Last altered February 19th 2002.
Aside from the General, Gothic Horror, Early Fantasy, and Medieval
sections, these links are organized by region and language group, with
those groups which produced written accounts of their myths and legends
earlier, generally appearing closer to the beginning.
Announcement: You don't mind frames and a smaller font and you'd
like a spiffy contents scroll on the left? Try the Myths and Legends
main page.
Announcement: These pages are now being mirrored at http://www.myths.com/pub/myths/mythold.html thanks to
David Murphy et al. with the original being at http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze33gpz/mythold.html.
I'm still looking for more of these, but we've got:
Contents
- Philip Burns' Mythology
& Folklore A description of mythology along with scores if not
hundreds of links. It's quite a stash. There is a greater emphasis on
folklore than here. He's been annotating them as well.
- Kathleen Jenks also has a large number of well annotated
mythology links organized by theme & region at Mythinglinks.org
- John Adcox maintains a somewhat smaller collection of
Mythology and Folklore links.
- Jo Heirman's collection of mythology links is a bit briefer and
lacks descriptions, but Mythologie.pagina.nl may be easier for you to understand
than other sites if Dutch is your native tongue.
- Julia Hayden's Ancient World Web contains links to and reviews of a
number of sites dealing with archaeology, history, art, mythology and
ancient religions. She also has a separate index for Mythology and Religion
- Arthur Goldstuck's Legendary Site
of the Week Myths, Legends, and Urban Folklore are fair game.
- The ARGOS limited
search engine, searches major ancient and medieval indicies such as ABZU,
Perseus, and Labyrinth - thus screening out a large number of irrelevant
links.
- Micha Lindemans's Encyclopedia
Mythica. Over 5100 articles and growing on myth related topics of
lengths ranging from a couple of sentances to a couple of paragraphs.
- A somewhat similar venture by Lestat is Of Gods and Men.
- The University of Michigan's Windows to the Universe project has
assembled a collection of Mythology
pages describing deities from around the world. Of note is that here
they are organized not only by cultural group, but by "sphere of
influence" as well.
- The
Probert Encyclopedia - Mythology should probably be called a
dictionary, given its extensive number of rather brief (one or two
line), entries.
Restored! 2/10
- After the MIT incarnation of this page, Mark de la Hey's
MythText was the earliest site devoted entirely to mythology of which I
was aware. Robert O'Connell of Untangle has revived the non-commercial
parts of that site as Mythhome. It includes articles on and links to sites
dealing with various aspects of mythology. It has recently been revamped
and updated with the help of Rick Eagan.
- Luminara's Web of
Mythtery contains both short format entries on a number of deities,
organized by culture, as well as a number of brief essays on myth related
subjects.
- P. J. Criss's The Book of Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, and other Mythological
Characters contains brief entires on numerous deities and heroes,
retellings of various mythic tales, and links to a number of mythology
related sites representing cultures around the world.
- Kat's older Mythology pages have been incorporated into her site,
Eliki's pages on Gods, Goddesses and Myth featuring the Celtic pantheons,
and such creatures as the phoenix, dragons, and Pegasus. She also has
pages on Arthuriana, Greek Amazons, Faeries, and Mermaids.
- Richard McLaughlin's Mythology Notes present descriptions of gods, summaries
of myths, and some historical material on the mythologies of the Ancient
Near East, Persia, Scandinavia, and the Celts. His is one of the few
sites to include a mythological treatment of Judaic and Christian stories
- some of the material he draws upon for these is extracanonical.
- Scadian, Cynric of Bedwyn (R. G. Ferrell) presents his Guide to
Lesser known Deities and Moderately Divine Beings a few brief descriptions
of obscure deities in this installment of Ex
Tempore.
- Elizabeth Willey, Donald Keller, and Paula K. Marmor have put
together a number of essays, links, pieces of artwork relating to such Legends as
Robin Hood, King Arthur, Roland, El Cid, Pirates and others.
- JBL statue is out
to sell you statues of deities from all over the world. The cool thing is
that they show you pictures of these statues, but their brief
descriptions of the deity featured thereon are not always accurate.
- Mythic
Images is another purveyor of statues. They also describe the
goddesses they portray in short paragraphs.
- Sandra Stanton sells oil paintings of goddesses from
around the world. At her commercial web site, The Goddess in World Mythology she presents images of
those paintings along with brief descriptions of those deities.
-
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is just that from 1894.
- Kim and Mike Burkard's The Green
(formerly known as 'All Things Ancient') features Kim's
extensive mythology booklist FAQ - partially culled from USENET.
- Bifrost isn't the only rainbow in mythology. Fred Stern writes
about the rainbow as it appears in a number of Religious
Myths from all over the world.
- Mark Isaak now keeps his Mythological Sources
FAQ on his own page and features his picks of the better mostly
offline sources.
- I too, have cobbled together a short list of
Mythology
Sources but to escape redundancy I've added brief reviews of those
works I've encountered.
- Bulfinch's
Mythology here maintained by Bob Fisher. Its first section, The Age
of Fable
includes Greek, some Norse, and some Egyptian mythology in a sort of
"Reader's Digest" format. Its other sections on King Arthur, the
Mabinogeon, and Charlemagne continue in a similar format.
- Reality Software's Origins of Mythology, is a Zip file e-text, downloadable as shareware.
- Madhury Ray (with some assistance) has compiled descriptions of
the cultures, pantheons, and legends from around the world in The
World (As We Know It), Legends of Forever.
- Morgana's Observatory collects, retells and highlights a number
of Universal Myths and Mysterious Places including
creation, flood, and afterlife myths.
-
Creation Stories and Traditional Wisdom Short tales primarily
from Australian Aboriginal and Native American sources.
- Richard Darsie collects Tales
of Wonder - Folk and Fairy tales from around the world at his site.
(Broken Link 2/10/2002)
- The SurLaLune Fairy Tale Pages are Heidi Anne Heiner's
collection of tales - often as written by Lang or Perrault, but well
annotated by Heiner, with illustrations, histories, and recommended
readings.
- Whootie
Owl's Stories to grow by is a collection of folk and fairy tales
gathered from around the world, intended for younger (up to 10 years old)
readers.
- Kids Zone at AFRO-Americ@ has a Myths
and Fables page, collecting & illustrating 16 stories from around the
world.
(Broken Link 2/10/2002)
- Snaith Primary School in East Yorkshire, UK has collected a few
Myth
retellings from places including Japan and Mexico.
- D. L. Asheman is the translator of several Electronic
Texts in Folklore and Mythology. His translations
are primarily from German tales and there are links to
tales from Scandinavia, Britain and other regions.
- ZenSufi
Story Park collects a number of folktales primarily from South and
South-West Asia, primarily from the Sufi Muslim tradition - but including
stories from outside those areas as well.
- Cinderella Stories are found throughout Western Europe, with
parallels elsewhere as well. The University of Southern Mississippi has
collected a number of English languages versions of the tale at its Cinderella Project site and also hosts collections of
Jack the Giant Killer and Red Riding Hood stories at the same site.
- David Brown, Kathy Martin, Jean Rusting, Doris Dale and others
have assembled a collection of links and bibliographic refferences to a
number of Cinderella Stories for the Children's Literature
Project.
- Rita Kambos's Mythmaker site contains retellings myths legends and
folklore- current offerings are a story from India and a couple stories
from Russia.
- Mary Mark has collected assmbled a large bibliography of and a
few links to Percussion Folktales.
- The LEAP English Academy's students retell (and invent?) a
number of Folktales, Stories, and Poems from around the world for
an issue of their magazine, LEAP Star.
- In 1872, John Fiske wrote a "somewhat rambling and unsystematic
series of
papers" entitled Myths and Mythmakers: Old Tales and Superstitions
Interpreted by Comparative Mythology.
- Eliza Burt Gamble wrote The God-idea of the Ancients or Sex in Religion in 1899.
- Sir James George Frazer's magnum opus The Golden
Bough was the first major work to make an exhaustive comparison of
the myths and religious practicies of cultures worldwide. Much of
Frazer's conclusions are now considered outdated, but the work as a whole
is still an interesting read. The link above is to the 1922 abridged
edition.
- Excerpts from the mythology related writings of
James Frazer, author of The Golden Bough.
- Eric Maulin of the magazine Label France reviews Georges
Dumézil's Mythe et Epopée in The Indo-European tales of Georges Dumézil
revealing some of the philologist's comparisons between Indo-European
mythologies.
- The Joseph
Campbell Foundation Web Site features bio- and bibliographical
information on the popular mythologist, an excerpt of his work, some
other mythological links, and details of the Foundation's activities.
- Theosophical Perspectives on World Spiritual Traditions
is a collection of articles from Sunrise Magazine, many of which deal with
mythology from all over the world.
- Michael Joseph's course at Rutgers entitled In Search of Cupid & Psyche: Myths and Legends in Children's
Literature examines and compares a number of stories and archetypes
beginning with Near Eastern and Classical mythology and progressing
forward in time to current tales.
- Aaron Rester's Mythology Home Page has become Lamhfada: An Online Magazine
of Myth and Story. The initial articles contain several
essays about mythological stories from numerous cultures all relating to
the idea of a savior/creator/fertility deity. He also has a collection of
links to other mythology sites.
- Flute (Carolyn Maloney), Vickie Hamby and the rest of Creative Minds have a site on which
includes monthly articles on mythology. They also feature
poetry, the mystical, back articles and of course, links.
- N. S. Gill has assembled a number of essays on Ancient/Classical
History for the Mining Company. Included is a section on mythology
and religion.
- Every two weeks, Linda Casselman presents a new essay on a
different area of mythology for Suite 101's
Mythology page.
- Dan Norder's Mythology Web contains a number of essays on varying
aspects of myth, legend, and folklore - including urban folklore. It
appears that he intends to add a new collection of essays every month or
so, but at last check it had been some time since the last update. Also
at this site is an active mythology oriented mailing list and archive.
- Rebecca Salek has compiled a collection of creation myths, myths
about the overthrowing of goddesses and descriptions of goddesses
themselves in Clio: Women in Mythology, Religion and Herstory. She
writes from the thesis that these myths help indicate that prior to
the pridominatly patriarchal, literate cultures we know of, there were
matriarchal societies.
- Tired of a saccharine goddess image? Robin Weare's Dark
Goddess
site examines the less sweet aspects of such deities as Artemis and Kali from
a bit of a neo-Pagan standpoint.
- Stephan Stenudd critiques the Jungian analysis of Myths of
Creation in this essay
- Deborah Scherrer has collected an number of myths and Solar Folklore from around the world for the Stanford
Solar Center.
- Bifrost isn't the only rainbow in mythology. Fred Stern writes
about the rainbow as it appears in a number of Religious
Myths from all over the world.
(Broken Link 2/10/2002)
- Mark Isaak has compiled a number of Flood Myth stories from around the world for use as a talk.origins FAQ. The most recent
edition of which is kept at his home page.
