People have been attracted to the lure of distant, exotic places throughout the ages, and over the centuries a vast store of legends and lore relating to travel have grown up. This encyclopedia represents a complilation of travel legends and lore of civilizations throughout the world.

This is a study of the manner in which certain mythical notions of the world become accepted as fact. Dathorne shows how particular European concepts such as El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, a race of Amazons, and monster (including cannibal) images were first associated with the Orient. After the New World encounter they were repositioned to North and South America. The book examines the way in which Arabs and Africans are conscripted into the view of the world and takes an unusual, non-Eurocentric viewpoint of how Africans journeyed to the New World and Europe, participating in, what may be considered, an early stage of world exploration and discovery. The study concludes by looking at European travel literature from the early journeys of St. Brendan, through the Viking voyages and up to Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville. In all these instances, the encounters seem to justify mythical belief. Dathorne's interest in the subject is both intellectual and passionate since, coming from Guyana, he was very much part of this malformed Weltschmerz.

This book entitled, Garden of Eden Found, is divided into three almost equal parts. Part I of the book is exactly what the title says. It reveals and explains the exact geographical location of the ancient site of the Garden of Eden. This is an absolutely new and a previously undiscovered site. People suppose that we must yet wait on a prophet of God to reveal its location, but this book explains that God through the prophet Moses said everything he could to explain the location of the Garden of Eden in the second chapter of Genesis. It is just that the names of the lands and rivers have changed. Garden of Eden was located upon the North American continent. Note that according to Genesis 1:10 each land was called earth. Thus, it could have been on any continent. There has never been one fact of evidence to show that the Garden of Eden was located in the Middle East anyway. This has only been a supposition of the so-called learned; even those who write the text books; and most of whom do not believe in God or in revelation. The author has simply put together the Genesis account of Eden with the latter-day revelations concerning Adam-ondi-Ahman in America. nights and Sabbath of the creation account in Genesis chapter one. No one has ever discovered nor understood their ultimate meaning before this work. The author submits that this concept is the greatest concept that can be conceived by the mind of man concerning ultimate reality. This concept ties together the law of eternal progression, the order of the universes of the cosmos, and the days and nights of creation as one and the same thing. So the author begins Part II of his book with the following paragraph. would name my address, The Number and Order of the Universes of the Cosmos. If I was a philosopher and was presenting this topic before my fellow philosophers, I would entitle my presentation, The Law of Eternal Progression to Ultimate Continuum. But if I happened to be a theologian, and was preaching a sermon to my parishioners, I would call my message, The Meaning of the Six Days and Six Nights and a Sabbath of Creation. This is because these three subjects concern the same ultimate reality. The first is scientific, the second is philosophical, and the third is religious. Actually, this is the concept of mankind at the present time. Most people, including scientists, the philosophers, and the theologians, consider that the universe is the cosmos and that the cosmos is the universe. However, this is simply not the true case of the matter, for the cosmos is the sum total of the series of the twelve universes of the cosmos. found in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis in the Bible? Who would have thought that God had hidden it in the simple account of the six days and the six nights and Sabbath of creation? I will attempt to show, in plainness and simplicity, that this is the true interpretation. Book of Revelation. The new truth to understand is that they represent only natural things and historical events of the past two-thousand years of Christian history. There are three general principles that we must accept in order to understand the symbolism of the Book of Revelation. Let me now list the general principles in this order. The first thing to understand is that the prophecy of the Book of Revelation covers the past two-thousand years of western history. The second thing to understand is that the prophecy is only about Christianity.

