The legend of Perseus, Volume 1 (of 3)

The classical story of Perseus--Its localisation in Greece, in Latium and at Joppa--References by Herodotus--The Assyrian hero, Gilgames--References by Ælian--The three leading...

The Breton tale of The King of the Fishes--Four trains of incident here developed--Variants in Lorraine, Tirol, Gascony--The Wonderful Pike and other Scandinavian variants--Gree...

The Mermaid type--Scottish, Lithuanian, and Sicilian tales--The Gold Children type--German, Flemish, Italian, and Breton tales--The Tower of Babylon type--The Enchanting Bird ty...

Stories of Supernatural Birth are world-wide--Only examples analogous to those in the variants of Perseus to be dealt with--Birth caused by something eaten or drunk--Fish--Fruit...

Stories of Supernatural Birth not only told for amusement but believed to be true--The eating of fish a rare cause--The eating of fruit and cereals frequently {xi} found in both...

The supernatural means of conception in the stories actually believed to be still effectual--Practices to obtain children--Vedic ceremonies--The eating of fruit, cereals, and le...

Birth often merely a new manifestation of a pre-existing person--The Egyptian tale of The Two Brothers--European and other variants--Transformation {xii} in _märchen_--The Singi...

In _The Earthly Paradise_ William Morris has made English the Doom of King Acrisius in such lovely wise, and in the main with such close adherence to the story as told by Ovid a...

In our previous chapter we have examined the classical legend of Perseus, and a few of the recently recorded popular traditions of Europe most nearly akin to it, all of which I...

We have now surveyed the stories of the Danae type and those of the King of the Fishes type. There remain a large number of variants wherein one or more of the incidents are wan...

We have found the story of Perseus to consist of three leading trains of incident, namely, the Supernatural Birth, the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head, and the Rescue of Andromeda. I...

Hitherto, dealing exclusively with _märchen_, or tales told for simple amusement, we have found the incident of the Supernatural Birth, outside the cycle of the Perseus myth, wi...

The result of the inquiries of the last two chapters has been to show that the incident of the Supernatural Birth, in forms identical with, or at least analogous to, those of th...

In the course of our examination of tales of Supernatural Birth we have more than once found that birth was to the hero merely a new manifestation. He had previously existed in...

[4.2] Pausanias, ii. 16; Plutarch, _Rivers and Mountains_, xviii., Inachus. An inscription was discovered not very long ago at Mykene, testifying to the worship of Perseus there...

[59.2] Leskien, 389. Stories of the Faithless Sister (sometimes it is the hero’s mother who plays the traitor’s part) are numerous in the East of Europe. I have studied some of...

[77.3] Frere, 250. Mangoes appear also in Sâstrî, _Drav. Nights_, 54; Sâstrî, _Folklore in South. Ind._, 140; Knowles, 130; Day, 117. In a variant of the last, the fakir simply...

Pitrè, _Toscane_, 8. The circumstances of the conception differ very slightly in all these. Two or three years ago the same story was discovered in the island of Möe, belonging...

[105.1] Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 351. Owing to this writer’s method of heaping his authorities together at the end of each section, a practice as mysterious as any recorded of...

[150.1] _Ibid._, 262, 263; Friend, 115, 124, 581. Rosemary with grains of mastic was given by physicians in the seventeenth century to cure barrenness. Ploss, i. _Weib_, 434. A...

[186.1] Haltrich, 1 (Story No. 1). In a Wallachian variant the trees are apple-trees, the mother is only expelled, and the tremendous _Deus ex machinâ_ of the Transylvanian stor...