Third link is a (Broken Link 2/10/2002)
- Patrick C. Ryan has a page on Proto-Religion, which he claims is a reconstruction of
the religious beliefs of people before they dispersed from the rift
valleys of Africa 100K BCE. Putting it mildly, this is more than a bit of
a stretch, but his comparisons of creation accounts are reasonably
detailed, and hit some of the commonalities that many note about Near
Eastern creation accounts, as well as bringing in a few other cultures.
- Equinox Occult Supplies also supplies a collection of essays on
sundry topics in Mythology from the Greek & Celtic pantheons as well as
various mythical animals.
- Gareth Long compares and contrasts the Hellenic and Nordic
pantheons in Greek vs.
Norse Mythology.
- The Aberdeen Bestiary is an actual medieval bestiary
from around 1200.
- Oban retells assorted Animal,
Myths, Legends, and Folktales from around the world, with
illustrations.
- Windseeker's (Laura Hamilton's) Home Page contains a
Glossary of Mythic Creatures and a page on dragon lore, including
retellings of a few dragon legends.
- Gareth Long's Encyclopedia of Monsters, Mythical Creatures,
and Fabulous Beasts contains a number of short paragraph descriptions
of sundry creatures, some of which are illustrated.
- Dark Daemon's Mythic
Creatures page contains a dictionary of mostly one-line descriptions
of a great number of mythic creatures.
(Broken Link 2/10/2002)
- Conrad Tolentino's The Bestiary
presents information on both mythcal beasts and cryptozoological creatures
such as Bigfoot.
-
alt.mythology.mythic-animals - this USENET newsgroup is intended to
be
for the discussion of mythic & legendary animals & monsters. It is also
dominated by a lot of PBNG (play by newsgroup) free-form roleplaying.
- Anansi's Mithology, Stories, Movies page recounts spider legends
from around the world - primarily from the Hopi stories and from the West
African Anansi stories. This page is in both Japanese and English.
Dragons, Serpents and Reptiles
- Robert T. Mason's paper The Divine Serpent in Myth and Legend recounts and
analyzes serpent tales from the Near East and the rest of the world.
- Alara (Sara Gilliand) undertakes a Jungian analysis of dragons
in world mythology in her The
Dragon as an Archetype paper.
(Broken Link 2/10/2002)
- Jennifer Walker's Here be Dragons! provides mythic
information as well as art and assorted links related to these fearsome
beasts.
- Polenth's Weyr is a collection of information about both
literary and mythological dragons as well as links to other dragon
afficianados on the web.
- Drakhen briefly describes various Dragons of Myth and Legend.
- The
Dragon's Pearl A brief article on Lake Tahoe's Tessie with mentions
of a couple of other dragon tales.
- U. Mass has a page on Snake Mythology written
by Scott Jackson and Peter Mirick with illustrations by Nancy Haver.
Restored! 2/10/02
- Soror Ourania's Naga page also
focuses on the snake's role in myth.
Birds
- Phoenix recounts The Phoenix
Legend of this fantastic bird as described in the Near East and in
China.
(Broken Link 2/10/2002)
- Mad Phoenix also retells the Legend of the Phoenix in it's Chinese and Near Eastern
versions.
- A fixture in the legends of the cultures native to Alaska and
the American Pacific Northwest, Raven is featured in the Aviariy's
collection of links to Raven fiction
- Gryphons,
Griffins, Griffons! Tirya's page with some info, more pictures, and
lots of links to companies named Gryphon or thereabouts.
Mammals
- Les licornes, The Unicorn Web Page of Bruno Faidutti.
He keeps a number of unicorn pictures at this bilingual site, drawing from
medieval manuscripts.
- Cybercat's
Space presents some brief notes on the cat as a symbol in world
mythology.
(Broken Link 2/10/2002)
- Zephyr Lion presents this collection of Tidbits
of Cat Mythology and Folklore.
- Bandicoot's Cat Lovers page contains this section on Mythology and Folklore of cats.
(Broken Link 2/10/2002)
- Laura Steinke (Shadowfox) presents a page on Kitsune
and other legends of foxes from around the world.
(Broken Link 2/10/2002)
- Bob Trubshaw's article, Black
Dogs - Guardians of the Corpse Ways, explores the mythology of dogs
drawing from many cultures.
Human-like Creatures
- Matt Wisely has a few brief descriptions of sprites and genies
and things in An Etymology of Sprites and Fantastic Creatures.
Restored! 2/10/02
- Rebecca Lehmann's Faerie Encyclopedia
has many brief entries as well as links to related pages and some of
Yeats' tales.
(Broken Link) 2/10/02
- Pagan the Fay's Faerie
page defines a number of different creatures, places and things
related to the fair folk.
- Dawn has collected a number of Feri
Stories and more from around the world. Some of these one might not
consider to be about faeries at first blush, such as the notes on the
Sons of God.
- Sea Tails Online Kurt
Cagle's mermaid page. The History and Persona Guide is the meatiest
section here.
- Mermaid Myths and Legends recounts several mermaid
stories, primarily from the British Isles.
- Frodo's mermaid pages are primarily oriented around Disney's
Ariel, however he maintains some useful Links
to other Mermaid pages.
- Pathway to Darkness bills itself as "the ultimate online
vampire resource" and indeed its collection of essays on Vampire
Facts is quite impressive and has much to say about past and present
vampire folklore. Also included is an essay on werewolves.
- In silence forlorn: Vampires gives a historical survey
of vampire like creatures throughout the world, as well as brief
recountings of the lives of Vlad Tepes and Lady Elisabeth Bathory.
- S A Rudy has pages on vampires, shapeshifters, and witches which
list the different quallities that they have when portrayed in contempory
fiction in her Comparison of Myhs in Popular Fiction page.
- The Minneapolis Institute of the Arts runs a very visual
tour of World Mythology
meant to supplement a trip to the museum.
- Here is presented Bill Hollon's essay on the Origin of the Seven Day
Week.
- This feature on
The Celestial David and Goliath takes an astronomical look at that
Biblical tale and compares it to tales in Irish mythology.
(Broken Link) 2/10/02
- Martin Gray invites folks to Explore the Sacred
Sites he has photographed. His commentary discusses the religious,
archeological and historical import of those sites with the mythic and
legendary content varying.
- Bill Williams runs a concordance program that operates
over a number of e-texts including the Bible, the Koran, and a number of
works of
classical mythology--- which you could also find in the Perseus Project
(see the Greek/Roman section).
- The American Academy of Religion maintains a searchable Syllabi
project archive. Included are courses partially or fully covering
myths and mythology to varying degrees.
- Catherine Yronwode's Lucky Mojo
site includes a large collection of essays on amulets, talismans, charms,
sacred geometry, and sacred landscape. Not exactly mythology, but some of
it is related.
- Another useful site in a similar vein is Symbols.com.
- Whether or not they describe actual events, most modern religions are not above invoking material which is
mythic
in character. This page by A. Mueller is part of the World-Wide Web
Virtual Library.
(Broken Link) 2/10/02
- J. B. Hare's Internet Sacred
Text Archive collects texts from past and current religions, including
the Rg Veda, the Kojiki and Nihongi, the Quran, the Eddas, and many
others.
- World Religions and Scriptures is another good site for
information on major living religions.
- alt.mythology - this USENET
newsgroup is a good place to go for general and even somewhat esoteric
discussions. Don't proselytize there though, and it's also a good idea to
check the archives at Google's Usenet
Groops Archive to
look at past discussions first, and to read the alt.mythology General FAQ.
- Sumerian
Mythology FAQ This page contains a description of the pantheon and
cosmology of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq over
4000 years ago. Aspects of Sumerian culture are touched upon as are
parallels with Biblical stories.
- Inanna can you hear me? Inanna - The Opera is a rock opera based on the Inanna
myths. A number of translations of Sumerian myths (along with a couple of
Babylonian ones) and hyms can be found here as well.
- Shemhazai's (Valis, Michael Tolle)
Babyloniaca brings you translations of Sumerian and Akkadian myths,
hymns and incantations, as well as information relavant to Mesopotamian
oriented pagans.
(Broken Link 2/10/02)
-
Twin Rivers Rising a pagan coven of the Sumerian Tradition maintains
a good page on the Religion of the Sumerians, as well as providing
an English-Sumerian dictionary.
(semi-Broken Link 2/10/02)
- Lishtar maintains an extensive collection of translations of
Mesopotamian myths, as well as her own retellings in Gateways
to Babylon. Some of these are difficult to find currently in print.
- Mary Lynn Schroeder has written an essay entitled In the Eyes of Inanna: Aspects of a Goddess in
Literature, drawing from Jacobsen, Kramer, Eliade and
Wolkstein.
(Broken Link 2/10/02)
-
Assyro-Babylonian Mythology FAQ This page contains a description
of the pantheon, cosmology, and history of the ancient Assyrians and
Babylonians. These people lived from about 4000 years ago to about 2500
years ago primarily in what is now northern and central Iraq.
- The Restoring Christian Keys site has a lot of messages within
that I don't personally care for, as some of the language appears
intollerant of other forms of belief. However, they have collected a
number of translations of Mesopotamian Myths (by Dalley, Kramer, Jacobsen
and others) on their Babylonia and Near Eastern Resources page.
- Lee Huddleston's course on The Ancient Near
East to 500 BCE includes a good page on the spiritual systems of
Mesopotamia and an extremely well annotated and linked outline of The Epic of
Gilgamesh
- Fr. James W. Reites' Origins of Western Religion course
presents information
on the Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh for contrast with the creation and flood
stories in Genesis in Archaeology
and Literature: Creation and Flood Stories.
(Broken Link 2/10/02)
- Wolf Carnahan presents Maureen Gallery Kovacs translation of the
Sin-eqi-unninni version of The Epic of Gilgamesh Tablets I-XI.
- Washington State University's World Cultures course presents a
summary of the New Babylonian version of the Epic of
Gilgamesh
by Sin-eqi-unninni.
- John Crocker sumarizes the Epic of Gilgamesh, introducing it with a history of the
discovery of the different versions of the text.
- Rene Pannekoek presents the de Lingre Böhl translation of
the Gilgamesh story into Dutch (although he also includes an English
translation of the Atrahasis flood story) in Vertaling Gilgamesjepos.
(Broken Link 2/10/02)
- Arthur A. Brown has written an essay entitled Storytelling, the Meaning of Life, and The Epic of
Gilgamesh for Exploring Ancient World Cultures.
- Shawn C. Knight's Egyptology Page.
Reworked and reformatted for the web from the
old Egyptian Mythology FAQ, this edition is also quicker to upload.
Restored! 2/10/02
- Jimmy Dunn has put together The Gods of Ancient Egypt,
an extensive document discussing the individual deities and the
development of Egyptian religion over time. This document is mirrored here. Much of this
is straight out of E. A. Wallis Budge's The Gods of the Egyptians
(1904).
- April Arnold's Ancient Egypt: the Mythology contains extensive
descriptions of the deities, retellings of the myths, and essays on the
region.
