GAFFER DEATH. There was once a poor man who had twelve children, and he was obliged to labour day and night that he might earn food for them. When at length, as it so happened, a thirteenth came into the world, the poor man did not know how to help himself, so he ran out into the highway, determined to ask the first person he met to be godfather to the boy. There came stalking up to him Death, who... more...

MOOWIS. In a large village there lived a noted belle, or Ma-mon-dá-go-Kwa, who was the admiration of all the young hunters and warriors. She was particularly admired by a young man who, from his good figure and the care he took in his dress, was called the Beau-Man, or Ma-mon-dá-gin-in-e. This young man had a friend and companion whom he made his confidant. “Come,” said he one day, in a sportive... more...

In this short monograph I do not pretend to give anything more than a Sketch of the Folk-lore to be found among the Borneans. The island is large, and the people, scattered and isolated by constant inter-tribal warfare, differ one tribe from another, in language, customs and appearance almost more than do Germans, French, or English; to say that any tradition or custom is common to all the tribes, or... more...

CHAPTER I. FAIRIES. The wealth of Shakespeare’s luxuriant imagination and glowing language seems to have been poured forth in the graphic accounts which he has given us of the fairy tribe. Indeed, the profusion of poetic imagery with which he has so richly clad his fairy characters is unrivalled, and the “Midsummer-Night’s Dream” holds a unique position in so far as it contains the finest... more...

NAPOLEONDER[1] [Footnote 1: The Russian peasant's name for Napoleon Bonaparte. The final syllable "der" has perhaps been added because to the ear of the peasant "Napoleon" sounds clipped and incomplete, as "Alexan" would sound to us without the "der."] Long ago—but not so very long ago; our grandfathers remember it—the Lord God wanted to punish the people of the... more...

PREFACE If I have essayed to do in this book what should have been done by one of the masters of the science of folklore—Mr. Frazer, Mr. Lang, Mr. Hartland, Mr. Clodd, Sir John Rhys, and others—I hope it will not be put down to any feelings of self-sufficiency on my part. I have greatly dared because no one of them has accomplished, and I have so acted because I feel the necessity of some guidance... more...

PREFACE In 1899 I began to write out a text-book of sociology from material which I had used in lectures during the previous ten or fifteen years. At a certain point in that undertaking I found that I wanted to introduce my own treatment of the "mores." I could not refer to it anywhere in print, and I could not do justice to it in a chapter of another book. I therefore turned aside to write a... more...

How our heroes enter upon more than one career. On a raw, damp morning in early spring, a rather forlorn group of three youngsters might have been seen on the doorstep of Mountjoy Preparatory School, casting nervous glances up and down the drive, and looking anything but a picture of the life and spirits they really represented. That they were bound on an important journey was very evident. They were... more...

PAL In the depths of the green wilderness, where dark spruce and hemlock guard the secrets of the trail, are still to be found wild creatures who know little of man and who regard him with more of curiosity than of fear. Woodland ponds, whose placid waters have never reflected the dark lines of a canoe, lie like jewels in their setting of green hills; ponds where soft-eyed deer come down to drink at... more...

On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of the wastes of the Pacific and knew that that spectral promontory was Diamond Head, a piece of this world which I had not seen before for twenty-nine years. So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the Sandwich Islands—those islands which to me were Paradise; a Paradise which I had been longing all those years to see again. Not... more...