivals of a time in which natural phenomena were regarded, not as we regard them, but as persons, and savage persons, Alcheringa folk, in fact, and became the centres of legends in the savage manner.
Space does not permit us to recount the equally puerile and barbarous legends of Vishnu, Agni, the loves of Vivasvat in the form of a horse, the adventures of Soma, nor the Vedic amours (paralleled in several savage mythologies) of Pururavas and Urvasi.2 Divine Myths of Greece.
According to some legends Leto had been a were-wolf. ?
Further evidence on this point will be given below in a classification of the principal mythic legends.
But we cannot explain each detail in the legends as a myth of this or that natural phenomenon or process as understood by ourselves.
Various stages of late and early fancy have contributed to the legends.
Examples of all these myths are found among savages and in the legends of the ancient civilizations.
The Cephisian marsh was one scene of man's birth according to a fragment of Pindar, who mentions Egyptian and Libyan legends of the same description.
Legends concerning him are many.
Up to the period of inclusion within the protectorate of Nigeria little or nothing was known of the country, though there were interesting legends of the antiquity of its history.
The county offered no active resistance to the Conqueror, and though Hereward appears in the Domesday Survey as a dispossessed under-tenant of the abbot of Peterborough at Witham-on-the-Hill, the legends surrounding his name do not belong to this county.
The meagre accounts of his life which we possess have been supplemented by numerous popular legends, which represent him as a continuous worker of miracles, and describe his marvellous eloquence by pictures of fishes leaping out of the water to hear him.
It is doubtful whether Xanthus recognized the Greek legends which brought Pelops from Lydia, or rather Maeonia, and made him the son of Tantalus.
Similar legends were current in Attica and Phrygia.
Now it may be taken as admitted that the book of Esther was written in Persia, or by one who had lived in Persia, and not earlier than the 3rd century B.C. If now there is real weight in the points of contact between this story and the Arabian Nights - and the points of difference cannot be held to outweigh the resemblances between two legends, each of which is necessarily so far removed from the hypothetical common source - the inference is important for both stories.
In 1866 he made a valuable contribution to the history of Scottish literature by the discovery of 2200 lines on the siege of Troy incorporated in a MS. of Lydgate's Troye Booke, and of the Legends of the Saints, an important work of some 40,000 lines.
Like the history of the founder of the Achaemenian empire, that of Ardashir has from the beginning been overgrown with legends; like Cyrus he is the son of a shepherd, his future greatness is predicted by dreams and visions, and by the calculations of astronomers he becomes a servant at the court of King Artabanus and then flies to Persia and begins the rebellion; he fights with the great dragon, the enemy of god, &c. A Pahlavi text, which contains this legend, has been translated by Noldeke (Geschichte des Artachshir i Papakan, 1879).
The medieval travellers brought home many strange legends of the sea and its peculiarities - some absurd, others with a basis of fact.
At one time it was held that the constellation names and myths were of Greek origin; this view has now been disproved, and an examination of the Hellenic myths associated with the stars and star-groups in the light of the records revealed by the decipherment of Euphratean cuneiforms leads to the conclusion that in many, if not all, cases the Greek myth has a Euphratean parallel, and so renders it probable that the Greek constellation system and the cognate legends are primarily of Semitic or even pre-Semitic origin.
The inter-relations of the Phoenicians with the early Hellenes were frequent and farreaching, and in the Greek presentation of the legends concerning constellations a distinct Phoenician, and in turn Euphratean, element appears.
From the 6th century B.C. onwards, legends concerning the constellation subjects were frequently treated by the historians and poets.
According to some legends he gained the fire by holding a rod close to the sun.
The legends are thick in every culture, from floods to plagues to volcanoes and the ground rising up to swallow people, to the influence of men who slaughtered whole nations for entertainment.
The legends about him say he killed his mate, who was the daughter of a god, and he was cursed for all time.
Quo are British Rock legends, and the head banger 's heroes.
One of the attractions is Ossian's Cave, associated with the legends of the ancient Scottish bard.