(Broken Link 2/10/02)
- Katherine Griffis of Griffis
Consulting provides a number of Egyptology pages
including her pages on the Goddesses of Ancient Egypt.
- The Egyptian Mythology Site provides brief descriptions
of the deities, images, descriptions of philosophical concepts, and
another translation of the Papyrus of Ani.
(Broken Link 2/10/02)
- In addition to providing a teaser for his new book Hor,
Peter Preston provides an overview and some notes on Egyptian Mythology.
- Deborah Howard's essay The
Egyptian Culture Reflected in Worship presents an overview of Egyptian
religion and mythology for Exploring Ancient World Cultures.
-
The Papyrus of Ani: The Egyptian Book of the Dead translated by turn
of the century Egyptologist, E. A. Wallis Budge. It should be noted that
Budge's translations have fallen out of favor in the Egyptological
community in recent years. While the gist remains the same, the serious
scholar is advised to seek out something more current.
- Jimmy Dunn and Interoz also have a copy of Budge's translation
of the Book of the
Dead, but this version has a table of contents page which makes it
more nicely segmented.
- The Legend of Osiris and Isis as told by Christine Hobson
for the Baobab Project
- Rev. Stephanie "merry-Bast" Cass discusses the cat goddess in
great detail in The domain of Bast.
- This article briefly defines different classes of myths
before describing the Egyptian
Gods and briefly recounting some myths.
- The House of Netjer, a Kemetic Orthodox church - basicly an
Egyptian group which uses the whole of ancient Egyptian religion - has
put together a large collection of brief descriptions of the Egyptian
deities in Netjer - the
One God of the Ancient Egyptians
- Milo Shiff has compiled a Glosary of Deites providing capsule information for a
large number of Egyptian deities, with a bit of a neo-Pagan slant.
- Taken from Mythtext, Mark de la Hey's Guide to the Gods v. 1.0 contains brief descriptions of
the Egyptian deities.
- Canaanite/Ugaritic
Mythology FAQ This page contains a description of the pantheon of
the people refered to as Canaanites in the Bible, as recovered from the
city of Ugarit in what is now western Syria. These people lived from at
least 3800 years ago through 3000 years ago and were absorbed into
neigboring peoples including the Phoenicians and the Hebrews.
- Biblical Beginnings in Canaan As you can probably
guess, this has a good bit on Canaanite Mythology in a Biblical context.
- Brandeis University maintains a number of
Selections from Ancient Near Eastern Texts including the Ugaritic
myth of the
Dying and Rising of Baal
(Broken Link 5/12/00)
- Lilinah biti-Anat's Qadash Kinahnu - A
Canaanite-Phoenician Temple as well as being a site for
Canaanite neo-pagan information contains a extensive amount of
mythological information about those gods. She also continues to
translate many of the myths from Ugarit and some later sources.
- Salim George Khalaf's page on Phoenician Religion describes the deities and religious
practicies of the Canaanites, primarily as witnessed by their neighbors,
the Greeks and the Egyptians. He also has a page describing their Ethnic Origin, Language and Literature, delving
into both Ugaritic and Greek accounts, as well as a page giving the Background to Religions in E. Mediterranean - which
confines itself to the Aramaeans, Canaanite/Phoenicians, Philistines, and
Moabites.
- Roger Crowley, aka. Village Fox, has assembled a Hebrew Mythology Library which explores some of the
Genesis stories such as those of creation and the early patriarchs. He
also examines the nature of Elohim, YHWH, and possible Hebrew goddesses.
He appears to intend to expand his site to cover other Near Eastern
regions, as well as stories from Native American groups, but at last
check, those pages weren't nearly as developed as the one above.
(Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Paul Brians et al. present an excerpt from their book Reading
About the World, Volume 1 discussing The Hebrew Creation Narrative (Genesis 1-3) including a
fair amount of commentary. Genesis and the other books of the Pentateuch
were assembled in written form during the sixth century B.C.E., following
the Babylonian Captivity.
- Donavon Marais of the University of South Africa presents his
paper on The Cain Myth: a discussion of its historical roots and an
interpretation. He introduces the Cain story by examining the Old
Testament from a historical and mythological perspective and compares the
tale to Egyptian and Canaanite stories.
- It's not to hard to find the Bible on-line - The King James
translation was one of the most widely distributed e-texts before the
advent of the web; however, if you want to find the books and stories that
didn't make it in (most of which were written after the canonical books -
later than 200 B.C.E. for the Tanach and later than 150 C.E. for the New
Testament) try the Wesley Center's Noncanonical
Homepage for Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha - books that might have
gotten you tortured during the inquisition. This is where you'll find
stories about the Nephilim, and seven or ten heavens and all kinds of
escatological stuff.
- Alan Humm's Lilith page contains a large number of ancient and
medieval sources.
- Renee Rosen's Lilith
Shrine has extensive links and information about the legendary first
wife of Adam.
- David S. Devon has written an essay on Science as Applied Kabbalah. While primarily religious
and mystical in tone, this essay does give some insight into the
Kabbalistic take on Jewish cosmology.
(Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Charles Benton takes a mythological look at Angels and their different classifications.
(Broken Link 5/12/00)
- Stephanie Connelly's Online Demon Dictionary is featured in
Terzian's Vault: Demonolatry. Many demons have there
sources throughout the religions of the Near East.
(Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Dante Alighieri is guided by Virgil through the
Inferno (Hell), and Purgatorio (Purgatory) on his way to
Beatrice in Paradiso (Paradise) in his Divine Comedy.
Written in the late 1200's and early 1300's Dante's cosmology is his own
take on that of the medieval Roman Catholic church and has roots in
Classical myth, the Bible, extra-canonical sources, and Dante's own
politics. The link above takes you to both the Italian and Longfellow's
translation.
- Drawing on the legends of the fallen angels from Genesis 6 and
various extra-canonical sources, John Milton crafted his masterpiece Paradise Lost in 1664 with a revision in 1667.
- Bashar Barghouti has collected a pair of Palestinian
Folk Stories at his site.
- Hittite Mythology
REF This page contains a description of the pantheon, and history of
the Hittites, who drew heavily upon the pantheon of their neighbors the
Hurrians. These peoples lived primarily in the central and eastern
portions of Anatolia during the second millenium B.C.E.
- Poems
from the Turkish Epic is a collection of Altaic poems a dapted by Gene
Doty from Gulten Yener's prose translation.
- Handan Oz's Turkish
Mythology page contains Turkish myths (mostly in Turkish) as well as
myths set in Turkey (mostly Greek and written in English).
(Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Kephera claims to have assembled "the best collection of
Middle Eastern Mythology!" accessible from his Middle Eastern
Studies page. His ancient mythology page includes copies of Stephanie
Dalley's translations of four Akkadian language myths. He also has a
couple of Canaanite Myths, and five Egyptian myths. He also keeps a
dictionary of Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hittite, and Hebrew gods and
assorted entities.
(Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Pagans Online's Scrolls
Catalogue - Ancient Near East collects some essays and
translations of Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts.
(Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Robert Best argues that Noah's flood was based on Sumerian
accounts of an actual river flood and compares the two versions in this
site promoting his book: Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic: Sumerian Origins of the
Flood Myth..
- Well, it's archaeology, not mythology, but
The
Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago has some interesting
stuff including ABZU
a guide to info on the Ancient Near East availible on the net.
- Father James W. Reites' course on the Origins of Western
Religion contains a description and links concerning Religion in
the Ancient Near East: Myths and Gods. He deals with Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and the Canaanites.
- A brief
glossary of predominently Mesopotamian, Near Eastern
deities explains the Names of the
Computers at IIB.uam.es.
- Alf Layla wa Layla The Thousand
Nights and a Night translated by Sir Richard F. Burton.
Early versions of this collection of tales go back to the tenth century,
but the present collection includes material from as recent as the
sixteenth. It made its way to Europe, specifically France, in the early
1700's and Burton's version was published in the late 1800's. The source
tales come from all over the Near East, as well as India. The frame
story of Shaharazad is Persian and if you're looking for Sindbad the
Sailor, this book is his home. Many of these tales feature the
Caliph Harun al'Rashid, a historical figure who ruled the Abbasids
and was a correspondent of Charlemagne. This is the 1850 version which is
much less exhaustive and inclusive than his famous 17 volume 1885 version.
Nonetheless, the file is huge. Other copies of this can be found here.
-
Andrew Lang's version. of The Arabian Nights.
(Broken Link 2/11/02)
-
Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp - a story associated with the Nights,
but not included in the canonical collection.
(Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is also associated with
the Nights. This is from the Burton translation.
(Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Jinni, Genie, Djinn, Richard F. Burton had a fair
amount to say abouth them in the footnotes to his translation of the
Nights. He also had notes about Ghuls,
more commonly known as ghouls, the Rukh, and flying
carpets.
- John Crocker has an excellent set of notes on the Nights
entitled Arabian
Nights Entertainments after the publishing house which put out
Burton's translation. He details works of art, music & literature
inspired by the Nights, as well as providing a history of the Nights and
of many of the characters contained therin.
- Fatme Sharafeddine Hassan's essay The Passion and the Magic: Distinctions of Arabic
Folktales, highlights common features of those stories.
- alt.mythology.jinn has been a fairly low traffic
newsgroup devoted to that subject.
- The Zoroastrian religion contains much of what we know of the
Persian mythology, particularly in the Avesta, a work attributed
to Zarathustra, which likely preceeded him.
- In the 800's CE, Ervad Zadspram compiled writings from the
Avesta and Zand, here translated by W. E. West for Exploring Ancient
World Cultures. This selection begins with a description of creation by
Ohrmazd and Ahriman.
- Written around 1000 CE by Ferdowsi, the Shah
Nahmeh i.e. the Epic of the Kings, contains much of the balance of
known Persian myth and legend including tales of the Zal and of Rustram.
(Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Pomona's Ancient Cosmology site features three articles on India which describe the creations, Deities, and
structure of the Vedic universe.
(Erratic Link 5/26/00)
- Indian
Mythology.com presents a sizable collection of tales and descriptions
of Hindu deities as they appear in mythic tales. This stretches from the
Vedas to folktales.
- Global Hindu Electronic Networks presents God in Hindu Dharma and
Representation in Temples, which describes and provides images of a
number of Deities and heroes and also maintains an article from "Hinduism
Today" on "God and Gods of Hinduism".
- Dating back to at least 1200 BC to 900 BC, the
Hymns of the Rig Veda collected at Washington State University
provide insight into creation, the devas, and the ashuras.
- Sri Aurobindo focuses on the tradition of spirituality and
mysticism found in the Rig Veda, and translates those hymms
relating to Agni, fire, in Rig Veda - Hymms
to the Mystic Fire.
(Broken Link 2/12/02)
- InvestIndia collects a dozen or so Religious
Stories from India including mythological tales as well as summaries
of the epics and a Yoga Sutra creation story.
- John Smith maintains an archive of Hindu
epics in Sanskrit including the Mahabharata and the
Ramayana.
- Richard Blumberg sumarizes the Mahabharata and includes some coments intended for a
Western oriented readership.
