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Myth   Listen
noun
Myth  n.  (Written also mythe)  
1.
A story of great but unknown age which originally embodied a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; an ancient legend of a god, a hero, the origin of a race, etc.; a wonder story of prehistoric origin; a popular fable which is, or has been, received as historical.
2.
A person or thing existing only in imagination, or whose actual existence is not verifiable. "As for Mrs. Primmins's bones, they had been myths these twenty years."
Myth history, history made of, or mixed with, myths.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Myth" Quotes from Famous Books



... religious mind of the Hindu." In the course of his enquiries Lyall incidentally performed the useful historical service of showing that Euhemerism is, or very recently was, a living force in India,[49] and that the solar myth theory supported by Max Mueller and others had, to say the least, been ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... paper and read a scathing personal denunciation. Duroy, it seems, had written an item claiming that Dame Aubert who, as the editor of "La Plume," claimed, had been put under arrest, was a myth. The latter retaliated by accusing Duroy of receiving bribes and of suppressing matter ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... exasperation. "You don't get me, Hiram. Nobody owns the mine. That part of it's all a myth—a fairy tale manufactured because we need it. But Harris mustn't find that out—not, at any rate, until it's too late. Then if anything ever does leak out, suspicion will be directed toward some mysterious mine-owner, and the police will be wearing out shoe-leather hunting the cracks in the ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... be polite toward every one; and if he is rude, he must immediately make an apology. Teach him that all men are equal—that high birth is a myth when not accompanied with merit. Let the prince speak with every one, that he may gain confidence. It is of no consequence if he talks nonsense; every one knows that he is a child. Take care in his education, above ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... heart sinking. They had come far enough, according to the map, to be at the fall, but there was no sign of It. Was the story all a myth? Was there no waterfall, ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster

... reign of Elizabeth thus saw Jonson recognised as a dramatist second only to Shakespeare, and not second even to him as a dramatic satirist. But Jonson now turned his talents to new fields. Plays on subjects derived from classical story and myth had held the stage from the beginning of the drama, so that Shakespeare was making no new departure when he wrote his "Julius Caesar" about 1600. Therefore when Jonson staged "Sejanus," three years ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... group with individual experience and both with observation, hearsay, and tradition. Whether the narrators relate what they actually saw and thought and felt, what they imagine, or what they have thought and felt about slavery since, now we know why they thought and felt as they did. To the white myth of slavery must be added the slaves' own folklore and folk-say of slavery. The patterns they reveal are folk and regional patterns—the patterns of field hand, house and body servant, and artisan; the patterns of kind and cruel master or mistress; the patterns of Southeast and Southwest, ...
— Slave Narratives, Administrative Files (A Folk History of - Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves) • Works Projects Administration

... The most popular myth or fairy on the Messines front was undoubtedly the "Mad Major." This individual was supposed to be an artillery officer who spotted for his own battery—which incidentally always did the most marvellous shooting—from an aeroplane, in which he performed the most daring feats while dodging ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... thinks she's more likely to be a myth than a Smith," said Thaddeus. "She told me to ask you if Mary has a twin-sister, and to say that if you hear of her having any relatives at all—and no domestic ever lived who hadn't—to send her their addresses. She'd ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs

... the story passed through many forms and many phases—the myth, e.g. The Labors of Hercules; the legend, e.g. St. George and the Dragon; the fairy tale, e.g. Cinderella; the fable, e.g. The Fox and the Grapes; the allegory, e.g. Addison's The Vision of Mirza; the parable, e.g. The Prodigal Son. Sometimes it was merely to amuse, sometimes ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... Old Tarwater, as in the delirium of drug or anaesthetic, recovered within himself, the infantile mind of the child-man of the early world. It was in the dusk of Death's fluttery wings that Tarwater thus crouched, and, like his remote forebear, the child-man, went to myth-making, and sun-heroizing, himself hero-maker and the hero in quest of the immemorable ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... Holy Land. Myth of the Great Deluge. Revelation Under the Microscope of Evolution. Chas. Darwin, What He Accomplished. Jehovah Interviewed. Church and State—by Jefferson. Mistakes of Moses—by Ingersoll. Ingersolia: Gems from R. G. Ingersoll. Age of Reason—by Thos. Paine. Ingersoll—44 Lectures. Ingersoll's ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... shrewd therewith; Slow to resolve, but firm to hold; Still with parable and with myth Seasoning truth, like Them of old; Aptest humor and quaintest pith! (Still we smile o'er ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... Prussia, nor did he keep us from evil experiences or certain humiliations, for Emperor Nicholas really preferred Austria to Prussia. The idea that we owed Russia any thanks during his reign is a historical myth. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... not difficult to determine the relative position of one point to another, while all the windings of a road could be fixed down on paper without much difficulty. Consequently, while the learned monks were content with the mixture of myth and fable which we have seen to have formed the basis of their maps of the world, the seamen of the Mediterranean were gradually building up charts of that sea and the neighbouring lands which varied but little from ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... opportunity during my limited stay on the islands, that Mrs. Dexter was anxious for me to go, that they would more than fill my place in my absence, that this was a golden opportunity, that in short I MUST go, and they would drive me back to the hotel to pack! The volcano is still a myth to me, and I wanted to "read up" before going, and above all was grieved to leave my friend, but she had already made some needful preparations, her son with his feeble voice urged my going, the doctor said that there was now no danger to be apprehended, and the Damons' kind urgency ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... has arisen as to the earliest edition of Mother Goose. Thomas's suggestion as to the origin of the first American edition has been of late years relegated to the region of myth. Nevertheless, there is something to be said in favor of the existence of some book of nonsense at that time. The Boston "News Letter" for April 12-19, 1739, contained a criticism of Tate and Brady's version of the Psalms, in which the ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... added for the mere poetic enrichment of the text, and to prove that the hand that was writing was not that of a musty polemic, but of an artist, at home in splendours. There is a striking instance in point in Chap. VI. of Book I., where there is interpolated a gratuitously gorgeous myth or fable, which may be entitled Eros and Anteros, or Love and Its Reciprocation. The passage is characteristic and ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... of former religions are vague, distant, and so covered over by tradition, myth, and folklore, as ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... hardly hide, seeing her standing there so young, so fair, so debonnair before him—so insensible to the passion for her that is stirring within his heart—"and yet your friend, Miss Knollys, is giving up her life, you say, to the consecration of this myth." ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... on an old myth found in many forms, all turning upon the attempt to cheat a magician out of his promised reward. See Brewer's Reader's Handbook, Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Grimm's Deutsche Sagen, and ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... gives unity to the book of nature, while it dilutes and renders as transitory as possible the sense of the universal in the whole.... And as it laid great stress upon the letter in the book of nature, it fell into polytheism. The particular symbol of the divine, or of the Godhead, became a myth of some special deity."—Lange's "Bible-work," Genesis, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... Dumb Oracle.—Appeared in the University Magazine for June, 1878. The legend on which it is founded, a mediaeval myth here transferred to classical times, is also the groundwork of Browning's ballad, "The ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... shoulders like a mantle. Jose's extravagant praises of the Federal commander, together with the daily presence of the military guard, forcibly brought home to the ranch-dwellers the fact that war was actually going on, and that Luis Longorio was indeed a man of flesh and blood, and no myth. This realization caused a ripple of excitement to stir the ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... multitudes, who secretly sighed for deliverance, were thus induced to test its efficacy. But Gnosticism, in whatever form it presented itself, was a miserable perversion of the gospel. Some of its teachers entirely rejected the Old Testament; others reduced its history to a myth; whilst all mutilated and misinterpreted the writings of the apostles and evangelists. Like the Jewish Cabbalists, who made void the law of God by expositions which fancy suggested and tradition embalmed, the Gnostics by their far-fetched and unnatural comments, threw an ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... gathered it before he was able to arrive at what was really important, the name of Zoraya's first husband, where she was married, and by whom, and where she had parted from him. She was so unwilling to give particulars that he began almost to hope to make her confess that the whole was a myth, but at last she owned that the man's name was Giovanni Benista, and that the marriage had taken place at Messina; she knew not in what church, nor in what year, only it was before the end of the old regime, for she recollected the uniforms of the Bomba soldiers, though ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... no Cavaliers in my country. We are all Covenanter and Huguenot folks. The idea that Southern boys are lazy loafing dreamers is a myth. I was ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... the whole neighborhood be held a dangerous spot on account of the malaria; insomuch that the traveller will make but a brief and careless inquisition for the traces of the old wonder, and will stake his credit before the public, in some Pacific Monthly of that day, that the story of it is but a myth, though enriched with a spiritual profundity which he will proceed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... disaster at Thermopylae, and here Alexander of Macedonia crossed over to begin his march of conquest which was to extend his power as far as India. And about this narrow strait is centered the ancient Greek myth about Hero and Leander, which inspired Byron to swim across from ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... a kettle. We waited till 9, when the cavalry patrols returned and reported no sign of the enemy, so we marched back to the pontoon bridge (7 on sketch). I suspect our re-entry qua stage reinforcements was the whole object of our expedition, and the out-flankers were a myth from the beginning. The march back was the most unpleasant we've had. It got hot and the ground was hard and rough and we were all very tired and footsore. A sleepless night takes the stamina out of one. There and back our trek was about ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... tradition is, says Pliny, that King Augeas was the first in Greece to use manure, and that Hercules introduced the practice into Italy. To the wise farmer the myth of the Augean stables is ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... clean. The tramp is as clean as his life permits him to be ... usually ... the myth about his dirtiness is another of the myths of the newspaper and magazine world ... though I have seen ones who ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... without interruption; and for seven weeks he had been happy: companioned by the vivid creatures of his brain; and, better still, by a quickened undersense of his mother's vital share in the 'blossom and fruit of his life.' The danger of becoming embedded had been no myth: and at the back of his brain there had lurked a superstitious reluctance to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... Colgan, whose clear faith accepts Saint Patrick just as he stands in history and tradition, yet, on the other hand, there are sceptics, like Ledwick, who contend that the saint is nothing but a prehistoric myth, floating about in the imagination of ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... showing an amount of incredulity scarcely becoming a sane man, to deny the existence of the traveler, and the reality of that voyage which I believed all along to have been a myth—the ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... it is not the individual that is drawn, but the type. Where the individual alone is real, the type is a myth of the imagination—a pure invention. And invention is the mainspring of the theatre, which rests purely upon illusion, and does not please us unless it begins ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... sheiks thought them impious enough, for daring to build brick walls instead of keeping to the good old- fashioned tents, and gathering themselves into a nation instead of remaining a mere family horde; and gave their own account of the myth, just as the antediluvian savages gave theirs of that strange Eden scene, by the common interpretation of which the devil is made the first inventor of modesty. Men are all conservatives; everything new is impious, till we get accustomed to it; and if it fails, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... broke in MWAW, "old Teutonic legend. Men become wolves. Strongest and fiercest breed. Eat people up. Frighten everybody. Ravage countryside. Beautiful myth! Teaches power is greatest thing. Might gives ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke

... rouse curiosity, are some incrustations, which had at first the appearance of the effigies of lizards crawling along the main figure. It was supposed that these reptiles were intended to embody the idea of malevolent spirits, and that the piece of sculpture might have been designed to represent a myth, probably in reference to the machinations of the infernal world. But, upon a closer inspection, it was found that these tiny figures represented pigmy knights in armor, scrambling, as it were, up the massive figure. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... on filagree, mosaics which inspire theft, Dutch pictures in the style which Schinner has adopted, angels such as Steinbock conceived but often could not execute, statuettes modelled by genius pursued by creditors (the real explanation of the Arabian myth), superb sketches by our best artists, lids of chests made into panels alternating with fluted draperies of Italian silk, portieres hanging from rods of old oak in tapestried masses on which the figures of some hunting scene ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac

... speech congratulating this society of yours on its fiftieth anniversary haunted and racked me all through the meal. I am not, in plain truth, the ready and brilliant speaker you take me for. That is a pure myth. If you could see the desperate home scene that goes on in my family when I am working up a speech, your minds would be at ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock

... where only birds and squirrels are considered at home, lifting himself up, letting himself down, running out on the yielding boughs, and traversing with marvellous celerity the whole length and breadth of the thicket, was truly surprising. One thinks of the great myth, of the Tempter and the "cause of all our woe," and wonders if the Arch One is not now playing off some of his pranks before him. Whether we call it snake or devil matters little. I could but admire his terrible beauty, however, his black, shining ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... exceptions that are produced in any system, no matter how false its premises or how decadent it may become, to uphold faith in the intrinsic soundness of human nature, the vow of chastity was never much more than a myth. Through the tremendous influence exerted over a fanatically religious people, who implicitly followed the teachings of the reverend fathers, once their confidence had been secured, the curate was seldom to be gainsaid in his desires. By means of the secret influence ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... formulated, and that in his imagination it had assumed colossal proportions. He says: "'La Peau de Chagrin' is the formula of human life, an abstraction made from individualities, and, as M. Ballanche says, everything in it is myth and allegory. It is therefore the point of departure for my work. Afterwards individualities and particular existences, from the most humble to those of the King and of the Priest, the highest expressions of our society, will group themselves ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... they had been taught of old; that its age is immeasurable; that man has been an inhabitant of this fragment of it for a hundred thousand years at least; that there never was any such being as a first man, some seven thousand years old; that his existence, his history, is a myth, traced upon the cylinders of Babylon; that man never fell except to himself and his own conscience; that the "redemption" scheme is an idiosyncrasy of Paul; that a priesthood is avowedly a pagan conception, and sacrifice a relic of barbarism. Tell them this, for you know it is true, and ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... That the myth of the tribalism of the Jewish God should persist in face of such passages can only be explained by the fact that He shares in the unpopularity of His people. Mr. Wells, for example, in his finely ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill

... while it passes. This one, when lathered and half shaved, was suddenly called by the train, and in this predicament he stands while it passes. The best new work in the exhibition was one in water colors by Professor Schwind, of Munich, setting forth the popular German myth of the seven ravens. It sold to a prince for seven thousand florins. I know better than to attempt a description. The 'Raising of Jairus' Daughter,' a picture sent on by the king of Prussia, gave the best impression I ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... principles, the story of MacIan's challenge, and we are happy to be able to inform you that the whole story of the attempted duel is a fable. There never was any challenge. There never was any man named MacIan. It is a melodramatic myth, like Calvary." ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... of fact. It became history, it became legend and tradition, it became a myth, it became almost the foundation of religion. For a thousand years a lost family of mankind dwelt on that island on the unvisited sea, and none of their kindred ever came out of its barren ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... hares lay the Easter eggs." Queer hares they must be, indeed, but the children here believe it as devoutly as they do that the "Christ-kind" brings their Christmas presents, or as our own little ones do in Santa Claus. No one knows exactly whence came this myth. Many think it a relic of heathen worship; but a writer named Christoph von Schmid, in an interesting story for children, suggests ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... discover how much there is in us that needs to be forgiven. This is the wonderful story which was told by the Hebrews so dramatically in their Book of Job; and the phases through which that drama passes might be taken as the completest commentary on the myth of Prometheus which ever has been ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... and legends of the origin and spread of mankind are of interest now only because so many human beings have believed them in the past. The biblical story of Shem, Ham, and Japheth retains the interest of a primitive myth with its measure of allegorical truth,[3] but has, of course, no ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... husband and son, but the woman herself, with almost every article of clothing from vest to jacket; while among the wealthy classes, the male dress-designer with his hundred male-milliners and dressmakers is helping finally to explode the ancient myth, that it is woman's exclusive sphere, and a part of her domestic toil, to cut and shape the garments ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... the sinner himself. The permission of evil is explained by the predominantly good results which follow from it (not, as in physical evil, for the sufferer himself, but for others)—from the crime of Sextus Tarquinius sprang a great kingdom with great men (of. the beautiful myth in connection with a dialogue of Laurentius Valla, Theodicy, iii. 413-416). Finally, reference is made again to the contribution which evil makes to the perfection of the whole. Evil has the same function in the world as the discords in a piece of music, or the shadows ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... hand us them back again improved by the sublimation, has pretty well gone the way of all hypotheses. Myths are not made in three days, or in three years, and no more time can be allowed for the formation of the myth of the Resurrection. What was the Church to feed on while the myth was growing? It would have been starved to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... somewhat of the nature of an Eastern myth in this little New England village. Although with the uncompromising practicality of their natures the people had given it a name so directly significant as to make it lose all poetical glamour, and render it the very commonplace of ghastliness, it still ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... position under the king of France. The name of his father, by means of which his lineage might be traced, is not mentioned, but Francisco Carli is named as of the same family, but without designating his relationship. Whether a myth or a reality, Fernando seems to have been an obscure person, at the best; not known to the political or literary history of the period, and not professing to occupy any position, by which he might be supposed to have any facility or advantage for obtaining official information or ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy

... mighty hunter of the same when he grew to a certain age. He had now reached that age, but never a rabbit as yet had he encountered. He might even have concluded that the whole Rabbit story was a myth and a legend were it not that certain scents and odours were for ever tantalising his nose that could, his instinct told him, mean Rabbit and only Rabbit. These scents met him at the most tantalising times, pulling ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... teeth gleamed in a grin of malicious sarcasm. "I should know that you believed in God. Bah! An old woman myth to scare fools and children. I suppose you believe in ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... negative answer can be given. Christ has in no wise redeemed the world. He was no god of power, but a weak fallible man like ourselves; and his cry of despair on the cross might now be repeated with tenfold force. The older myth of Prometheus is truer and more inspiring than the myth of Christ. If there be gods, they have never yielded man aught of their grace. All his possessions have been cunningly, patiently, and valorously extorted from ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... by adding to it. This addition is so constant, so unavoidable, that the existence of an isolated sensation which should be perceived without the attachment of images, without modification or interpretation, is well-nigh unrealisable in the consciousness of an adult. It is a myth. ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... masses of the people as literally true; but which "a later and more reflective age than that in which the mythus had birth" learned to regard as only the vehicle of certain ideas respecting deity. The myth, as thus defined, does not come within the sphere of biblical interpretation. The historic events recorded in the Old Testament may, and often do, shadow forth something higher. In that case they are not myths, but typical ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... or Pleiades: a group of stars in the constellation Taurus; only six stars of the group are readily visible, but legend tells of a seventh, lost. Read the account of the ancient myth in Gayley's "Classic Myths." ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... command of some invisible jinn; but they were all perfectly harmless. The jugglers were catching them, to exhibit their forky tongues and snaky folds, as venomous and deadly, to the marvel-loving crowd. The lion of The Desert is a myth. The king of beasts never leaves his rich domain, the thick forest and pouring cascade, where water and animals of prey abound, for the naked, arid, sandy, and rocky wastes of The Sahara. The ancients and moderns, however, have persisted in representing ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... people) Ologan * * * The souls of the departed go to a mountain in the province of Oton, [208] called Medias, where they are well entertained and served. The creation of the universe is thus explained. [Creation myth.] A vulture hovering between heaven and earth finds no place to settle himself upon, and the water rises towards heaven; whereupon Heaven, in its wrath, creates islands. The vulture splits a bamboo, out of which spring man ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... ideas partially drawn from Sparta—are woven into the ideal structure. Then the dialogue rises to a larger view of education, as a preparation of the soul of man, not for a community on earth, but for that heavenly life which was suggested above (p. 144) in the myth of the steeds. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... truth and skilled in knowledge. If, however, God himself were not the giver of good and bad fruits, then amongst creatures there would not be any that was miserable. If the effect of former acts be a myth, then all purposes for which man would work should be successful. They, therefore, that regard the three alone (mentioned above) as the doors of all success and failure in the world, (without regarding the acts of former life), are dull and inert like the body itself. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... all ways Balzac has saved himself from the dangers incident to his plan in this book after a rather miraculous fashion. The Goguelat myth may seem disconnected, and he did as a matter of fact once publish it separately; yet it sets off (in the same sort of felicitous manner of which Shakespeare's clown-scenes and others are the capital examples in literature) both the slightly matter-of-fact ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... weapon—because we've got to keep up the myth," the Operative said. "Psi Operatives are untouchable. No such thing as a deadly weapon for a ...
— Sight Gag • Laurence Mark Janifer