Graeme Kay has arranged the Legends for double wind quintet with contra bassoon.
Burnout legends is definitely a fantastic game, its just as a franchise burnout legends is definitely a fantastic game, its just as a franchise Burnout has moved on.
And took up the development of wsop champion joseph quot legends of.
Taito has shown us all just how to put a retro compilation together and Taito Legends is arguably the best of the bunch.
This site collects, categorizes and analyzes (for plausibility) a large collection of Urban Legends for your amusement and greater edification.
Immersed in Celtic myths & legends, hear about the Selkies, the mischievous faeries and learn the secret of eternal youth!
I had seen the frontman for sixties garage legends, The Seeds, outside the venue and shook his hand.
Throughout the many legends there are only three who were said to have seen The Grail itself.
Grail legends you'll love these articles.
These places could not have become incorporated into the Vedic legends so quickly if the Vedic culture came from another location.
Simple graphics look good although text legends can be rather jagged.
Joseph quot legends of.
The poem has been described as the most successful poem inspired by the Arthurian legends since the Middle Ages.
Cook great-grandmother's favorite recipes and retell the family legends, especially to younger members of the family.
Three of the four arms are plywood replacements faced with plastic bearing the legends.
Meanwhile, Howard Stevenson has another tale of harrassing English cricketing legends.
Celtica Celtica is a unique attraction telling the story of Celtic myths and legends.
Have been a wsop circuit features broadband network 's launch the legends of.
Many ancient cultures have legends that their ancestors originated from the Pleiades.
Recently Peter has been painting iconic portraits of music legends.
Some legends say that the great Taoist sage Lao Tzu, personally introduced him to the Taoist practices.
The sheer strangeness of this place and the bizarre regularity of its 37,000 basalt columns has made it the subject of numerous legends.
Popular beliefs and legends Why were the Aztecs so superstitious?
In these, puma heads spout volutes from their open jaws in a form of visual representation of indigenous myths and legends.
Gently touching on themes of racism and ethnic cleansing, Untold Legends tells the tale of a kingdom overtaken by a monstrous warlord.
Legends of wrestling brings 30 of pro wrestling 's all-time best out.. .
On the 26th of January the grand-duke issued a circular letter to the Tuscan bishops suggesting certain reforms, especially in the matter of the restoration of the authority of diocesan synods, the purging of the missals and breviaries of legends, the assertion of episcopal as against papal authority, the curtailing of the privileges of the monastic orders, and the better education of the clergy.
For a critical account of the former, the story of which has been overlaid by a mass of legends, see Delbriick, Gesch.
The sun is often in German and Lithuanian legends described as the apple that hangs on the tree of the nightly heaven, while the dragon, the envious power, keeps the light back from men till some beneficent power takes it from him.
A revision of the breviary, which would have involved the omission of some of the less credible legends, came to nothing, while the recitation of the office in honour of the Santa Casa at Loreto was imposed on all the clergy.
Several quaint and beautiful legends have been handed down as to the origin of the epithet of "venerable" generally attached to his name.
A collection of legends about Asoka, included in the Divyavadana, a work composed probably in the ist or 2nd century A.D., tells us (pp. 3 8 9, 39 0) how Asoka, the Buddhist emperor, visited the traditional site of this grove, under the guidance of Upagupta.
The fraternal and democratic spirit of the first communities, and their humble origin; the identification of the object of adoration with light and the Sun; the legends of the shepherds with their gifts and adoration, the flood, and the ark; the representation in art of the fiery chariot, the drawing of water from the rock; the use of bell and candle, holy water and the communion; the sanctification of Sunday and of the 25th of December; the insistence on moral conduct, the emphasis placed upon abstinence and self-control; the doctrine of heaven and hell, of primitive revelation, of the mediation of the Logos emanating from the divine, the atoning sacrifice, the constant warfare between good and evil and the final triumph of the former, the immortality of the soul, the last judgment, the resurrection of the flesh and the fiery destruction of the universe - are some of the resemblances which, whether real or only apparent, enabled Mithraism to prolong its resistance to Christianity.