- Larry A. Brown presents a good synopsis of The Mahabharata as well as his discussion of the
religious and mythological themes involved in the epic.
- The Library of Hindu History includes a collection of links to
essays concerning the Mahabharat including some which find it to be more
grounded in history than legend.
- Concerning events of 1000 BCE and written down between 400 BCE
and 200 CE, the Ramayana tells of Rama, Sita, and the Rakshasha
among others and is attributed to Valmiki. Jean Johnson's Rama and the Ramayana discusses the work and offers a
synopsis.
- John Crocker present a good set of notes and a good summary of
The
Ramayana.
- This commercial site for indiaMystica
provides presents as a sample of their product, a brief history of Indian
religious practices, from pre-Vedic times through the Upanishads.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Mike Magee's and Jan Bailey's Tantrik Home Page presents
information and images of the gods, goddesses, and practices of Tantra.
- K. Kannikeswaren and Templenet compile information about a
number of Hindu temples. This page links to the sections covering Myths and Legends
associated with those temples and their images.
- Here's a brief description of Bengali
Folklore from the
West Bengal homepage.
- The St. Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church has compiled this
brief listing of the deities and their qualities in Armenian Mythology
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Armenia Online presents an article on The
Worshiping of Armenian Mother Anahit, Armenia's mother goddess. This
article is based on Karapet Sukiasian's Hayagitakan Hetazotutuner.
(Broken Link 5/26/00)
- Tsegakron Hye writes an essay on the Armenians eponymous god, Ar
in Armenian Forefathers.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- A. G. Bell Elementary has collected a number of links to Fairy/Folk Tales from the Pacific Rim, including tales
from East Asia and Southeast Asia.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Joo-Young You presents an essay entitled Foundation and Creation Myths in Korea and Japan: Patterns &
Connections and compares the tales within Kojiki and Nihon
shoki with those found in Samguk yusa and Samguk sagi.
- Chinavista's The China Experience includes a description of Chinese Myths and Fantasies from a historical
perspective, brief retellings of over a dozen Selected Mythical Stories as well as descrpitions of
some Deities Worshipped by Farmers.
- U. C. Computer (Shanghai) maintains a large collection of
Chinese Historic Legends & Tales including how Pan Gu created
the world, how Nv Wa patched up the sky, as well as tales of historical
figures such as Emperors and Confusius.
- Princeton ninth graders have researched Chinese
Creation Myths.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- The Taoist
Restoration Society is primarily a religious site, but does include a
few essays about the legends associated with some Taoist deities as well
as many illustrations of Taoist deities particularly in the Taoism
Explained and Introduction sections.
- Tao Resource, a related commercial site, describes the deities
of The Taoist
Pantheon in paragraph long descriptions, sometimes including brief
allusions to associated legends.
- Chad Gundarson's article on Ancient
Chinese Civilization includes the legend of Shen-nung's instruction to
man of the art of agriculture.
- The life of Buddhist monk Xuan Zang (602-664 C.E.) is the basis
for the story The Journey to the West, also known as The Monkey
King. This site contains an episode from the novel illustrated with
Chinese paintings.
- Galen Jang's China:
Journey of the Mind features an English translation of Pu Sung-lin's
Liao Tsai Chi Yi, a 17th century collection of tales.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Jason Enterprise tells of the Nian as a monster in Myths and
Legends of the Chinese New Year.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- This excerpt from an article by H. Wenzel in The Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland tells A Jataka-Tale from the Tibetan. Jataka are fables
concerning former lives of the Buddha.
Special thanks to Nancy Lee for suggesting many of the Korean legend
links.
-
Myths and Legends of Ancient Korea translated by Richard Rutt and Peter
Lee.
- The SsangYong motor company presents this summary of The SsangYong Legend - the legend of the twin dragons.
(Eratic link 7/31/01)
- Hwan-ung begins a new nation as a bear and a tiger ask him for
advice on how to become human in Korea in the eye of the Tiger - which tells the legend
of the founding of Korea as a preface to a site dealing with
Korean history.
- Kidsight's Folk Tale Corner tells an illustrated version of The Story of Tan-gun.
- Jeon Hong Kyu retells The T'angun Legend and Ancient Choson, a talee of the
founding of Korea, as part a project at Sogang
University.
- As part of the same project, Song Ju Yeon retells The Founding Myth of Koguryo.
- Kim Mae Sook retells The Tale of Sim Chung - a story of piety and fidelity
along with a brief sojurn under the Southern Sea.
- This page on Korean Astrology begins by telling the legend of how the
Korean zodiac came into being.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Sugano explains the nature of Tokkaebi,
i.e. Korean "gremlins". This page is also available in Japanese.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Haemin Dennis Park tells the story of Hok-boo-ri Grandpa, The
Old Man With A Wen. He also encounters do-ggae-bis (tokkaebis).
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Carsten Jorgenson has compiled a great deal of information on The Hwarang
Warriors a group of Korean knights who were both legendary and
historical.
- A class at UIUC put together a collection of Fairytales from east Asia - primarily from Korea, but
with a couple from Japan and one from Taiwan.
- Dr. Jason Joh presents his Home Page of
Korean Folktales which includes his essay on Korean folklore as well
as his translations of several tales.
- Eyoungsoo Park retells the folktale of the brothers Nolboo
and Hungboo.
- Heinz Insu Fenkl introduces with comentary the tale of
Shimchong, The Blind Man's Daughter, a story of virtue and
sacrifice of a daughter for her father.
- KT Net's Korean Faith
page includes the story of Princess Pari, as well as a general discussion
of faiths native to Korea and the somewhat more recently imported
religions of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism.
- Suzanne Crowder Han retells four folktales on this site about Hangul / Literature - Hangul is the Korean alphabet.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Pomona's Ancient Cosmology site includes an article by Mitch
Stoltz on Ancient Japanese Culture and Cosmology. It includes a
brief account of the Shinto creation story.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- The Kojiki and the Nihongi, both completed in the
early 8th century C.E., are the earliest written histories of
Japan. Their early sections contain a wealth of myth and legend, and of
the two, the Kojiki contains more mythic material. Mire Uno
translates sections of that work relating to Miyazaki Prefecture in Myth and Legends in Miyazaki: Kojiki. Included within
the translations here are also illustrations and a nice family tree of the
older deities. This page is part of a larger site dealing with other Myths and Legends in Miyazaki.
- Paul Brians et al. present another excerpt from their book
Reading About the World, Volume 1 discussing the Japanese Creation Myth - Tales from the Kojiki.
The Kojiki was complied in 712 CE by O No Yasumaro.
-
Kimiyo Tanaka's intro page tells briefly of the creation of Japan and,
more germain to the rest of her site, the haiku.
- A brief telling of the
Myth of Munakata-Taisha
- Ayacko Adachi retells a handful of Japanese Myths.
- Myriam Dantois has nearly a dozen Japanese Old
Tales on her site, written in Japanese, as well as translated into
French, Spanish, and English.
- The
Astronomy in Japan page contains, among other things, details of a
few legends and mythic starlore.
- Ancient World presents five brief tales from Japanese
Myth.
- While geared for use in role-playing games (Torg, Shadowrun),
Japanese Legendary
Lives by Gen-ichi Nishio, contains legitimate descriptions of legendary
creatures.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Dr. Htin Aung tells about the celebration the Burmese New Year
and The Visit of Thagyamin, the King of the Gods.
- This site tells the legend of the founding of Phnom Penh.
- Khoua Neng Yang retells The Creation Myths, Legends, and Folk Tales of the
Hmong. The Hmong, aka the Miao, live in south east China, and
northern Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Symbols
of Vietnam explains the legendary nature of those objects in its
title.
- A page on Vietnamese
Literature
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- The U.S. Muy Thai Association presents this page on the Ramakien,
the Thai version of the Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana. Here it ties
parts of it to moves in Thai boxing.
Restored! 2/14/02
- This site is another recounting of the Ramakian.
Restored! 2/14/02
- The Chiang Mai annals tell a fifteenth century story of The Tiger King another legend related to Muay Thai (Thai
boxing).
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- This page briefly tells folklore and myths associated with
certain Thai Amulets, Charms and Talismans
- Rachan Ninlawannapha and Wajuppa Tossa retell the folktale of
Pig and Dog, which explains why pigs eat bran and dogs
eat rice.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Asian Elephant Legends briefly tells the Thai origin
story for elephants.
Restored! 2/14/02
- L. Hasadsri tells the folktale of The
Singing Ape of Thailand - an origin story of the Lar Gibbon.
- June Rubis has collected a number of Fauna Folktales
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- KampungNet, representing Singapore's Muslim community collects
a handful of Malay Legends about Singapore.
- Lady Kitty has collected a handful of Myths and Legends of Singapore as well as some ghost
stories from the Lion City.
- Puan Normah Mohamad tells the story of The
Monkey and Red Chillies
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Mario Rustan's page on Indonesian Myth gives a basic introduction and then
retells almost a dozen tales.
- Mrs Kusumadewi retells the legend of the Keong Mas, The
Golden Snail - a tale of shapechanging and curses.
- Here is a brief retelling of the Javanese Legend of Prambanan Temple.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Renny Yaniar has collected three Folktales from Indonesia, principally from Java.
- Here is briefly retold the Javan tale of The Birth of Majapahit.
- The year four class at Fahan school retell and illustrate The Blooming Flower of Flores
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Tanikalang Ginto, the Philippines' Web Directory has large
collection of links to Filipino
Myths and Legends
- Johann Stockinger has put much of Mable Cook Cole's collection
of Philippine Folk Tales gathered from five of the Filipino
peoples (Tagalog, Ilocano, Bilaan, Manadaya, and Visayan) with six more
groups stories in preparation when this link was added.
- Poems
from the Turkish Epic is a collection of Altaic poems a dapted by Gene
Doty from Gulten Yener's prose translation.
- Azerbaijan International is an online magazine that in
this issue has a number of articles on Azerbaijani legends, both ancient
and contemporary.
Restored! 2/14/02
- Three English translations of Uzbek Folktales are kept on this University of
Washington site meant to aid students of the Uzbek language.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- This Mongol page features a collection of Mongol Mythology,
translated by Todd Cornell and the trickster tale of Shagdar the Nut.
- Sarangerel of the Buryat Homep page, recounts about a dozen tales
of Buryat Mongolian Mythology.
- Afghani.com's Afghan Traditions & History page discusses the mythic
origins of the new year festival of Nowrouz which has some ties to
Zoroastrianism.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- The Afghan Cultural Information Center maintains a small
collection of Afghan Folklore including a few folktales.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- The Perseus Project
maintains an extensive collection of hypertext annotated classical texts,
as well as a new encyclopedia and search engine.
- Another great resource of classical texts is found at the MIT
Student Newspaper's site The
Tech's Classics Archive.
-
Baylor Classics Page
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- sci.classics
Greek
- One of the first sites to offer information on the characters
and stories of Greek Mythology is this one by John M. Hunt.