The Papago Indians of the American Southwest say butterflies were created to gladden the hearts of children and chase away thoughts of aging and death. "How the Butterflies Came to Be" is one of twenty-four Native American tales included in "Native American Animal Stories." The stories, coming from Mohawk, Hopi, Yaqui, Haida and other cultures, demonstrate the power of animals in Native American traditions.
Parents, teachers and children will delight in lovingly told stories about "our relations, the animals." The stories come to life through magical illustrations by Mohawk artists John Kahionhes Fadden and David Fadden.
"The stories in this book present some of the basic perspectives that Native North American parents, aunts and uncles use to teach the young. They are phrased in terms that modern youngsters can understand and appreciate ... They enable us to understand that while birds and animals appear to be similar in thought processes to humans, that is simply the way we represent them in our stories. But other creatures do have thought processes, emotions, personal relationships...We must carefully ccord these other creatures the respect that they deserve and the right to live without unnecessary harm. Wanton killings of different animals by some hunters and sportsmen are completely outside the traditional way that native people have treated other species, and if these stories can help develop in young people a strong sense of the wonder of other forms of life, this sharing of Native North American knowledge will certainly have been worth the effort." --excerpt from the forward by Vine Deloria, Jr.
These stories first appeared in "Keepers of the Animals: Native American Stories and Wildlife Activities for Children" by Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

For generations, Central Asian Muslims have told legends of medieval rulers who waged war, died in battle, and achieved sainthood. Among the Uyghurs of East Turkistan (present-day Xinjiang, China), some of the most beloved legends tell of the warrior-saint Satuq Bughra Khan and his descendants, the rulers of the Qarakhanid dynasty. To this day, these tales are recited at the saints' shrines and retold on any occasion. Warrior Saints of the Silk Road introduces this rich literary tradition, presenting the first complete English translation of the Qarakhanid narrative cycle along with an accessible commentary. At once mesmerizing, moving, and disturbing, these legends are essential texts in Central Asia's religious heritage as well as fine, enduring works of mystical literature.

The ten chapters of "Proverbs Speak Louder Than Words" present a composite picture of the richness of proverbs as significant expressions of folk wisdom as is manifest from their appearance in art, culture, folklore, history, literature, and the mass media. The first chapter surveys the multifaceted aspects of paremiology (the study of proverbs), with the second chapter illustrating the paremiological work by the American folklorist Alan Dundes. The next two chapters look at the effective role that proverbs play in the mass media, where they are cited in their traditional wording or as innovative anti-proverbs. The fifth chapter discusses proverbs as expressions of the worldview of New England. This is followed by two chapters on the proverbial prowess of American presidents, to wit the proverbial style in the correspondence between John and Abigail Adams and a discussion of Abraham Lincoln's apocryphal proverb "Don't swap horses in the middle of the stream." The eighth chapter traces the tradition of proverb iconography from medieval woodcuts to Pieter Bruegel the Elder and on to modern caricatures, cartoons, and comic strips. The last two chapters deal with the origin and history of the proverbial expression "to tilt at windmills" as an allusion to Cervantes' Don Quixote and the many proverbial utterances in Mozart's letters. The book draws attention to the fact that proverbs as metaphorical signs continue to play an important role in oral and written communication. Proverbs as socalled monumenta humana are omnipresent in all facets of life, and while they are neither sacrosanct nor saccharine, they usually offer much common sense or wisdom based on recurrent experiences and observations.

Orature and Yoruba Riddles takes readers into the hitherto unexplored undercurrents of riddles in Africa. Because of its oral and all too often ephemeral nature, riddles have escaped close scrutiny from scholars. The strength of the Yoruba as the focus of this study is impressive indeed: a major ethnic group in Africa, with established connections with the black diaspora in North America and the Caribean; a rich oral and written culture; a large and diverse population; and an integrated rural-urban society. The book is divided into six chapters for readers' convenience. When read in sequence, the book provides a comprehensive, holistic sense of Yoruba creativity where riddles are concerned. At the same time, the book is conceived in a way that each chapter could be read individually. Therefore, those readers seeking understanding of a specific type of riddle may target a single chapter appearing most relevant to her/his curiosity.

Twenty-six haunting tales of Florida's ghosts, from a haunted schoolhouse in Micanopy to the many spirits lingering in St. Augustine, America's oldest city.

In the wake of the elegant master theories of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Georges Dumezil, and Claude Levi-Strauss, how are mythology and the comparative study of religion to be understood? In Myth and Method, a leading team of scholars assesses the current state of the study of myth and explores the possibilities for charting a methodological middle course between the comparative and the contextual issues raised in the last ten years. In confronting these tension, they provide an outline of the most troubling questions in the field and offer a variety of responses to them.

