The old powder-house, as the round stone tower is called that stands on a gravel ridge in Somerville, Massachusetts, is so named because at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War it...
It is commonly believed in Germany that on St. Andrew's night, St. Thomas' night, and Christmas and New Year's nights, a girl has the power of inviting and seeing her future lover....
Not long since, a pious clergyman was returning home, after administering spiritual consolation to a dying member of his flock. It was late of the night, and he had to pass through...
The Sabbath-day drew to a close in the summer-tide of the year of grace one thousand and one, and the rustics of Ramersdorf amused themselves with a dance, as was their wont to do,...
The promise of the return to earth of various benign spirits has caused much trouble among the red men, and incidentally to the white men who are the objects of their fanatic disli...
Once there was a rich man who was a miser. Although he kept farm servants they would never stay out the year with him; but ran away in the middle. When the villagers asked why they...
Block Island, or Manisees, is an uplift of clayey moorland between Montauk and Gay Head. It was for sailors an evil place and bad medicine for Indians, for men who had been wrecked...
Long ago there was an old woman called Grizzly Bear. She had neither husband nor children, and lived all alone in a lodge on the hillside. As the days went by, she became very lone...
King Agamemnon sat in his tent at Aulis, where the army of the Greeks was gathered together, being about to sail against the great city of Troy. And it was now past midnight; but t...
The king of the north once said to himself, "I am master of the country of ice and snow, but what is that if I cannot be ruler of the land of sunshine and flowers? I am no king if...
A TRADITION OF THE ODJIBWAS. There was an old hag of a woman living with her daughter-in-law, and son, and a little orphan boy, whom she was bringing up. When her son-in-law came h...
Of nearly six hundred species of birds in the Philippines the jungle fowl, or bankiva, is best known, and is both killed and domesticated. Unlike the dove, it does not understand h...
When Jason, the son of the dethroned King of Iolchos, was a little boy, he was sent away from his parents and placed under the queerest schoolmaster that ever you heard of. This le...
(Explanatory) (3) Mr. Stephen Powers claims that there is no such word in the Miwok language as Yosemite. The valley has always been known to them, and is to this day, when speakin...
Two young women took a ball of yarn and doubled the threads, and then tied tiny pieces of wood along these threads so as to form a miniature ladder. Then they went upstairs togethe...
Respecting their myths the Filipinos differ in little from other human families whose civilization is incomplete. They had in former times the same tendency to create gods and spir...
Once upon a time there was a youth who used to herd buffaloes; and as he watched his animals graze he noticed that exactly at noon every day a she-dog used to make its way to a rav...
A curious tale of the Rosicrucians runs to the effect that more than two centuries ago a band of German colonists entered the Ramapo valley and put up houses of stone, like those t...
A man whose name was Artuk had buried his wife, but refused to remain aloof from doings which those who have been busied with the dead are forbidden to share. He said he did not ho...
Though Columbus made his first landing in Porto Rico at Naguabo, where the Caribs afterward destroyed a Spanish settlement, he gave its present name to the island when he put in Ag...
Although Minnesota has been called the "Land of the Dakotas," the Sioux, as well as the Pawnees, roamed over the entire Mississippi Basin, previous to its settlement; and were foun...
The Tory Manheim sits brooding in his farmhouse near Valley Forge, and his daughter, with a hectic flush on her cheek, looks out into the twilight at the falling snow. She is worn...
Sia (New Mexico) Another day when he was travelling around, Coyote met a deer with two fawns. The fawns were beautifully spotted, and he said to the deer, "How did you paint your c...
Ogata was the name of a castle-lord who lived in the Island of the Nine Provinces, (Kiushiu). He had but one son, an infant, whom the people in admiration nicknamed Jiraiya (Young...
On some of the beautiful vases that are made in Japan there is a picture of a goddess changing a dragon into an island. When the children of Japan say, "Mother, tell us a story abo...
When mankind first came to live upon the earth, they committed many blunders, for they were ignorant and wasteful, not knowing how to shift for themselves, and having no one to tea...
I. LLANLLECHID CHURCH. There was a tradition extant in the parish of Llanllechid, near Bangor, Carnarvonshire, that it was intended to build a church in a field called Cae'r Capel,...
The following Fairy legend was told to Mr. W. W. Cobb, of Hilton House, Atherstone, by Mrs. Williams, wife of Thomas Williams, pilot, in whose house he lodged when staying in Angle...
Though several natural bridges are known in this country, there is but one that is famous the world over, and that is the one which spans Clear Creek, Virginia--the remnant of a ca...
The Delaware Indians, or Lenape, as they called themselves, are of Algonquin lineage. Their language, which is soft and musical, bears a strong resemblance to that of the Shawnees...