- Princeton's Greek Myth HQ by Mark Woon is now Classical
Mythology by Geography.
- Professor Ruth Webb, also at Princeton, has a comprehensive site
on the characters in Greek mythology for her Classics
Course CLA 212
Mythology Home Page.
- Spyros Tyrakis' site features The
Hellenic Pantheon. While primarily a neo-pagan site, it also
contains information about the Greek deities and mythology related
links.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Brandon's
Mythology is an overview of Greek mythology.
- Carlos Parada's Greek Mythology
Link provides information about the gods
and heroes in brief list form as well as extended entries on the more
major deities. It also allows the user to poll entries from his CDrom -
Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology. Another useful feature here
is the bibliography of primary sources,
indicating which myths they contain.
(Now also available en español
Restored! 2/10/02
- From Myth to Eternity is another Greek myth project.
This one gives summaries of information on the greek cosmology and
mythological characters as well as providing related images and links to
excerpts from classical sources.
- The
Pantheon is another Greek myth project that details the stories, the
deities, and other characters that appear in Greek mythology. Also part
of this site are a search feature and a discussion board.
- Audrey's Le
Grenier de Clio provides brief articles on a large number of classical
mythological figures, accompanied by a number of images from classical and
renaissance art. This site is primarily en Francais, with English and
Deutsch translations.
- Hellas On Line provides information on The Ancient
Gods of Greece, including brief descriptions and a family tree.
- Here is a brief description of The Myth of
Cheiron
Restored! 2/14/02
- The Perseus Project
maintains an extensive collection of hypertext annotated classical texts,
as well as a new encyclopedia and search engine.
- Another great resource of classical texts is found at the MIT
Student Newspaper's site The
Tech's Classics Archive.
-
Baylor Classics Page
- The University of Victoria presents Classical Myth: The Ancient
Sources, which collects links to classical images and texts and
organizes them by Olympian deity.
- Classical depictions of the most popular pantheon Mythology
in Western Art kept by the University of Haifa Library.
- Mythology 101
From the people who bring you "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys". Brief and
flip but not inaccurate.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
-
Ceres A summary of the Persephone myth as a means of explaining the
name of the host machine.
Restored! 2/14/02
- From an astronomical perspective, here is the
Mythology of the Seven Sisters (Pleiades)
- The Eliki site has this Circle of Muses
which describes those inspirational beings.
- Heather Blakey's House of
the Muse also describes the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne on this
site which is primarily intended as a creative writing center.
- The Ecole Initiative keeps an article by Edward Beach on The
Eleusinian Mysteries which honored Demeter and Persephone.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Writing in the last half of the eighth century B.C.E. or
perhaps the early 7th century B.C.E., Hesiod presents the earliest written
works of Greek Mythology. His
Theogony describes the creation of the world and the history of
the titans and gods.
Works and Days focuses more on the acts of man, while containing a
synopsis of the myth of Prometheus and Pandora and the myth of the five
ages of man.
Restored! 2/14/02
- Assembled in its present form by the sixth century B.C.E. The Iliad is
attributed to Homer and was probably composed around 750 B.C.E. It tells
part of the story of the Trojan War.
Restored! 2/14/02
-
The Odyssey also by Homer, here translated by S. Butler, tells of the
wanderings of Odysseus following the capture of Troy, on his way home to
his family in Ithaka.
- Bill Thayer's RomanSites is a detailed collection of links
related to ancient Rome. This page is his sub section on Astrology, Magic, Religion & Philosophy - with the
religion sections haveing myth related links.
- David Camden's Forum
presents retellings of a number of Roman and Greek myths, as well as other
Roman cultural information and, of course, the requisite link pages.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Religio Romana is a Roman pagan reconstructionist site
which includes some brief information on the dieties of Rome and promises
to offer more information on Roman legends.
- Publius Vergilius Maro wrote his sequel to Homer's epics, The Aeneid in 29
B.C.E., bringing Trojan glory to the ancient Latins in the form of Aeneas.
Restored! 2/14/02
- Alan Dyck presents John Dryden's verse translation of Book I of
The Aeneid.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Larry A. Brown presents a thorough summary and commentary of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Publius Ovidius Naso composed his
poetic retellings of Classical Myths sometime during his lifetime of 43
B.C.E. to 18 C.E.
- Nicole Cherry's
Norse Mythology page Excellent, with more being added.
-
The nordic mythology... A recounting of Snori's Edda, possibly with
more to come.
- Sverre Moe's Viking History
Web
includes a good deal of information on Norse mythology and deities. He's
also working on a multi-lingual text archive of sagas and Edda poems, but
the primary focus of the site is on history.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- The
Viking Home Page which has some info on the history and religion of
the Northmen.
- Some students in Iceland have been putting together
Fornfraedi a Vesturlandi which has or will have info. on some a
couple of sagas as well as Snorri's Edda. That link will get you to the
English version, from which the more comprehensive Icelandic version is also
reachable.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Nicky Page provides a collection of translations on The Norse Classics Page, including Paul Taylor and W. H.
Auden's translation of the Elder Edda, a translation of the Prose Edda,
excerpts from a number of sagas, and an essay or two on Norse Mythology.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- The
Poetic Edda translated into English by Stephan Grundy. Also known as
Edda Saemundar and as the Elder Edda, the oldest written copy of this
work dates to 1270 in Iceland, about 30 years after the publication of
Snorri Sturlason's Prose Edda. Still, this work is often judged to be
closer to the source than Snorri's work and less colored by his clerical
perceptions.
- Within its extensive archives, Project Runeberg offers The Poetic Edda,
both in modern Swedish and in Old Norse.
- Composed around 1200 for an Austrian court wedding, the Nibelungenlied tells of the Burgundians Gunther and
Kriemhild, her lover, Siegfried, Gunter's wooing of Brunhild, the
treachery of Hagen, and the court of Etzel aka. Attila the Hun.
- The story of Sigurd, Gudren, Grimhild and Brynhild is found in
the 13th century work Volsunga
Saga, a story which is also told in the Poetic Edda and the
Nibelungenleid.
- The Germanic Heritage Page, by Arlea Anschütz,
includes a page of links to and essays about Germanic folklore and
mythology as well as Asatru, history, and literature.
- In Furth im Wald, every summer for the past 500 years or so, the
"Drachenstich" is
performed - tale of a knight slaying a dragon during the Hussite Wars.
This site is primarily auf Deutsch.
- A rise in the spirit of German unity, partially triggered by a
rising French influence during the reign of Napoleon inspired linguists
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm to assemble a collection of Märchen -
most often translated as 'Fairy Tales', but also meaning 'Fables' or
'Legends', from across the German countryside, publishing them between
1812 and 1815.
- Also in the 1800's, Richard Wagner composed Der Ring des
Nibelungen, an opera in the tradition of Nibelungenleid and the
Volsungsaga. This page by Erik Tempel contains a plot summary and
character descriptions of the cycle - in Dutch.
- FINFO: The
Ancient Religion of the Finns. An extensive examination of ancient
Finnish religion, including the precursors to the Kalevala.
- Reijo Nenonen and Luca Piotto present The
Ancient Finnish Myths home page which describes the history, deities,
cults, and spells of the Suomi and of course includes the appropriate
links.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- FINFO: Kalevala An examination and summary of the
Kalevala and its role as myth and national symbol. Also found there is Kalevala - The Finish National Epic
- Finnish
Mythology A brief introduction to the topic by Pirjo Joki.
-
Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot (in Finnish/Suomeksi). Lönnrot
spent the years from 1828 to 1845 collecting folk songs from the Karelia
regions of Finland and Russia and assembled and edited them into what became
the Finnish national epic. An early version was released in 1835, with
the final version being completed in 1849.
- Another copy of the Kalevala can be
found at Project Runeberg.
- Ritva Raesmaa's Kalevala page
contains many links on the work.
- Sonja Reasor presents selections from W. F. Kirby's English
translation of the Kalevala in Kalevala - Land of Heroes. She includes sections of
Runo's 1, 9, and 10, which deal with creation, iron working, and the
Sampo.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Aaron Shepard retells part of Vainamoinen's battle of song with
the young Joukahainen from Runo 3 of the Kalevala in A Hero Tale of
Finland
- Keith Bosley's English translation of Runo 15 from the Kalevala
- a Lemminkainen episode - is provided by Interspecies
Communication.
- Aaron Shepard again retells part of the Kalevala this time
reworking the contest between Vaino and Ilmarinen for the hand of Louhi's
daughter in The
Maiden of the Northland
- Glenn Jakobsen's page on Sami Culture expired, leaving a pointer
to the Sami Association of
North America, which contains links to information on the culture of
the people from arctic Scandinavia.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Commentary on the Kalevipoeg,
the Estonian national epic.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Aado Lintrop's essay on Little Mos'-woman features stories of her and Bell-Hand,
and bear feasts as recounted by Maria Albina and Klaudia Sainokhova. This
article appears in the Estonian Folklore Archive's Electronic Journal of Folklore.
- Fred Hamori's extensive Hungarian Heritage Page
has been relocated and expanded. His section on mythology includes
links to his accounts of legends and with detailed linguistic traces.
- Dr. Josef Vegvari's Magyar Traditional Culture
page (originally titled "Hungarian Organic Culture")
"does not contain any myths
or legends in the strict sense of the word - it presents original and
largely unpublished research relating to the origins of, and the ancient
knowledge underlying, all Hungarian folklore. This knowledge is cosmic in its
origins and astrological in its structure." - Dr. Vegvari.
- István Lázár tells the origin myth of the
Huns and Magyars in Chapter 2, One
Must Descend from Some Place of his book Hungary - A Brief
History.
Restored! 2/14/02
General Slavic
- Ainsley Friedberg's page on Slavic
Paganism & Witchcraft includes pages on Slavic Pagan Beliefs and
Slavic deities, demigods and faeryfolk in addition to spells and links to
related sites.
- This page describing the deities of The Slavic Mythos comes from a site dealing with a
PBEM RPG.
(Broken Link 2/14/02)
- Denice Szafran presents Lady Okana's Web. Here you will find primarily Polish
information including pages on Polish Paganism, a listing of Slavic
Deities, spirits, and faery folk, a brief collection of folk tales, and
other places to go for resources.
Restored! 2/16/02
- Tomasz Wiersza³owicz has a list of names of Polish deities at Slowianie.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Grace Green Knoche retells the Czech Legend of The Princess Libushe.
- Russian Crafts collects dozens of Russian and
Ukranian folk tales, legends, and stories including a couple retold by
Pushkin.
- Tradestone International collects eight Russian Fairy
Tales.
- G. Galinka describes the pre-Christian Russian pantheon of
Peroon (Perun) et al. in Ancient Slavic Gods.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Dazhdbog
in Russian mythology. Summary and excerpts from Dazhdbog's tale with
commentary by Sergei Naumov.
- Sunbirds.com sells Russian Lacquer, much of it decorated with
themes from Russian folk stories. Their page of Readings
is an index to brief essays on the subjects of those tales.