... a sun myth, the blood of the final massacres and the flames of the pyre being emblems of the sunset, and the slaying of Fafnir representing the defeat of cold and darkness which have carried off the golden hoard ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... Master of the Craft Section of Italy and Deputy Grand Commander only of the Supreme Council of Italy of the 33 deg.. The pretended Grand Central Directory of Naples, which governs all Europe in the interests of Charleston, with Giovanni Bovio for Sovereign Director, is a Masonic myth—pace Signor Margiotta. Signor Bovio is a Member of the Grand Master's Council and a 33 deg. at Rome. There is a Neapolitan Section of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, but it has powers only up to the 30 deg., and as such has no authority ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... that the pleuro-pneumonia often mentioned as a scare or a myth by the thoughtless and optimist is a stern reality. Its journeys and track of destruction among cattle have been as marked as that of small pox and cholera—contagious diseases which have so tearfully decimated the human family. Lung diseases of ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... was speaking a large man entered—a wonderfully fine specimen of Russian manhood. As he stood there, proud but respectful, his flaming red beard falling over his broad chest, he looked like some Viking who had just stepped out of an old myth. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... Nointel, a metrical romance, plainly of youthful composition, containing some seven thousand verses; (2) Le Roy Amaury, well known to English students in Watson's spirited translation; (3) Le Roman de Lusignan, a re-handling of the Melusina myth, most of which is wholly lost; (4) Le Dizain des Reines, a collection of quasi-historical novellino interspersed with lyrics. Six other romances are known to have been written by Nicolas, but these have perished; and he is credited with the authorship of Le Cocu Rouge, ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... elements into the legend. These Gnostics were a sect that arose in the early times of Christianity. They pretended to a special insight into the divine nature, and combined Platonic and oriental theories with Christian dogmas. They tried to convert the story of the Redemption into a cosmological myth, and regarded the human person of Christ as a kind of phantom—a magic apparition. Some of these Gnostics seem to have accepted Simon Magus as the 'Power of God'—as the Logos, or divine Reason, by which the world was created (or reduced from chaos to an ordered Cosmos). From this a curious ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... bated no jot of energy or courage; nay, rather, as his health grew weaker, did he redouble the pressure of his work. I think there is a grandeur in the story of the last five years of his life, that dwarfs even the tale of his rapid and splendid rise. It reads like some antique myth of the Titans defying Jove's thunder. There is about the man something indomitable and heroic. He had, as we have seen, given a series of readings in 1858-59; and he gave another in the years 1861 to 1863—successful ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... Manuel's eyes is taken by Vanderhoffen, in his Tudor Tales, to be a myth connecting Manuel with the Vedic Rudra and the Russian Magarko and the Servian Vii,—"and every beneficent storm-god represented with his eye perpetually winking (like sheet lightning), lest his concentrated look (the thunderbolt) should reduce the universe ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... song composers, Franz Schubert is the unquestioned master. To him the modern artistic song owes its birth, and, as in the myth of Pallas, we find birth and maturity simultaneous. It bloomed at once into perfect flower, and the wrorld will probably never see any essential advances in it. It is this form of music which appeals most ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... taken him a very short time to find out that the reputation for sound sense was, like most traditions, founded on a myth, and that if his wife's vanity was only equalled by her egotism, her most remarkable characteristic was her excessive silliness. But she loved him, and he ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... also that Bracciolini himself insists on the probable myth of the whole tale; the learned Goth is "unreliable"; he maintains that he is "telling no fib"; Bracciolini doubts himself whether what he hears is "true," but he can "see no reason why the man should lie": thus repeatedly in a very short letter ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... him toned down. His value to me is his being just as he is. He's a myth, a hero, a power on the water-front, and ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... a Jataka story; but Eitel thinks it may be a myth, constructed from the story of the ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... where poetry and myth and tradition have placed a most ancient civilization,—the Black-Land, or Land of the Nile: we search its royal sepulchres, its manifold history written in funereal records, in kingly genealogies, in inscriptions, and in the thousand relics preserved of domestic life, whether in picture, sculpture, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... forlorn, with the lush grass and heavy fern growing rank and thick under the stately trees. To right they stretched and to left; and straightaway westward was one long, wide, vast, deserted avenue, at the end of which was an opening, and in the opening a huge stone myth or figure of a runner, who in the act of racing receives an arrow in his heart, and, with arms madly tossed ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... boy who volunteered to show us the chalybeate spring, and who guided us through the woods barefoot, making himself ill with "sarvice" berries as he went,—we were instructed by this naturalist that the trout were eaten away from the streams "by the alligators." This we regarded as a sun-myth, or some other form of aboriginal superstition, until we were informed by several of the gravest and most trustworthy gentlemen of several different localities on the mountains that there really is a creature infesting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... with one hand akimbo under his left side, and in his right hand a sword stretched out toward the sea," was first chronicled by Winthrop under the year 1648. This meteorological phenomenon took on the dimensions of a full-grown myth some forty years later, as related, with many embellishments, by Rev. James Pierpont, of New Haven, in a letter to Cotton Mather. Winthrop put great faith in special providences, and among other instances ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... in the Empire when it became German, and resisting the Empire of its own creation when the towns at last were strong enough to stand alone. To speak about the people in this early period is, therefore, to invoke a myth; to write its history is the same as writing an ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... the story of Abou Zennab, his horse, in Stanley's 'Sinai,' p. 67? What a myth! What a poem old Wordsworth would have writ thereon! If I didn't cry like a babby over it. What a brick of a horse he must have been, and what a brick of an old head-splitter Abou Zennab must have been, to have ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... trace of hell in ancient Irish myth, Haines said, amid the cheerful cups. The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of destiny, of retribution. Rather strange he should have just that fixed idea. Does he write ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the ancient world had a very humble beginning, and that is involved in myth and mystery. Even the Latin stock, inhabiting the country from the Tiber to the Volscian mountains, which furnished the first inhabitants of the city, cannot be clearly traced, since we have no traditions of the first migration of the human race into Italy. It is supposed by Mommsen ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... recollection of the past awed him even now. He looked so serious that I could not laugh, inclined as I was to ridicule any such story as that of the fabled sea serpent, which one looks for periodically as a transatlantic myth to crop up in dull seasons in the columns of ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson

... by investing one of their body with a cloak made in a single day, [Greek: pharos autemeron exyphenantes], Euterpe, cxxii. Gray, in his ode of The Fatal Sisters, has embodied the Scandinavian myth in which the twelve weird sisters, the Valkiriur, weave "the crimson web of war" between the rising and ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... daylight. Since most of us are agreed that stories such as that of Indra defeating Sambara for the benefit of Divodasa refer to real events, it seems unnatural to suppose that the Vritra-legend is a purely imaginary myth. We can thus explain why the ideas of Indra setting free the rain and the light fit in so awkwardly with the heroic element in the legend: for they are merely secondary attributes, borrowed from the myths of other gods and mechanically attached to Indra on his elevation ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... story-book of Klim the Russian robber, {15} and the most poetical part of Tom Shone's history, namely, that in which he threatens to cut off the hand of the reluctant bride unless she performs her promise, is, in all probability, an offshoot of the grand myth of "the severed hand," which in various ways figures in the stories of most nations, and which is turned to considerable account in the tale of ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... F. CURRIER, New York: "Dear Dr. Rose, I received your book with great pleasure. It is very attractively made up, and I am looking forward to the pleasure of reading it. As I get older I am astonished at the charm with which memory recalls history, myth, and poetry in the study of the classics long ago. With sincerest wishes for your success, believe me ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... into a sort of honored disuse, though their memory is still reverently cherished in all the text-books of the science. The "Challenger" Expedition dissipated most of the myths that had long been taught regarding the deep waters of the ocean; and Professor Suess has disposed of the closely related myth about the coasts of the continents being constantly on the seesaw up and down. These two discoveries, with others that might be mentioned, dispose of Lyell's theory of uniformity. Lord Kelvin and the other physicists dissipated the idea of a molten interior of the earth. Hence, ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price

... Mr. Baldwin presents respectively the legends relating to the Trojan War, the great Siegfried myth of Northern Europe, and the mediaeval romance of Roland and Charlemagne, bringing before the reader, with great spirit, with scholarly accuracy and with unfailing taste these heroic figures and the times in which their adventures are supposed ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton

... sought peace with them, and were taxed—or pillaged—often to the point of starvation. They were so poor and insignificant that the Romans really never heard of them, and they never heard of the Romans, save in myth and legend. They lived in caves and rude stone huts. They fished, hunted, raised goats and farmed, and finally, about the year Three Hundred, they secured horses, which they bought from the Goths, who ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... isolated position, no other Forsyte being content with less than four per cent. for his money; and this isolation had slowly and surely undermined a spirit perhaps better than commonly endowed with caution. He had become almost a myth—a kind of incarnation of security haunting the background of the Forsyte universe. He had never committed the imprudence of marrying, or encumbering himself ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... be fair; for a reason so obviously disingenuous that Mr. Lansing had the sympathy of the country. He should either have told the truth then and there or forever have held his peace; and had he remained mute out of the mystery would have grown a myth. The fictitious Lansing would have become an historical character. But he must needs write a book. It does not make pleasant reading. It does not make its ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... group by Edward Berge, "Muse Finding the Head of Orpheus," a white marble group of superior elegance and texture, arrests the passerby. A Muse kneels, drooping in exquisite pathos over the head of Orpheus found in the waves. The sculptor has chosen the tragic side of the Orphean myth. The son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope, whose heaven-taught lyre charmed men and beasts, melted rocks and even opened the gates of Erebus, had failed to win from death his bride, Eurydice, lost to him for ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... it was but a step to Phoenicia, Judaea,[FN232] Phrygia and Asia Minor, whence a ferry led over to Greece. Here the Apologue found its populariser in {Greek}, AEsop, whose name, involved in myth, possibly connects with :— "AEsopus et Aithiops idem sonant" says the sage. This would show that the Hellenes preserved a legend of the land whence the Beast-fable arose, and we may accept the fabulist's aera as contemporary with Croesus and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... to pass and remain uncontradicted so long could not be fathomed. Those were very black days for the army in the field and many a man died with despair in his heart, convinced that what had been the greatest fact in his whole life—the invincibility of the British Fleet—was a myth. The British nation will take a long time to forgive the Admiralty ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... was Widow Tully, who had been the much-respected housekeeper of old Captain Manning for forty years. When he died he left her the use of his house and family pew, besides an annuity. The existence of Mr. Tully seemed to be a myth. During the first of his widow's residence in town she had been much affected when obliged to speak of him, and always represented herself as having seen better days and as being highly connected. But she was apt to ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... of enlightenment. Through their power and the means they have to corrupt, the majority is indeed so constantly deceived that, when one dwells only on this side of our political life, it is easy to arrive at the conviction that democracy is a myth and that, in fact, the end may never come of this power of the few to divert and pervert the institutions ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... sure that it never happened anywhere. Popular fancies propagate themselves indefinitely, but historical events, especially the striking and dramatic ones, are rarely repeated. The facts here collected lead inevitably to the conclusion that the Tell myth was known, in its general features, to our Aryan ancestors, before ever they left their ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... four years old (No myth, but a genuine child is she, With her bronze-brown eyes, and her curls of gold) Came, quite in disgust, one day, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... myth of the Receding God may be that the Sphere of Morality is extended in inverse proportion to the intensity of theological interference. Not that theology necessarily or always deliberately limits the domain of morality: but ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato

... her soul, daily rounded the ragged edges of life, woke merciful trust and belief in a promised life of bliss beyond the grave, and embroidered thereupon a patchwork, not unbeautiful, built of fairy folk-lore, saintly legend and venerable myth. Her credulous nature accepted right and left; anything that harbored a promise or was lovely or wonderful in itself found acceptance; and Joan read into the very pulses of the summer world the truth ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... was to her a myth, the crucifix a vague superstition, prayer a mere unmeaning mummery. But the kisses were ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... individual, 'crushed by life.' Full of learned philosophies from Max Stirner and Nietzsche, they preach, in Stirner's words, 'the absolute independence of the individual, master of himself, and of all things.' 'The death of "Everyday-ism,"' the 'resurrection of myth,' 'orgiasm,' 'Mystical Anarchism,' and 'universalist individualism' are some of the shibboleths of these new writers, who are mostly very young, very clever, and profoundly convinced that they are even cleverer than ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... the presence of this great beast, which was made into the fanciful proportions most adapted to excite awe and wonder." To his friend Hogg, in after-years, Shelley often spoke about another reptile, no mere creature of myth or fable, the "Old Snake," who had inhabited the gardens of Field Place for several generations. This venerable serpent was accidentally killed by the gardener's scythe; but he lived long in the poet's memory, and it may reasonably be conjectured ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... Spanish conquest, and English treasure hunting. He was surprised to find a great deal of information. Almost without exception, however, this particular treasure which had sent Quesada to his grave a pauper, which had lured from quiet England Raleigh, Drake, and Leigh was thought to be a myth. The hours passed and Wilson knew nothing of their passing. It was eight o'clock before he paused once more to summarize the result of his reading. In the light of the key which lay before him, the ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... thus significant for Romantic interest in myth in two ways. First, he provides a clear statement of what can be loosely called the antimythic position, that rationalist condescension and derogation of all myth and all religion that was never far from the surface during the Romantic era. Holbach was and is a reminder that ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... are apt to suspect. Here, too, have existed hardly any of the conditions which obtained in older communities where great literature arose. There is no glamour of old Romance about our early history, no shading off from the actual into a dim region of myth and fable; our beginnings are clearly defined and of an eminently prosaic character. The early settlers were engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with nature, and in the establishment of the primitive industries. Their strenuous pioneering days were followed by the feverish excitement of ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... misleading sentence that the chief concern of the Brethren was that Christ "would condescend to enter into a special covenant with His poor Brethren's people, and take us as his peculiar property." For that statement there is not a shadow of evidence. The whole story of the "special covenant" is a myth. In consulting the Lot the Brethren showed their faith; in passing their resolution they showed their wisdom; and the meaning of the resolution was that henceforth the Brethren rejected all human authority in spiritual matters, recognized Christ alone as the Head of the Church, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... any of you have looked at the explanation I have given of the myth of Athena in my 'Queen of the Air,' you cannot but have been surprised that I took scarcely any note of the story of her birth. I did not, because that story is connected intimately with the Apolline myths; and is told of Athena, not essentially as the goddess of the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... given to men to choose between sacraments and statues," said Rodney. "Beauty is a reality, morality is a myth, and Ireland has always struck me as a place for which God had intended to do something, but He changed his mind and that change of mind happened about a thousand years ago. Quite true that the Gael ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... is a myth; we're all a little neurotic, and the | | study of neurosis has been able to classify the general | | types of disturbance which are most common. And some types | | (providing the subject is not suffering so extreme a case ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel

... Prof. Koehler's elaborate list of parallels attached to Mr. Lang's variant in Revue Celtique, iii. 374; and Mr. Lang, in his Custom and Myth ("A far travelled Tale"), has given a number of parallels from savage sources. And strangest of all, the story is practically the same as the classical myth ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... near Edinburgh, and stood in a row handing the stones on, one to another, from Ravelston Quarry, on the adjacent hill of Corstorphine. Such is the local folk-tale; and it has its congeners in Celtic and even in Hindu myth. Thus in the Highland tale of Kennedy and the claistig, or fairy, whom he captured, and whom he compelled to build him a house in one night, we read that she set her people ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... well-dressed, easy-going people on the streets and in the cafes, every business house working to full capacity, and all at first glance going well. The children, and especially those of the working class, look healthy and full of life. Starving Vienna seems somewhat of a myth. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... celebrate King William, who did live as a Saint like Patrick, Phadrig as ye call him, who never existed at all. At laste, that's what some of them say. Ye mix the life an' work of half-a-dozen men, an' ye say 'twas all Saint Patrick. Sure, most of him is a myth, a sort of a fog, jist. Ye can't agree among yerselves as to whin he was born." Turning to me, the bearded man said, "Did ye ever hear the pome about ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... to live was a hard and fearful thing. Yet honour said, Die and be satisfied that you are doing right. Did honour always command what was easiest for a man to do? Again, what was it? He had but a few moments left to live, and in a lifetime he had served honour scrupulously. What if it were but a myth, but a legend of fools, a destroying idol worshipped by brave and brainless visionaries, who had more courage than intelligence, more desire to do right than discernment to sift right from wrong? Pity that so many daring, honest men should have been spitted on rapiers, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... our friend; poor Lion, my heart is full of pity for you and you do not know it, because you cannot speak until the "difficulty" is overcome; ah! me, what a world of lies it is, for that this 'hidden wife,' is a myth, and an inspiration from Lucifer to Madame, I am quite sure of. But alas! should their be one grain of truth in the bushel of lies, and that he cannot prove to 'society's' satisfaction that 'twas only a grain of youthful ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... extend to me more than common politeness. Neither will any other man. Surely you know enough of masculine human nature to see there is no danger of a man losing his heart to a plain woman like me. Love in fancy and song is a pretty myth, embracing unity of souls, congeniality of tastes, and such like commodities. In workaday reality it is the lowest of passions, which is set alight by the most artistic nose and mouth, and it matters not if ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... face among those people at the present day. The myth has been exploded. The golden image has been scratched, and the potter's clay beneath has been revealed. This is a terrible result of clumsy management. We have failed in every way. Broken faith has dissipated our character for sincerity, and our military operations have failed to attain their ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... win your case," said Major Williams, "what romance in history will be left us? William Tell is now a myth, and Washington's little hatchet story is ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... Egyptian god of Agriculture (here, perhaps by confusion with Apis, figured as a Bull), was torn to pieces by Typho and embalmed after death in a sacred chest. This myth, reproduced in Syria and Greece in the legends of Thammuz, Adonis, and perhaps Absyrtus, represents the annual death of the Sun or the Year under the influences of the winter darkness. Horus, the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... happy, earth seemed heaven! So happy, sorrow seemed almost a myth!—I little dreamed that I would ever drink the bitterest dregs of that black cup.—The Revolution rushed upon ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye

... ambiance of the beautiful old churches and convents where she worked and pored over the ancient missals, and softly talked with the princely robed Monsignori, no doubt did much to develop her love for the Beautiful Story, the delicate myth of Christianity—and all this, all these rare qualities and honest efforts we find in ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... ideas of information handed down from generation to generation orally, the only way of teaching under the old type of management. It recalls the idea of the inaccurate perpetuation of unthinking custom, and the "myth" element always present in tradition,—again undeniable accusations against the old type of management. The fundamental idea of the tradition, that it is oral, is the essence of the difference of the old type of management from science, or even ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth

... that the name of Micaboche, an Algonkian divinity, appears. This Spirit, who acted as an intercessor between Ki/tshi Man/id[-o] (Great Spirit) and the Indians, is known among the Ojibwa as Mi/nab[-o]/zho; but to this full reference will be made further on in connection with the Myth of the origin of the Mid[-e]/wiwin. The tradition of Nokomis (the earth) and the birth of Manabush (the Mi/nab[-o]/zho of the Menomoni) and his brother, the Wolf, that pertaining to the re-creation of the world, and fragments of other myths, are thrown together and ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... thousands of human beings were willing to lay down their lives, and actually did lay them down, are to us mere words and dreams, myths, fables, and legends. If ever there was a doer, it was Hercules, and now we are told that he was a mere myth! ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... firmly in a whole unseen or rarely-seen world around them of fairies, ghosts, spirits and witches. In some out-of-the-way corners in England—even in these days of board schools and competitive examinations, when we are told that King Arthur never existed and that William Tell is a "sun-myth"—some remnants of this belief still linger. In Devonshire folks speak shyly and with bated breath of the "good people;" and even in the year of grace 1879 a Warwickshire laborer was had up before the magistrates for having with a pitchfork half killed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... weather and position, was not seen by the United States ship Vincennes; a land, in fact, that from the foregoing statements and from the imperfect accounts of whalemen we had begun to regard as a myth, was actually seen; and I shall never forget the tinge of regret I felt when the necessity of the position obliged the withdrawal of the ship and I took a last lingering look at the ice-bound and unexplored coast, fully realizing ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... way, this General Clements seems to be a myth, and the talk now is of Rundle and Ian Hamilton, who are supposed to be getting round De Wet from other quarters, while we drive him up this way into their arms. It is said we are going to Bethlehem. I forgot an important event of the evening in the arrival of a bag of ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... which are the crown as well as the foundation of the Chinese group-system, and which must be patiently studied in the village-life of the country to be fitly appreciated. To be quite frank, absolutism is a myth coming down from the days of Kublai Khan when he so proudly built his Khan-baligh (the Cambaluc of Marco Polo and the forebear of modern Peking) and filled it with his troops who so soon vanished like the snows of winter. An elaborate ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... idea!" I said, glancing up at the young man who was watching me as I read. "But you say this cell has never been found. I should say its existence was a myth, and, of course, the curse on the soul of the first-born to keep the door shut as warder is absurd. Matter ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade

... their neighbours had a longer time to live stood underneath the east window on that eve, and anxiously listened for the dreaded revelation. It is related of a tailor, who was reckoned a wit, and affected disbelief in the Spirit story, that he announced his intention to prove the thing a myth, and so, one Nos G'lan Geua', Shon Robert, as he was called, proceeded to the church just before midnight, and, to his horror, he heard his own name—"Shon ap Robert," uttered by the Spirit. "Hold, hold!" said the tailor, "I am not quite ready!" But, ready or not ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... Bartholomew. The man is a chien impur. And in answer to this new huntsman the whole Protestant pack crashed in pursuit. Within fifty years of his death The Prince and Machiavelli himself had become a legend and a myth, a haunting, discomforting ghost that would not be laid. Machiavellism had grown to be a case of conscience both to Catholic and Protestant, to Theologian, Moralist, and Philosopher. In Spain the author, damned in France for his despotism and popery, was as freshly and freely damned for his civil ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... was out with the Pembroke's boats in the Basin at the time Holmes started up the river, and was probably on his ship, with his hands full driving the bombardment, and the recital of the Elegy at such a time was probably a myth, the traditions may be put down to imagination. The boats were piloted to the landing by Captain ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... gate to the fields. Months afterwards it was said that she had been identified among a band of wild horses in the Coast Range, as a strange and beautiful creature who had escaped the brand of the rodeo and had become a myth. There was another legend that she had been seen, sleek, fat, and gorgeously caparisoned, issuing from the gateway of the Rosario patio, before a lumbering Spanish cabriole in which a short, stout matron was seated—but I will have none of it. For there are days ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... specimen of the wild West was soon seen not to be of the charlatan type; as a natural alternative he was assumed to be something of a simpleton. Many intelligent men retained this view of him throughout the years of his trial, and, only when his triumph and tragic death set going a sort of Lincoln myth, began to recollect that "I came to love and trust him even before I knew him," or the like. A single speech like this at the Cooper Institute might be enough to show a later time that Lincoln was a man of great intellect, but it could really do little ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... remained in Liverpool. I had called several times at the consulate, and each time met with the same ungracious reception. I could never see the consul, and began to regard him as a myth. I did not then know that every time I called he was seated at his comfortable desk in a room elegantly furnished, which was entered from the ante-room occupied by his clerks. Nor could I get any satisfactory information from the well-dressed Englishman, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... cheese, and coffee in transparent little china cups, and sugar in a silver bowl, and then cigars,—everything of the best and purest; and as we passed from one thing to another, I became at length persuaded that the Arctic Circle was a myth, that my cruise among the icebergs was a dream, and that Greenland was set down wrongly on the maps. Long before this I had been convinced that Doctor Molke was a most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... by the aid of historical research, we are enabled to regard the Creeds in the light of their usefulness to life. The myth of the virgin birth probably arose through the zeal of some of the writers of the Gospels to prove that the prophecy of Isaiah predicted the advent of the Jewish Messiah who should be born of a virgin. Modern scholars are agreed that the word Olmah which Isaiah ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... and Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) are miles upon miles of manufactories, workshops and mills; warehouses connected with coal-mines; dirty barges blackening the water; iron-works and carpet-mills; cloth and paper-mills and glass-works—a busy region, the modern translation of the myth of gnomes making gold out of dross in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... the forest worshipper as at the end of ages having caught this light—having brought it down in the language of his myth from heaven to earth: that is, imagine the star in space as having become a star in his hand—the candle: the star worshipper had now become also the fire worshipper. Thus the candle leads us back to the fire worshippers ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... had brought them to the mouth of the treasury of the world," and then fainted over the great bars of silver and gold, and when they took him up he was losing "so much blood as filled his very footsteps in the sand;" Drake, who has become a legend and a myth in Devon, so that the country-people say that he brought water from Dartmoor to Plymouth, by compelling a stream to follow his horse's heels all the way into the town; who, like King Arthur and Barbarossa, is ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... come and carry them off. What makes me believe what they say is the fact that all the savages in general fear it, and tell such strange things about it that, if I were to record all they say, it would be regarded as a myth; but I hold that this is the dwelling-place of some devil that torments them in the above-mentioned manner. [249] This is what I have learned about ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... mythology of Greece assigned to each wind a separate cave, in which it was supposed to await the commands of its sovereign Aeolus, or Aeolos. It is to this myth that Lovelace alludes. ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... was about four miles an hour. During the early day he strove frequently to mend it; but as the sun became hot in the heavens, his efforts after speed were gradually reduced, and long before evening he had begun to think that Jerusalem was a myth, his dragoman an impostor, and his Arab steed the sorriest ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... in the South Seas, the tritons blow their conchs and shake their shaggy heads, while the daughters of the deep gather, at certain seasons, on the water, or about some favorite rock, and sing. Always, in Eastern versions of the myth, there is music, save in the case of Melusina, who became a half fish only on Saturdays, when her husband was supposed not to be watching, and this music follows the myth around the world. Among the vague traditions of certain Alaskan ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... hung sublime with brat and spouse By tail prehensile from the boughs, And, happier than his maimed descendants, The culture-curtailed independents, 100 Could pluck his cherries with both paws, And stuff with both his big-boned jaws; Or else the core his name enveloped Was from a solar myth developed, Which, hunted to its primal shoot, Takes refuge in a Sanskrit root, Thereby to instant death explaining ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... the pre-Patrician myth are alleged, scil.:—to rebut certain claims to jurisdiction, tribute or visitation advanced by Armagh in after ages. It is hard to see however how resistance to the claims in question could be better justified on the theory of a pre-Patrician Declan, who admittedly ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous

... Is this strange myth, differing as it does from the simple narrative presented in the Welsh legend of Peredur, really Cymric, or ought we rather to see in it an original creation of the trouveres, based upon a Breton foundation? With M. de la Villemarque we believe that this ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... thousands of such small meteors have passed through our atmosphere, there is no distinct record of one having ever fallen to the earth during these annual displays. One was said to have fallen recently at Naples, but on investigation it turned out to be a myth. These annual meteors in the upper air are supposed to be only small ones, and to be dissipated into dust and vapor at the time of their sudden heating; so numerous are they that 40,000 have been counted in one evening, and an exceptionally great display comes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... life to all things. There is a saying among Eastern Massachusetts farmer folk that if you will bathe three times in the salt water during the summer you will not feel the cold of the coming winter. Thus is the old myth revived and the modern Achilles may find invulnerability beneath the Styx, nor need his heel be left above the tide for his undoing. And the sea has more than that to give us, more than physical well-being and invulnerability to ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... dialogue was cut short by the wild shout that rose from the crowd, the delusive cry of "A sail, a sail!" and Dunmore rushed with the rest to descry its myth-like form, if possible. It was some moments before hope again died down to a flat ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... hands it became like wax (Koran xxi. xxxiv., etc.). Hence a good coat of mail is called "Davidean." I have noticed (First Footsteps, p. 33 and elsewhere) the homage paid to the blacksmith on the principle which made Mulciber (Malik Kabir) a god. The myth of David inventing mail possibly arose from his peculiarly fighting career. Moslems venerate Daud on account of his extraordinary devotion, nor has this view of his character ceased : a modern divine preferred him ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... unaccustomed to stimulants and narcotics, declare that, like opium eaters, they cannot live without the excitement. It seems to produce in them a manner of dreamy enjoyment, which, exaggerated by time and distance, may have given rise to that splendid myth the Lotos, and the Lotophagi. It is held by the Ulema here as in Arabia, "Akl el Salikin," or the Food of the Pious, and literati remark that it has the singular properties of enlivening the imagination, clearing the ideas, cheering the heart, diminishing ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... head was no myth. A fortnight later the leonine letter-box was actually placed in position at Button's, and, after doing service there for some years, was used by Dr. Hill when editing the Inspector. It was sold in 1804, the notice of ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... backward, their riders underneath, and those behind plunged over them, unable to stop. Soon it was a fearful jumble; men and beasts, hoofs and steel, curses and shrill neighing. Then the firing began, a woof of fine red threads through the warp of pale-green reeds. The guerrillas yet fought. The myth of their own heavier numbers kept them from panic. Ragged fellows with feet bare in the stirrups leaned over to slash at heads between the tasselled stalks. They squirmed like snakes from under kicking horses, and fainting, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... The dragon-myth, however, did not really begin to develop until an ageing king refused to be slain, and called upon the Great Mother, as the giver of life, to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human blood; and ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith



Words linked to "Myth" :   Twilight of the Gods, mythical, mythologize, mythic, story, Ragnarok



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