It contains a medley of all sorts of legends and fables belonging to both the mythological and historical periods.
The increasing veneration paid to the Prophet and love for the marvellous soon gave rise to fables about his childhood, his visit to heaven, &c., which have found their way even into sober histories, just as many Jewish legends told by the converted Jew Kai) al-Abbar and by Wahb ibn Monabbih, and many fables about the old princes of Yemen told by `Abid, are taken as genuine history (see, however, Mas`udi, iv.
The legends represent the Latins of the historical period as a fusion of different races, Ligures, Veneti and Siculi among them; the story of the alliance of the Trojan settler Aeneas with the daughter of Latinus, king of the aborigines, and the consequent enmity of the Rutulian prince Turnus, well known to readers of Virgil, is thoroughly typical of the reflection of these distant ethnical phenomena in the surviving traditions.
The great Phrygian saint of the 2nd century was named Avircius Marcellus (Abercius); the mass of legends and miracles in the late biography of him long brought his very existence into dispute, but a fragment of his gravestone, discovered in 1883, and now preserved in the Lateran Museum in Rome, has proved that he was a real person, and makes it probable that the wide-reaching conversion of the people attributed to him did actually take place.
According to one of the Greek legends about Arcas, son of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, he was killed by his father and his flesh was served up in a banquet to Zeus, who was indignant at the crime and restored him to life.
There is no doubt that Midas was the name of one or more real persons around whom religious legends have grown up. The name "Midas the king" occurs on a very ancient tomb in the valley of the Sangarius, the legendary seat of the Phrygian kingdom.
His name and legends still filled the land, or at least the Buddhist portion of it, 600 years later, when the Chinese pilgrim, Hsiian Tsang, travelled in India; they had even reached the great Mahommedan philosopher, traveller and geographer, Abu-r-Raihan Muhammad al-Biruni (see Biruni), in the i, th century; and they are still celebrated in the Mongol versions of Buddhist ecclesiastical story.
It was a period with him of great mental activity, and is represented by four of his books which stand as admirable witnesses to the Lowell of 1848, namely, the second series of Poems, containing among others "Columbus," "An Indian Summer Reverie," "To the Dandelion," "The Changeling"; A Fable for Critics, in which, after the manner of Leigh Hunt's The Feast of the Poets, he characterizes in witty verse and with good-natured satire American contemporary writers, and in which, the publication being anonymous, he included himself; The Vision of Sir Launfal, a romantic story suggested by the Arthurian legends - one of his most popular poems; and finally The Biglow Papers.
The identity of this prisoner was already, it will be observed, a mystery before he died in 1703, and soon afterwards we begin to see the fruit of the various legends concerning him which presumably started as early as 1670, when Saint-Mars himself (see below) found it necessary to circulate "fairy tales" (contes jaunes).
Through the contest for his daughter's hand (see Melampus) he is connected with the legends of the prophetic race of the Melampodidae, who founded the mysteries and expiatory rites and the orgies of Dionysus in Argolis.
The record of the earliest days of Thebes was preserved among the Greeks in an abundant mass of legends which rival the myths of Troy in their wide ramification and the influence which they exerted upon the literature of the classical age.
He died, it is said, on the 9th of April 1553, but actual history is quite silent save on the point that he was not alive in May of the next year, and the legends about his deathbed utterances - "La farce est jouee," "Je vais chercher un grand peut-titre," &c. - are altogether apocryphal.
The crisis culminated on a day, each event of which is surrounded in the Buddhist accounts with the wildest legends, on which the very thoughts passing through the mind of Buddha appear in gorgeous descriptions as angels of darkness or of light, To us, now taught by the experiences of centuries how weak such exaggerations are compared with the effect of a plain unvarnished tale, these legends may appear childish or absurd, but they have a depth of meaning to those who strive to read between the lines of such rude and inarticulate attempts to describe the indescribable.