- Masha Gedilaghine Holl presents a lengthy essay on Russian Folk Tales and includes links to her tellings
of some of those stories including the "Tale of the Apples of Youth and
the Living Water", which features Prince Ivan and Baba Yaga, and several
animal tales.
- David J. Birnbaum's Russian Fairy
Tales class web page includes a page with brief descriptions of
Russian gods as well as a page full of images related to those stories.
- E.A. Kostiukhin tells about Magic
Tales that End Badly in this lengthy article for the SEEFA (Slavic and
East European Folklore Association) Journal.
- Wonderland Bulgaria's Ethnography and Folklore page contains Todor Zhivkov's
essay on Bulgarian Folklore and an article on the Samodivi (Woodland
Fairies). Their layout suggests that there will be myths, legends and
folk-tales page in the future.
- Mark D. Lew has collected Helen Rootham's translations of Serbian
Epic Poetry - specifically the Kosovo song cycle, centering around the
battle there in the fourteenth century C.E.
- An abstract from Prane Dunduliene's
Ancient Lithuanian
Mythology and Religion
- Marija Kuncaitis presents Pagan
Lithuania, Folk Beliefs and Its History which includes translations of
the tales Egle, Queen of Serpents, and The Old Man and the
Devil as well as a general lecture on Lithuanian Paganism.
- A collection of Baltic (primarily Lithuanian) legends and
tales as well as a listing of Baltic deities and their attributes are
among the features at Sacred Sepent -Journal of Baltic Tradition.
- Kristaps Johnson's Ancient Latvian
Paganism and Mythology describes the deities of the Latvian pantheon
as well as religous festivals on his seachable site.
Ray Porter has written an article on Vlad
Tepes the historical Dracula.
Kreshnik Bejko presents The Home of the
Albanian Kreshniks - a page dealing with Albanian Folklore.
- Before the Celts came from the continent, before the Scotti came
over from Ireland, the Picts inhabited what is now Scotland. Catriona
Fraser presents Pictish
Nation which descibes the history and legends of these people in a
fair amount of detail for an online document. The legend of Tristan and
Iseult is said to have Pictish origins.
- Celtic Folklore, compiled by Phillip J. Brown contains a
wealth of Celtic myths and folktales. Here are included Lady
Augusta Gregory's works on the Irish cycles of myths as well as
collections of Fairy Tales and Folk stories by Crocker, Jacobs, Curtin,
Rolleston, Sikes, and Evans-Wentz. Manx, Orkney, Cornish, and Somerset
Folklore also have their own sections at this site.
- Lugodoc's Guide to Celtic Mythology tells a condensed
version of Irish and Welsh mythology, summarizing the Irish mythological,
Ulster, Fennian and Historical cycles and the Welsh Mabinogion.
- Dalriada Celtic
Heritage Society - for Irish and Scottish culture,
myths, and folklore.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Gaelic
languages, culture, and life.
- Knud Mariboe's The
Encyclopedia of the Celts contains entries from myth, legend,
literature and history.
- The Rampant Lion presents anumber of dictionary like entries
on The Gods & Goddesses of the Indo-Europeans - which
really is about the deities of the Celts, with a few Roman
deities thrown in for good measure.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Jenny Sposito has
Celtic
and Arthurian
pages.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Lars Nooden presents a paper entitled Animal Symbolism
in Celtic Mythology
- Leigh Ann Hussey's essay, Lady
of the Depths: Primal Goddess of Celtic Shamanism, draws parallels
between the Lady of the Lake found in Arthurian literature and with the
Irish goddess Brigit and the Welsh goddess Ceridwen. She also discusses
their association with wells and cauldrons.
- Allen Wright (Puck) has developed his Pook's Hill site around the deeds of the English faerie,
Robin Goodfellow, aka Puck.
- Chris Thurtle maintains The
Bard's Rest Library which includes one tale each from England,
Ireland, and Wales, as well as information on Bards and medieval
instruments.
- Anniina Jokinen presents an enormous collection of links to Irish Literature,
Mythology, Folkore, and Drama
- A to Z of Ancient Ireland, based on Conan Kennedy's
Ancient Ireland - The User's Guide, contains a number of paragraph
length descriptions of Irish deities and myth-oriented places.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Here is Kaeltha & Eric's Little Glossary of Irish Mythology, briefly describing
characters therin.
- Lebor Gabala Erren, aka, The Book of
Leinster, aka, The Book of Invasions, written in 1150 C.E.,
traces the history of the inhabitants of Ireland from predecessors in
Genesis. This work includes the coming of Cessair, Nemed, Parthalon, the
Fir Bolg, and the Tuatha De Danaan.
- Here is concisely presented the mythic History of the Irish
Race from the Milesians to the Tuatha De Danann and links to take you
beyond.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Anthony Murphy's Mythical Ireland recounts tales of the Dindshenchas, the
Tuatha De Danann and the Ulster Cycle.
- Lady Augusta Gregory retells
The Fate of the Children of Lir.
- This synopsis of Irish
Mythology is courtesy of Paddynet.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Ireland Castles to Shamrocks recounts the Myths and Legends of Ireland from the Tuatha de
Danaan to St. Patrick & St. Bridgit. Click on the "Ireland's Myths"
link in the upper frame to get there.
- On the same site, Patrick
Brown reminds us that there is more to The Ulster
Cycle than the Tain Bo Cualnge, in fact, there are about eighty
stories of Cuchulain and his countrymen which Patrick has made a good
start on sumarazing and paraphrasing.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- From the Ulster cycle, it's
The Story of MacDatho's Pig. Steve Taylor's site also contains
a character glossary/index and a collection of links to related sites.
- Also found on Steve Taylor's pages is the culmination of the
Ulster cycle, the Tain
Bo Cualnge, (The Cooley Cattle-raid). It is Cuchulain of
Muirthemne's triumph and tragedy, here translated by L. Winifred Faraday.
- Crystal Miller's Celtic Myth and
Lore page contains a number of tales of the Fianna and some other
Irish legends.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Richard Marsh's Legendary
Tours in addition to promoting their services recounts some Irish
legends, broken down by region of origin. He also has sections relating
to Basque and Galician legends.
- Tony and Suzy's Celtic Tales and Epic Journeys presents Irish folklore
and tales, organized geographically.
- William Butler Yeats wrote many poems and short stories which
retold or recast Irish legends, including
Cuchulain's Fight Against the Sea
- Lady Charlotte Guest's 1848 translation of
The Mabinogion is that which Thomas Bulfinch sumarized
in The Age of Chivalry. It is a collection of tales containing
Celtic myth, pseudo-historical romance, and Arthurian legend with
resonances of Chretien de Troyes. While doubtlessly derived from
pre-twelfth centrury oral antecedants, the earliest written fragments of
these tales date to the thirteenth century with more complete versions
appearing in The White Book of Rhydderch (1325) and The Red Book
of Hergest (1400). This is where to find tales of Pwyll, Arwan,
Annwvyn, Math, Rhiannon, and cauldrons which raise the dead.
(Broken Link 10/10/00)
- Another copy of Guest's translation of Y
Mabinogion can be found here. Both copies of Guest's translation
include the story of Taliesin, which is often seen as falling outside of
the collection.
(Broken Link 10/10/00)
- Rod Thorn's (Saros) British
Mythology page focuses on the Welsh Mabinogi.
Restored! 2/10/02
- Dave D. retells the Pwyll stories from the Mabinogeon as well
as the stories of "The Changeling of Llanfabon" and "The Green Lady of
Caerphilly Castle"
in Cfarwydd
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Rhiannon Kerins also retells the Pwyll stories after giving a
history of and introduction to The
Mabinogion.
- Cougar Trading Post hosts excerpts from Charles Squire's Celtic
Myth and Legend, which retell tales from the Mabinogion.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Bill Rowe's page on Cornish Folklore
contains stories of faeries, Jack the Giant Killer, and other
legends among other things.
- Scotts Gaelic
Culture. Among other things, this page includes essays on
religion, heroes, legends, and folklore. This includes
information on brownies and faeries and the tales of the Sons
of the North Wind and of Thomas the Rhymer.
- From the on-line zine Thirteen comes this feature on Scottish
Myth and Legend which includes stories of the King of
the Fairies, the Brownies, Prince Ian, and the Black bull of Norroway.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Young Tam Lin had a run in with the Faerie Queen in this
ballad. Also recounted at this site is the Welsh, Pwyll story from the
Mabinogion, with some interpretation at the end.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Jason Webb retells the tale of Angus McDougal for Tall Tales on the Web, a
storytelling society.
- The Lore of the Orkney Islands collects a number of
essays and stories about odd things from the land to the sea. From the
hogboon to selkies, vanishing islands to ghosts, there is a lot of variety
at this site.
- The Other
Side features ghost stories and Breton folktales.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Eric Kemper's Tales
pages tell of the Kingdom of Ys and Arthur in Breton among other tales.
This page is in English and French.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Ned Ramm presents some pages on the History, Legends
and Flags of Northumbria.
- Philip Atkinson's collection of Northumbrian Folk Tales include a number of stories such
as The Witch of Seaton Delaval, The Lambton Worm, and The Stanhope
Faeries.
- Translated from the Old English by Francis B. Gummere, Beowulf was probably composed around 750 AD in
Northumbria, although
some of the events it mentions occured over 200 years earlier on the
continent and features the titled hero's contests with Grendel, his
mother the troll-wife, and a dragon.
- Durham Myths and Legends recounts the tale of the
Lampton Worm on this site concerning the town of Durham in northern
England.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- The Britannia Internet Magazine's King
Arthur Site is enormous and features loads of essays on the subject
including some on King Arthur and Early British Kingdoms.
- Alas, Chris Thornborrow's Avalon is no more - however his Arthurian FAQ and an essay of his entitled An Introduction to Current Theories about The Holy Grail
survive.
- Jason Godesky's The
Saxon Shore includes a etexts of Arthurian literature as well as
historical essays and a number of well annotated links.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Judy Shoaf is the current moderator of Arthurnet, an Arthurian mailing list. This page
maintains a number of suitable links.
- The Archives
of Arthurnet are maintained at this site.
- Oxford Arthurian
Society
- Thomas Green's Arthurian Resources contains a number of erudite essays
on the History of Arthur, the characters, the places, and the literature
among other things.
- John J.
Doherty also maintains a listing of Arthurian resources both online
and off, as well as an essay on recent Arthurian related fantasy.
- Celtic
Twilight is an excellent site on the Matter of Britain. It includes
an infopedia of Arthurian characters and a collection of translations
of the major Arthurian works, including Lady Charlotte Guest's translation
of the Welsh Mabinogion.
- Sources of
British History excerpts from many early documents relating to Arthur
including:
- Gildas a 6th
century monk who mentions Aurellius Ambrosius and the battle at Badon.
- Jordanes' Gothic
History a sixth century work which describes a battle led by
Riothamus, who may have been the historical King Arthur.
- Elegy for
Geraint, a sixth century Welsh poem, here in translation presents its
subject as dying among Arthur's heroes.
