Myths That Every Child Should Know

Myths That Every Child Should
Know

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Myths That Every Child Should
Know, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give
it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Myths That Every Child Should Know A Selection Of The
Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People
Author: Various
Editor: Hamilton Wright Mabie
Illustrator: Blanche Ostertag
Release Date: August 17, 2005 [EBook #16537]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 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