Elves and elf-belief during the Anglo-Saxon period are reassessed in this lively and provocative study. Anglo-Saxon elves [Old English aelfe] are one of the best attested non-Christian beliefs in early medieval Europe, but current interpretations of the evidence derive directly from outdated nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship. Integrating linguistic and textual approaches into an anthropologically-inspired framework, this book reassesses the full range of evidence. It traces continuities and changes in medieval non-Christian beliefs with a new degree of reliability, from pre-conversion times to the eleventh century and beyond, and uses comparative material from medieval Ireland and Scandinavia to argue for a dynamic relationship between beliefs and society. Inparticular, it interprets the cultural significance of elves as a cause of illness in medical texts, and provides new insights into the much-discussed Scandinavian magic of seidr. Elf-beliefs, moreover, were connected withAnglo-Saxon constructions of sex and gender; their changing nature provides a rare insight into a fascinating area of early medieval European culture. Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award 2007 ALARIC HALL is a fellow of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.

Dictionary of Chicano Folklore charts the rich religious, social, artistic, and cultural heritage of Mexican Americans, who continue to evolve the customs and rituals connected to their Spanish and indigenous roots and the Spanish language. Entries cover specific regions, genres of folk speech, folk narrative, cultural traditions, artifacts, foods, ceremonies, rites, and define contemporary Hispanic terms ranging from duendes, pintos, and las posadas to pachucos, low riders, and Zozobra. The Dictionary of Chicano Folklore is the perfect resource for high school and undergraduate students interested in Chicano culture or for scholars seeking bibliographic material. Over 200 A-Z entries defining historical and contemporary terms, customs, legends, and rituals 44 photos Extensive bibliography

In this wide-ranging and insightful analysis, Stephen Benson proposes a poetics of narrative for postmodernism by placing new emphasis on the folktale. Postmodernist fictions have evidenced a return to narrative -- to storytelling centered on a sequence of events, rather than a "spiraling" of events as found in modernism -- and recent theorists have described narrative as a "central instance of the human mind." By characterizing the folktale as a prime embodiment of narrative, Benson relates folktales to many of the theoretical concerns of postmodernism and provides new insights into the works of major writers who have used this genre, which includes the subgenre of the fairy tale, in opening narrative up to new possibilities.

Benson begins by examining the key features of folktales: their emphasis on a chain of events rather than description or consciousness, their emphasis on a self-contained fictional environment rather than realism, the presence of a storyteller as a self-confessed fabricator, their oral and communal status, and their ever-changing state, which defies authoritative versions. He traces the interactions between the folktale and Italo Calvino's Fiabe Italiane, between selected fictions of John Barth and the Arabian Nights, between the work of Robert Coover and the subgenre of the fairy tale, and between the "Bluebeard" stories and recent feminist retellings by Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood. The arguments presented will interest not only folklorists and scholars of narrative but also readers in fields ranging from comparative literature to feminist theory.

Here are the great stories of the Blackfeet, including the entertaining Na'Pi (Old Man) stories of mischief and trickery; the hero Kut-o-yis', who got rid of the bad things; the secret societies and how the earth was created. Recorded in person by the famous conservationist and ethnologist, George Bird Grinnell, who became a tribal member in 1885.

Nothing like some good ghost stories on a cool Florida evening around a campfire (or at home in your favorite reading chair). And nothing like a swamp as a good, scary setting, especially Florida's famous ones--from the Everglades to Mosquito Lagoon. Mysterious things just happen in swamps. Maybe it's because they are often wet, shadowy places of wild beauty where few people go. Where else but a swamp can you find a ghost who is obsessed with the ghost orchid? Throw in a skunk ape or two and you've got the ingredients for many entertaining hours. In writing tales for this book, Doug Alderson drew upon many years of entertaining young people as a summer camp counselor and storyteller, and also from decades as a swamp explorer. He is a former associate editor of Florida Wildlife magazine. To learn more about his writing and photography, log onto his website at www.dougalderson.net.