Myths That Every Child Should Know A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People

MYTHS THAT EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Verity White and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

[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 CHIMÆRA 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.