Books in Myths and Legends from Around the World series

by Henriette Barkow illustrated by Alan Down Grendel, the most evil creature alive, is killing and devouring Hrothgar's bravest warriors. For twelve long years none can stop his evil ways until Beowulf, the strongest and mightiest Great warrior, arrives on the Danish shore and with his bare hands fights Grendel. All rejoice that peace has been restored at long last. But who is the creature living beneath the dark dank waters waiting for revenge?

The selections in this book come from German and English sources. There is a mass of East Baltic folk-lore from which to choose which gives but a feeble idea of the extent of Baltic folk-lore. In this volume you will find tales of Enchantments, Wizards, Witches, Magic Spells, Nixy Queens, Giants, Fairy White Reindeer, and glittering Treasures from the Baltic Lands -- Lapland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Their setting is the Long Winter Night with its brilliant play of Northern Lights over the snow-covered tundra; or the brief Arctic summer--its sun burning night and day--with its birds, flowers, insect-clouds, singing waters, and almost tropic heat; or the golden sunshine of the southern amber coast. But it is the Northern Lights themselves, flashing and flaming through the dark heavens, that cast their mystic weirdness over many of these tales moulded by the peculiar imagination of the Asiatic and European East Baltic folks. The farther our stories draw south from Lapland, the lower sink the Northern Lights and their influence on folk-tales, till at last they merge with the warmer lights of Lithuania - the amber-land. Wizards and wizardry abound in Lappish, Finnish, and Estonian tales, Witches appear more often in Latvian and Lithuanian ones. And in all these countries except Lapland, many European folk-tale themes, which we know in the Grimm collection, are found in new forms. 33% of the net profit from this book will be donated to charities. YESTERDAY'S BOOKS for TOMORROW'S EDUCATIONS

Early American folktales demonstrate the ambitions and values of the first settlers in the United States, including bravery, honesty, and a pioneering spirit. These legends, tall tales, and fairytales also introduced beloved figures like Babe the Blue Ox and Paul Bunyan. This book explains the traditions of storytelling that are uniquely American and describes how historical events shaped the stories we still tell in modern day.

Students of Icelandic literature agree that the Norse deities stand out as rude and as massive as the Scandinavian mountains. They exhibit "a spirit of victory, superior to brute force, superior to mere matter, a spirit that fights and overcomes." "The Norsemen have given their gods a noble, upright, great spirit, and placed them upon a high level that is all their own." "It is a greatness not of mere body and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul." It was in the infancy of thought gazing upon a universe filled with divinity, and believing heartily with all sincerity that a large-hearted people reached out in the dark towards ideals which were better than they knew. But, Ragnarok was to undo their gods because they had stumbled from their higher standards. The weighty words of William Morris regarding the Volsunga Saga may also be fitly quoted as an introduction to this collection of "Myths of the Norsemen": "This is the great story of the North, which should be to all our race what the Tale of Troy was to the Greeks-to all our race first, and afterwards, when the change of the world has made our race nothing more than a name of what has been-a story too-then should it be to those that come after us no less than the Tale of Troy has been to us." We have to thank a curious phenomenon for the preservation of so much of the old lore as we still possess. While modern and foreign influences were changing the Norse language, it remained practically unaltered in Iceland. And so here it is, re-presented for you to discover as it was writ over a thousand years ago.