- The ninth century Welsh historian, Nennius authored some of
the earlier written references to Arthur in his Historia
Brittonum
- The Annales
Cambriae - written in Wales circa 970, this text mentiones Arthur at
Badon and Arthur's and Mordred's (Medraut's) deaths.
- Under the patronage of Marie de Champagne from 1159 to 1191,
Chretien de Troyes composed the some of the earliest Arthurian romances.
His first work, Eric and Enide was proably written in 1169. It
corresponds to the Welsh tale of Gereint and Enid, found in the
Mabinogion.
- Chretien's second work, Cliges,
dates to 1176.
- His La Chevalier
de la Charrette is the earliest written work about Lancelot, composed
in the late 1170's or 1180.
- Chretien's The Knight with the
Lion was probably written at the same time as or shortly after La
Chevalier de la Charrette and focuses on the deeds of Yvain. This story
closely parallels that of Owein, or the Countess of the Fountain
from the Welsh Mabinogion.
- Layamon's
Brut was written around 1200 AD, drawing heavily from the
tradition of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace.
- The High History of the Holy Graal is one of a number of
continuations of Cretien's The Story of the Grail, (Percival).
This one was composed in the early 1200's.
-
Gawain and the Green Knight by the anonymous author of
The Pearl, this work was written around 1370 in West Midland
Middle English.
- The Alliterative
Morte Arthure was written around 1400 AD, making use of the ending
section of the French Prose Lancelot-Grail Cycle, 'Le Mort le Roi Artu'.
- In the late 15th century, Sir Thomas Malory composed what is
probably the definitive work of Arthurian literature based on several
sources, including the French prose Lancelot. In 1485, it was published
after having a good deal of editting done by William Caxton under the
title
Le Morte D'Arthur(large file). Also found at Virginia is the
second volume (large file) of that work.
- The library at the University of Rochester maintains a large
variety of Arthurian texts at their Camelot
Project
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson published his poetic novel, The Idylls
of the King in 1859. Lancelot and Elaine is one episode from that work.
- In the late ninteenth century, Richard Wagner composed his
opera Parzival
based heavily on
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parsifal, a thirteenth century work, which in turn
draws on Chretien de Troyes' Percival (1187) and centers on that knight's
quest for the Sangraal.
- The
Arthurian Booklist grown from the old Camelot mailing list and
maintained by Cindy Tittle Moore.
- Tyagi Nagasiva's Merlin
Archive via ftp.
(Broken Link 2/19/02)
- Adam Levin's thesis on The Death
of King Arthur in history and literature.
- alt.legend.king-arthur
- You've got to love the University of Rochester. In the same
vein as their Camelot collection listed above, is the Robin Hood
Project - a huge text archive of early works on Prince John's bane as
well as a collection of artwork featuring that character.
- Sir Walter Scott's work Ivanhoe has Robin as a feature character.
- Allen Wright (Puck) is putting together his own Robin Hood
site. It has a great deal of information about the history of the
outlaw of Sherwood, as well as a bunch of links to other Robin Hood sites
and some historical information about Nottingham castle.
- A Little Tale of Robin Hood translated by Graham
McLennan is perhaps the earliest Robin Hood tale. This includes a number
of notes and brief articles about the historical context of Robin Hood
embededded within the tale.
- Another exhaustive list which Cindy Tittle Moore maintains is
the
Robin Hood booklist.
- The Matter of France begins with The Song of
Roland, here translated by Charles Scott Mancrief.
- By the early renaissance, the Italians had picked up the story
of Charlemagne's peers. Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando
Innamorato, i.e. Orlando in Love, was first published in 1482 or
1483. This copy is only partially translated.
- Boiardo left the story unfinished at his death,
so Ludovico Ariosto continued the story in Orlando
Furioso, i.e. Orlando, Mad.
- see also the Breton section.
- Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, aka El Cid was a Spanish
infanzon (baronet), who was put into exile twice over politics in
the late 1000's. While in exile, he fought for the Moorish Emir Mu'taman
of Saragossa and his exploits became legend with the above romanticized
poem being written around 1201-1207.
- Well, it's not really a legend but I'll put it here anyway
Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote (1615) goes tilting at windmills
along with Sancho Panza - here translated by John Ormsby.
- Glen Welker's Indigenous
Peoples' Literature page. While its strength is in its info from the
cultures of what is now Mexico and the southwestern U.S., this page has
links to a wealth of literature from all over the Americas and the world.
- Nativeweb keeps an
extensive Index of Native American Short Stories Online.
- Broken down by region, these Myths and
Legends for American Indian Youth are an extensive list with
descriptions of tales from throughout North America.
- A new tale from a Native American group appears at StonE's Weblodge every month.
Old tales are archived here as well.
- Washington State's World cultures project collects a few
creation and death naratives in their Native
American Anthology Reader.
- The Canadian Museum of Civilization presents a collection of
stories from the Algonquin, Abenaki, Inuvialuit, Metis-Cree, Mi'kmaq, and
Nisga'a peoples in it's exhibition - Storytelling: the Art of Knowledge.
- Kathryn Gabriel's Indian Gaming
Mythology sketches myths involving gambling from tribes across North
America as an introduction and teaser to her book, Gambler Way.
- Adrienne Mayor links a handful of legends to our petrified
predecessors in Fossil Legends in America, 1540 to the Present.
- Margaritta Barretto and Dr. Joaquin A. Barrio have put together
a dictionary of South American Mitos y
Leyendas en Espanol for the e-zine Noticias de Antropologia y
Arqueologia.
- The Origin of the Inca People tells just that.
- Mythological
Chiloe Island presents legends from this island off the coast of
Chile. Most of this site is in Spanish.
- Two Legends of the Pampa Indians involving people being
transformed into plants are retold here by middle schoolers from Argentina
and Hawaii.
- Based on Dionisio Gonzalez Torres's Folklore del
Paraguay this site tells of Guaraní Creation and Mythology. This is both in
English and en espanol.
- Sheila Thomson maintains some brief descriptions and
illustrations of Brazilian
Folklore: Myths and Fantastic Creatures on the Maria-Brazil
site. Also connected from here is a page on Brazilian music & folklore.
- Al Mandell and The Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe present a tale of
Stone Mother and
Origin of Man.
- The
Hopi Information Network presents several Hopi stories.
- This excerpt of Harry C. James's Pages from Hopi History, tells of the Hurung Whuti's
creation of the world.
- Bruce Railsback presents the Hopi story of creation in an
excerpt from his book Creation Stories From Around the World. He
also collects links to other sites containing creation stories on Creation
Stories as a response to creationism.
- G. M. Mullet tells the Hopi tale of The
Children and the Hummingbird in this sample from her collection
Spider Woman Stories.
- Anna Moore Shaw tells The
Legend of Eagleman in this excerpt from her book Pima Indian
Legends.
- Ruth Warner Giddings recounts the tales of "The Ku Bird" and
"The Walking Stone" in these excerpts from her book Yaqui Myths and Legends published by University of
Arizona Press.
- Frank Hamilton Cushing retells "The Coyote and the Locust" as an
excerpt from his book Zuni Coyote Tales published by University of Arizona
Press.
- Marie L. McLaughlin collected Myths and Legends of the Sioux completing her
collection around 1913.
- Old Indian
Legends of Iktomi, Iya, and others; from the Dakotas, retold by
Zitkata-Sa.
- Paula Giese retells the Lakota story of how "White
Buffalo Calf Woman Brings First Pipe" based on the version by Joseph
Chasing Horse.
- Richard L. Dieterle has compiled The Short
Encyclopaedia of Hotcâk Myth, Legend, and Folklore. In addition
to containing a number of articles on the subject, Dieterle retells dozens
of Hotcâk (Winnebago) stories. The Hotcâgara are from the
central and southern portions of what is now eastern Wisconsin.
- Lady Pixel presents this page on Native American Legends, Folk Tales and Stories, which
currently features tales from the Siksikawa (Blackfeet) and Kiowa tribes.
- Ellen Furlong Cripsen recounts the Umpqua story of The Mountain with a Hole in the Top about the volcano at
Crater Lake, Oregon.
- Bigfoot
Legends gathered from Native American sources.
- Cougar Trading Post collects a small number of Chinook and
Tillamook Native American Myths and Legends.
- Amy Lowell retells the story of Many Swans: Sun Myth of the North American Indians based
on the Kathlamet legend, in a journal article from 1920.
- The Kathlamet Tale of Creation is retold in brief as
part of a page for the 1996 British Columbia Eco-Challenge race.
- Raven Mythology collects a handful of legends involving
Raven, including three creation stories. Most of these hail from
northwest and sub-arctic groups.
- This site on on Alaskan & Pacific Northwest art tells the
Tlingit tale of Natsilane and the Killer Whale
- The Tlingit Culure page includes four tales of Tlingit
legend.
- In 1898, Simon Pokagon, an Algonquin from Michigan, set down
some Indian Superstitions and Legends.
- The Monomini
Indians are native to what is now Northeastern Wisconsin. Their
language is from the Algonquin family. Here are collected seven tales.
- The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) are the six nations of Seneca,
Cayuga, Onodaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscorora - mostly located in what
is now New York and Pennsylvania. Their home page's culture section
reflects current religious beliefs and answers the question What is the Haudenosaunee Concept of Creation?
- The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Legend of Onarga
- The Lightning Valley Village storyteller tells over a dozen Lenape
Stories
(Broken Link 10/10/00)
- Jason Belanger presents a collection of Mi'kMaq Legendsand corresponding images from
tapestries, both written and designed by Michael Francis. Many of these
tales feature Glooscap.
- Snowbird (Wicked) has collected a number of Tsalagi Myths and Legends among her pages on Tsalagi
(Cherokee) culture.
- The Cherokee Messenger provides James Mooney's telling of the Origin of Disease and Medicine. This tells of the
grievances of animals against man and the Plants' alliance with man.
- J. C. High Eagle tells the Cherokee Tale of
the Rooster's Tail - a story of dancing, pride, and astronomical
objects.
- Ken Masters's Cherokee Images site opens with a story of how Old Woman
Spider (A-ga-yv-li-ge) developed the first piece of pottery.
- Cherokees of California present a collection of eleven tales of
Cherokees Mythology.
- George Lankford recounts this Creek story of Flying Rats
- a tale of a ball game between bats and birds.
- Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley presents Yupiaq Education Revisited, a page
which includes information on the traditional beliefs and myths of the
Yupiaq Eskimos, including a tale of the "Two Brothers".
- Information
about Innu History and Culture includes several stories.
African (excluding Egypt)
African: General
- Because of their close cultural association with the Near East,
I have included my links to Egyptian Mythology sites
in the Ancient Near East section of this page. Some of those pages may
also detail Nubian deities.
- Bill Parades-Holt's world literature course pages include an
essay on African
Mythology which draws from sources scattered about the continent.
- The Honors class on Religious
Traditions of the African Diaspora at the College of New Jersey,
provides a great deal of information including retelling creation stories
and describing religious traditions from across the continent.
