You must efface either the two sirens or the legend, without which I forbid the exhibition of the sign.
"We must efface the legend," said Pittrino, in a melancholy tone.
After dinner, over the walnuts and the wine, Sir Nathaniel returned to the subject of the local
legends.
It was a hazardous, though maybe a gallant thing to do, since it is probable that the
legend commonly received has had no small share in the growth of Strickland's reputation; for there are many who have been attracted to his art by the detestation in which they held his character or the compassion with which they regarded his death; and the son's well-meaning efforts threw a singular chill upon the father's admirers.
"
Legends handed down from one grandfather to another go back a good many hundred years.
"Poor but honest parents--that is all right--never mind the particulars-- go on with the
legend."
This is most complimentary to the virtue of Prince Bladud's tears, and strongly corroborative of the veracity of this
legend.'
"Nothing, my friends; at least of that which passes the limit of truth to get to fable or
legend. Nevertheless, there must be some ground for the imagination of the story-tellers.
It bore a device, a herald's wording of which may serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded
legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow: --
These old
legends, so brimming over with everything that is most abhorrent to our Christianized moral sense some of them so hideous, others so melancholy and miserable, amid which the Greek tragedians sought their themes, and moulded them into the sternest forms of grief that ever the world saw; was such material the stuff that children's playthings should be made of!
It is entitled THE
LEGENDS OF THE RHINE FROM BASLE TO ROTTERDAM, by F.
Folklore,
legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal.
And let no man doubt this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale, which the city's
legends and all the inhabitants asserted to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew.
IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell "Whose heart-strings are a lute;" None sing so wildly well As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so
legends tell) Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute.
In Ionia and the islands the epic poets followed the Homeric tradition, singing of romantic subjects in the now stereotyped heroic style, and showing originality only in their choice of
legends hitherto neglected or summarily and imperfectly treated.
