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If Myths are so old, how have they come down to us, and how have they gotten into the forms we now see? Many learned men have written on this subject, but they do not agree. Some think that Myths are twisted fragments of divine truths that the Creator first made known to mankind. Others believe that they are owing to the decay, the wear and tear of an ancient tongue once spoken in the far East, by the men from whom most of us in this land descend. Still others maintain that all Myths are the product of a low state of the savage mind, and that this is seen in certain bad and cruel traits that yet cling even to the finest of them. How closely akin are the chief Myths of the world may be seen from the stories that were made up very early about fire, its uses and dangers. Thus, it is the same idea which is the core of the stories about Agni, the God of Fire in India, and Vesta, the Goddess of the Common Hearth at Rome; about Vulcan, the Roman God of Ironsmiths, and the Greek Prometheus (or Forethought) who stole fire from heaven for the good of mankind.

Legends, on the other hand, deal with real actions of men and women. They always have some grains of truth in them, some facts that have become twisted in the mind of the story-teller; for legends are only "stories" told by some person for his own pleasure and that of others, or because it was his office to talk or sing about the past when his friends and neighbors

met in order to provide for the common weal, or to worship God, or the powers that they loved or feared as their Gods.

Legends are like the vines and tendrils that grow up about a tree. These sometimes hide its strength and cause its death, but they also lend to it a great and varied charm of color and outline. So Legends sometimes take the place of the real facts of history, but usually only add to them some touch of pathos or tender human interest. To-day trained judgment has pruned away many old Legends from the great trunk of history. In this cleansing process, however, we have learned that Legends, like Myths, have their uses; that they are often symbols of deep truths that were once known to all, but in time became changed into new shapes, often through ignorance and bad passions of the heart and mind.

Myths and Legends grow up sometimes on the same spot, and about the same names. Thus the Romance of King Arthur may be a great Myth told about the Sun, and as true as the story of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Its many Legends may be no more worthy of belief than the tales about Jack the Giant Killer, or the Twelve Labors of Hercules. The bards and the minstrels of the Middle Ages through whom come down many such old stories, were not very choice in their treatment of them. They were more anxious to please and surprise than to narrate true history. We must

be cautious, therefore, in dealing with old Myths and Legends; they are the stories of peoples and races less refined than we are; but in all these stories they have left some traces of their thoughts, their hopes, their fancies, their faiths and even their sorrows of mind and body.

The study of the old beliefs, old customs, old memories that have thus floated down among the simple, remote and unlearned peoples of the world reveals much history that would else be unknown- the history of the mind of man and its inner secret workings. In certain early stages of human society the great forces of nature seemed to unlearned men like real persons, with a will and a mind. They could hear, reason, show kindness or do much evil, it was thought. So, too, the world of animals seemed endowed with human sense and gifts. The trees and rivers had their sprites, or "spirits," that dwelled also in the lakes and mountains. In the legends of the saints. many pretty stories are told of the elves, dragons or worms," and serpents that long ago seemed to haunt all the lonely springs and the wild fens, all the hill-caves, the forest glens, and the sedgy marshes. By a careful study of these Myths and Legends we learn no little about the first far-away homes, faith, habits, the customs of war and peace, the common. daily life, of the old peoples from whom most of us draw our descent.

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Without some knowledge of Myths and Legends we

shall not enjoy keenly the beauties of our own tongue. As the English language is soaked with the spirit and temper of the Bible because of the countless words and phrases borrowed from it, so it is filled with other words and phrases borrowed from the Myths and Legends of many peoples. To be a perfect scholar in all that pertains to the English language requires a knowledge of such Myths and Legends as are most famous. Thus, the great poet Milton cannot be truly our delight unless we know something of the many old "stories" that he has worked into his great poems, always with a meaning. This is, to say the least, equally true of Shakespeare, whose plays abound with Myths and Legends that he has painted in such perfect words that they will never die while the poet's book is read.

Many ancient Myths had deep moral meanings. The dangers of Scylla and Charybdis, the evil tempting of the Sirens, the pleasures of the island of Calypso, the fire stolen from the gods by Prometheus, the Titans stricken by lightning, the story of Dionysos or Bacchus, the Blessed Fields, the Happy Islands, the Dark Under-World, had once a real moral warning attached to them. In the same way the stories of Tannhäuser, of Gudrun, Roland, Olger the Dane, Havelok, and many stories of the Arthur-Romance, like the tale of Guenevere and Launcelot, had a moral purpose in them; so that the hearer might shape his conduct according to the lesson told or sung in the tale.

Much knowledge of nature was conveyed to young and old by means of Myths and Legends. Thus the Norse peoples tell the story of Big Bird Dan, a boat that goes of itself, if you only say "Boat, boat, go on." It is the same story that the Greek minstrels sang more than three thousand years ago about the wonderful ships of the good king Alcinous. In the Odyssey of Homer it is told how they could speak and hear, and went their way without any human help. In both stories are meant the self-moving clouds that go always straight to their mark across the blue seas of heaven. Similarly, the movements and aspects of the Sun were given each some striking name, that expressed the endless uses and charms of the orb of day. His conflict with darkness and cold explains many of the fabulous conflicts of bright heroes with dark demons and monsters, ending in the rescue of some lovely maiden. Sometimes such Myths remained. tame and uncouth; sometimes they are "touched by the highest human genius," and are thenceforth counted among the rarest gems of the human mind. But always they acted as a helpful schooling for whole peoples and races, and epochs of time, when such ways of forming the mind were the only ones known, or at least, were the most popular.

Thomas &. She hav

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