One day in October, 1827, Rev. Charles Sharply rode into Alfred, Maine, and held service in the meeting-house. After the sermon he announced that he was going to Waterborough to pr...
Feather beds should be made of domestic birds' feathers, such as geese, ducks, and fowls. Wild fowl feathers should not be mixed with these feathers; for, otherwise, the sick will...
For ten years King Agamemnon and the men of Greece laid siege to Troy. But though sentence had gone forth against the city, yet the day of its fall tarried, because certain of the...
Dinewan and his two wives, the Wahn, were camping out. Seeing some clouds gathering, they made a bark humpy. It came on to rain, and they all took shelter under it. Dinewan, when h...
In the solitudes of the hills we find her, and yet we may come on her unawares in the din of a noisy city. She will answer us where the waves are lashing themselves against the rug...
When the great city of Troy was taken, all the chiefs who had fought against it set sail for their homes. But there was wrath in heaven against them, for indeed they had borne them...
When the Territory of Louisiana was still the property of France; when the United States was endeavoring to subdue the savages within its own domain; a wild and unsophisticated peo...
Wurrunnah had had a long day's hunting, and he came back to the camp tired and hungry. He asked his old mother for durrie, but she said there was none left. Then he asked some of t...
These are a sort of water-spirits who inveigle women and children into the recesses which they inhabit, beneath lakes and rivers, by floating past them, on the surface of the water...
The words Cwn Annwn are variously translated as Dogs of Hell, Dogs of Elfinland. In some parts of Wales they are called Cwn Wybir, Dogs of the Sky, and in other places Cwn Bendith...
If the sick asks for a pigeon pie, or the flesh of a pigeon, it is a sign that his death is near. If the feathers of a pigeon be in a bed, the sick cannot die on it.
A white cock was looked upon as an unlucky bird, thus:-- Na chadw byth yn nghylch dy dy, Na cheiliog gwyn, na chath ddu. Never keep about thy house, A white cock, nor black cat.
An old man lived with his two wives, the Mooninguggahgul sisters, and his two sons. The old man spent all his time making boomerangs, until at last he had four nets full of these w...
Gwineeboo and Goomai, the water rat, were down at the creek one day, getting mussels for food, when, to their astonishment, a kangaroo hopped right into the water beside them. Well...
Goomblegubbon the bustard, his two wives, Beeargah the hawk, and Ouyan the curlew, with the two children of Beeargah, had their camps right away in the bush; their only water suppl...
Bougoodoogahdah was all old woman who lived alone with her four hundred dingoes. From living so long with these dogs she had grown not to care for her fellow creatures except as fo...
Winter was coming, and the birds had flown far to the south, where the air was warm and they could find berries to eat. One little bird had broken its wing and could not fly with t...
Gooloo was a very old woman, and a very wicked old woman too, as this story will tell. During all the past season, when the grass was thick with seed, she had gathered much doonbur...
Young Goolahwilleeel used to go out hunting every day. His mother and sisters always expected that he would bring home kangaroo and emu for them. But each day he came home without...
This is a freakish spirit who delights rather to perplex and frighten mankind than either to serve or seriously hurt them. The Esprit Follet of the French, Shakespeare's Puck, or R...
At the beginning of winter, the iguanas hide themselves in their homes in the sand; the black eagle hawks go into their nests; the garbarlee or shingle-backs hide themselves in lit...
Goonur was a clever old woman-doctor, who lived with her son, Goonur, and his two wives. The wives were Guddah the red lizard, and Beereeun the small, prickly lizard. One day the t...
The feeling recently created by an attempt to fasten the stupid names of Fairport or of North Elmira on the village in central New York that, off and on for fifty years, had been c...
The superstition respecting the water-horse, in one form or other, is common to the Celtic race. He was supposed to intimate by preternatural lights and noises the death of those a...
Mooregoo the Mopoke had been camped away by himself for a long time. While alone he had made a great number of boomerangs, nullah-nullahs, spears, neilahmans, and opossum rugs. Wel...
Oolah, the lizard, was out getting yams on a Mirrieh flat. She had three of her children with her. Suddenly she thought she heard some one moving behind the big Mirrieh bushes. She...
The country was stricken with a drought. The rivers were all dry except the deepest holes in them. The grass was dead, and even the trees were dying. The bark dardurr of the blacks...
This spectre was supposed to be an old man, or malignant spirit, who directed, and ruled over, the mountain torrents. He delighted in devastating the lands. His appearance was horr...
Nothing is left of Province House, the old home of the royal governors, in Boston, but the gilded Indian that served as its weathercock and aimed his arrow at the winds from the cu...
Between the island of Manhattoes and the Catskills the Hudson shores were plagued with spooks, and even as late as the nineteenth century Hans Anderson, a man who tilled a farm bac...