- Pomona's Ancient Cosmology site discusses African Cosmology and Mythology in this brief article
highlighting Mande and Dogon ideas.
- This page is primarily an advertisement for Clyde Ford's book The Hero with an
African Face, however it does contain some excerpts and links which
deal with African legends - particularly in the fourth excerpt.
- Samantha Martin's African
Myths and Legends describes the cultures of the Khwai (Bushmen) and
Khoi-Khoi (Hottentots) as well as describing their legends and folklore.
She intends to expand her page to cover more than these southern African
groups.
- AfricaQuest presents a journal of Myths and Legends gathered in Kenya and Tanzania over a
seven week period, at a rate of one per week.
- Cuisenaire presents the Ghanan tale of Anansi
and the Sky God's Daughter as part of an activity for first and second
graders.
- Cutting to the
Essence an art exhibit covering the religion and mythology of the
Yoruba people, a culture primarily from southwestern Nigeria and Benin.
- Perhaps more properly considered a religion page than a
mythology page, Ijo Orunmila
describes the Cosmology and Creation story of the Yoruba and also
includes related stories and prayers.
- Paul Aclinou presents Thinking and
its Objet - Gods and Men, which is a series of pages on Yoruba deities
and legends, in both French and English (with a German version in the
works).
- Mamaissi Dansi Hounon "Vivi" presents an article entitled West
African Dahomean Vodoun: The Worlds Oldest Spiritual Tradition, which
gives a brief history of Voodoo - a name in the Adja-Tado Ewe/Fon (Yoruba)
language meaning "spirit or god," as well as describes aspects of
the religion including some of the Vodoun deities.
- The page for Cora Agatucci's class on African Storytelling examines a couple of Igbo folktales
involving Tortoise.
- In Louis
Trichard, Thoyandou - a cultural experience in a land of myths and
legends Lynette Oxley discusses several myths and legends in
the VhaVenda culture of northern South Africa.
- Ulli Beier edits a retelling of the creation story The Word, from the Wapangwa of Tanzania.
- Excerpts from a book by Haji Muuse on Astrology, Somali Culture, and History includes some
information on pre-Islamic, Somali belief systems.
- This dictionary of Afro-Carribean
Deities is primarily draws from those of Yoruba origin.
- Flavodoun presents his Haitian
Vodoun Culture page. Among other things, it includes a listing of the
deities and their families. Voodoun is native to Haiti, but draws on West
African and Christian sources.
- Haiti Forum tells A Folk
Tale of Haitian Mythology which tells a tale of creation and relates
Haitian deities to those from other cultures.
Micronesian
- Legends of Guam
Polynesian
- Pomona's Ancient Cosmology site has some articles concerning The Pacific
Islands. Those dealing with mythology include one on The
Polynesian Universe, and a pair on Hawaiian religion and cosmology.
- Kumulipo a Hawaiian Chant of Creation is presented here
both in Hawaiian and in English.
- Bishop
Museum Press - Hawaiian Oral Tradition, Myths and Folklore.
- While Hawaiian Legend Cards are
for sale here, you can also find examples of their pictures and excerpts
of the legends.
- Hana Weka colects and retells a number of Maori Legends including
those about Creation, the first woman, and Maui.
- The Peoples Embassy presents Aotearoa, a celebration of Kiwi culture which collects a
number of Maori legends as well as other items of New Zealand cultural
interest.
- Kiwi Park briefly retells with illustrations a Maori story: The
Story of the Mountains - Ruapaehu, Tongariro, Pihanga, and Taranaki.
- Rev. Thomas Powell recorded a pair of Samoan Creation
Myths featuring Tagaloa, shortly after the first arrival of Christian
missionaries.
- Myths and Poetry of the Black Pearl from Tahiti.
- Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) is one of the earliest
Gothic novels and helped define the genre.
- More properly Gothic Romance than Gothic Horror, and definitely
one of the seeds of modern fantasy, The History of the Caliph Vathek (1785) by William
Beckford is a tale styled after those found in The Arabian
Nights. Those stories had recently been translated into French and so
the original version of Vathek was also written in French, although an
English version was published before the French version was ready. "The
descriptions of Vathek's palaces and diversions, of his scheming
sorceress-mother Carathis... of his pilgrimage to the haunted ruins of
Istakhar... of primordial towers and terraces in the burning moonlight of
the waste, and of the terribleCyclopean halls of Eblis... are triumphs of
weird colouring which raise the book to a permanent place in English
letters." - H. P. Lovecraft
- Frankenstein, the Art and Legends is primarily a page of
advertisements, but also briefly traces the history of the name
Frankenstein and Frankenstein-like characters such as Göthe's Faust.
- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,
Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus (1818). This tale was partly
inspired by a proposal that Lord Byron made to her, Percy Shelley, and
John Polidori in June of 1816 that they each write a ghost story. Percy
Shelley's story never came of anything, Byron wrote a fragment of a
novel which inspired Polidori to write The
Vampyre (1819), with borrowings from Byron's plot.
- Washington Irving (1783-1859) wrote both Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - the tale of Ichabod
Crane & the Headless Horseman.
- Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
- Death and mania result from visions of The Great God Pan (1894) by Arthur Machen.
- Ambrose Bierce, Can Such Things Be (1893) includes such pre-Lovecraftian
short stories as "Haita the Shepherd" and "An Inhabitant of Carcosa".
The Devil's Dictionary, My Favorite
Murder
- Robert W. Chambers wrote The King
in Yellow in 1895, developing the character of Hastur with some echoes
of Bierce, which would be later adopted into H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu
Mythos and show up in unusual reflections in Marion Zimmer Bradley's
Darkover stories.
- Bram Stoker, Dracula,
(1897). The Irish drama critic's tale of a Transylvanian vampire in
London. Left out of the original book by Stoker's editors is the short
story Dracula's Guest. Also by Stoker is The Lair of the White Worm.
- Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) is the creator of The
Necronomicon and the Cthulhu Mythos - a collection of tales about
nasty alien creatures from the planet Yuggoth and beyond who landed on the
Earth in ages gone by and became the source of nightmares and tales of
demons. William Johns has collected Lovecraft's short-stories from 1922
and earlier in the H. P.
Lovecraft Library. Lovecraft was also a correspondent and
collaborator with authors Clark Ashton Smith (Zothique, Averoigne), Robert
E. Howard (Conan), Robert Bloch (Psycho), and Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the
Gray Mouser).
- The Short Stories of Clark Ashton Smith began appearing
in the Magazine "Weird Tales" in the 1930's after H. P. Lovecraft helped
the artist have a go at genre fiction. The prodigious purple prose of the
loquacious lexicographer finds certain echoes from the styles of Dunsany
and Eddison and in turn inspired the likes of de Camp and Vance. The
plurality of Smith's work is set in the far future, undead infested
continent of Zothique, although many stories are also set in ancient
Hyperborea, ante-diluvian Posidonis (Atlantis), and medieval
Averoigne. As a member of the Lovecraft Circle, many of his tales form
part of the Cthulhu Mythos.
- Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858),
The Light Princess and Lilith (1895) by George
MacDonald. "Most myths were made in prehistoric times, and, I
suppose, not conciously made by individuals at all. But every now and
thenthere occurs in the modern world a genius - a Kafka or a Novalis - who
can make such a story. MacDonald is the greatest genius of this kind
whom I know." - C. S. Lewis
- "'Curiouser and Curiouser', said Alice." -
Lewis Carrol. Alice's Adventures began in 1865.
- H. Rider Haggard imbued his adventure stories about Allan
Quartermain with the experience he had in the South African civil
service. Haggard's writing may strike the reader as belonging
to an imperial apologist and misogynist, but they were a product of their
time and remain classic adventure tales. Quartermain made his first
appearance in King Solomon's Mines (1885) and would return in
several sequels including Allan Quartermain (1887), Marie (1912), Child of Storm (1912), and Finished (1917). Other Haggard novels include
She (1887), Nada the Lily (1892), Montezuma's Daughter (1893) and When the World Shook (1917).
- The Well at World's End (1896), A Dream of
John Ball and a King's Lesson (1886-1887) by William Morris
"Scholars and historians of fantasy, such as my friend L. Sprague
de Camp, agree that it was the English novelist, poet, and artisan William
Morris (1834-96) who founded the genre of the heroic fantasy laid in
imaginary Medieval lands or worlds where magic works." - Lin Carter
- "These tales have been compared with the work of Jules Verne
and there was a disposition on the part of literary journalists at one
time to call me the English Jules Verne. As of mater of fact there is no
literary resemblance whatever between the anticipatory inventions of the
Frenchman and these fantasies. His work dealt with almost always with
actual possibilities of the invention and discovery, and he made some
remarkable forecasts.... He helped his reader to imagine it done and to
realise what fun, excitement or mischief would ensue.... But these
stories of mine collected here do not pretend to deal with possible
things..." - H. G. Wells
- Ernest Bramah Smith's "Oriental fantasies" The Wallet of Kai Lung (1899) Kai Lung's Golden Hours (1922) and The Mirror of Kong Ho are set in an invented, fantasy
version of China - a device meant more as a means of commenting on English
society of the time. In the first two of these selections, the narrator,
Kai Lung, is used to string together a number of short stories that he
tells while being brought in front of the magistrate for some difficulty
or another. Lin Carter compares Bramah's wit and style to those of
Jack Vance and James Branch Cabell.
- "Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed
childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome
and instictive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly
unreal." - L.
Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz (1900), the first of
fourteen of his Oz tales.
- Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Lord
Dunsany. Irish Lord and master of fantasy,
Dunsany began publishing
in 1905 with The Gods of Pegana and kept churning out plays, poems,
and short stories until his death in 1957.
- Charles Vess has collected a huge amount of Plunkett's tales,
some of which may have only appeared in magazines, in Dunsany's
Corner.
- Edgar Rice
Burroughs' tales of fantastic adventure fiction have made a huge
impact on American culture. John Carter of Mars, the hero of his first
novel A Princess of Mars (1912), is said to be an inspiration for
the creation of Superman. His Tarzan stories have been made into numerous
movies and TV programs. Even this past summer has seen a movie spoof of
the character.
- James Branch Cabell's Jurgen: a
Comedy of Justice (1919) sets a Poictesme pawnbroker in a story
involving Arthurian characters, the slavic demon Koshchei, God and the
Devil.
- A. Merritt's adventure novels, including The Moon Pool, published in 1919, are full of
elements of fantasy.
- James MacDonald's Library
of the Fantastic is an archive of numerous public domain fantasy and
horror tales including some by the above authors, as well as Chambers,
Lord Byron, Polidori, and others.
Probably the most valuable right
associated with the relative anarchy of the net is that of free speech.
While our server set up prevents a direct counter for this page, there have
been over 1,322,907 hits on the main Myths and Legends page since its
move from MIT in September of 1995, with the last assessment being on
December 1st, 2000.
Apparently, this site is useful and interesting enough to have earned
a few awards.
Copyright 1993
- 2000.
Christopher B. Siren
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