III—GREEK MYTHS AND LEGENDS
The mythology of the Greeks is the most beautiful, the most artistic, and the most perfectly developed of any that we have, and it repays careful study. The early myths are much like the Aryan; indeed some of the stories are practically identical. The sun and moon, darkness, storm, spring and summer, the ocean and the sky were all personified. Phœbus Apollo in his chariot is the sun; Eros and Psyche are the coming and going of light and darkness; Demeter, the harvest, has a daughter Persephone who goes down to the underworld as seed, dies, and is revived as spring brings back life. Notice how from such first, simple ideas a whole complicated religious system developed, and how the original gods and goddesses became so many that earth, air, water, sky, and all nature were filled with them. See also the gradual decadence of the system, especially when the Romans adopted it. Compare the myths of light and darkness with those of other lands. Read from Stories of Old Greece, by Emma R. Frith, and H. M. Chadwick's The Heroic Age.
IV—SCANDINAVIAN FOLK-LORE
In this cold, northern land the same original myths developed as elsewhere but were altered by the environment. Here the legends are often terrible instead of beautiful. There are battles of hail and snow, great ice mountains to be surmounted, gloomy castles to be won. The spirits of storm, of thunder, of cold, all figure. Animals, too, are conspicuous in the stories, especially bears, wolves and eagles. The gods were stern and awful, rather than lovable. But in spite of this, there were still some, like the goddess of spring, who had charm, and some stories which show a sense of humor. Read In the Days of the Giants, a Book of Norse Tales, by Abbie Farwell Brown. Here are stories from the Sagas and the Edda, the earliest literature of the North. See How Thor Went a-Fishing, The Lost Bell, The Three Dogs, and The Meal of Frothi.
V—PERSIAN FOLK-LORE
The Persian and Arabian folk-lore is really one, and stands quite by itself. It is unusually rich in well developed stories, many well worth study. The original myths of light and darkness were typified under the names of Ormuzd and Ahriman. The Zend-Avesta embodied their religion and literature, and is full of beauty. Later, however, the early and simple mythology degenerated into something complicated and almost puerile. The legends, preserved for us in The Thousand and One Nights, are marked by Oriental splendor. Often the setting of a story will be in a palace with wonderful gardens and fountains. We read of great merchants, gorgeous silks, jewels and ornaments; of money, horses and camels; of sheiks, caliphs, viziers, magicians, and genii. In every respect the stories differ from those of other lands. Read Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, from Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book.
VI—CELTIC FOLK-LORE
The peoples of Brittany, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland have folk-tales full of a certain mysticism. They have few nature myths, such as belong to earlier races, but they have drawn from their own imagination stories of beauty and charm, which are distinctly poetic, both in substance and form. Their legends deal largely with fairies, wishing-stones, haunted glens, and changelings. There are water fairies, some with human souls, and dwarfs who have homes in caves, and live and work like human beings. The whole of their folk-tales are filled with these little creatures, benign or malicious, who are closely in touch with the real lives about them.
The superstitions of these countries in regard to the reappearance of the dead as ghosts or spirits of one kind or another, also enter largely into the literature of the Celtic races. This subject, a very large one, may be taken up here, or later by itself.
There is a delightful book called Fairy and Folk-Lore of the Irish Peasantry, by W. B. Yeats, and another on the Fairy Legends of Ireland, by T. C. Crocker. Duncan Anderson has one on Scottish Folk-Lore, also. Read from any of these, and also a story in Little Classics called The Fairy Finder, by Samuel Lover.