Custom and Myth

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Longmans, Green and Company, 1884 - 312 páginas
This work by Andrew Lang analyzes the practice of comparative mythology and argues against the common conceptions of mythology. It lends itself well as an guide to understanding what drove Lang to produce his Fairy Books.
 

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Página 183 - My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God.
Página 148 - Therewith the slayer of Argos gave me the plant that he had plucked from the ground, and he showed me the growth thereof. It was black at the root, but the flower was like to milk. Moly the gods call it, but it is hard for mortal men to dig; howbeit with the gods all things are possible.
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Página 204 - Knee, and was originally applied to a doctor or sorcerer of considerable notoriety and skill among the Hottentots or Namaquas some generations back, in consequence of his having received some injury to his knee.
Página 235 - They threw away the old names, but they did not throw away their belief in that which they had tried to name. After destroying the altars of their old gods, they built out of the scattered bricks a new altar to the Unknown God...
Página 47 - Zeus as the best and most righteous of the gods ? — and yet they admit that he bound his father (Cronos) because he wickedly devoured his sons, and that he too had punished his own father (Uranus) for a similar reason, in a nameless manner. And yet when I proceed against my father, they are angry with me.
Página 115 - That unclean beasts, beasts not to be eaten, were originally totems, Prof. Robertson Smith infers from Ezekiel (viii. 10, II), where ' we find seventy of the elders of Israel — that is, the heads of houses — worshipping in a chamber which had on its walls the figures of all manner of unclean ' (tabooed) ' creeping things, and quadrupeds, even all the idols of the House of Israel?
Página 41 - I pass over the fact that you cannot find a single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing. ... To prove this I will not mention the secret acts of worship, on account of the uninitiated. But this much all men know, that most people say of those who reveal the mysteries, that they
Página 91 - The giant's dochter left her father's house, and he pursued her and was drowned. Then she came to the king's palace where Nicht Nought Nothing was. And she went up into a tree to watch for him. The gardener's dochter, going to draw water in the well, saw the shadow...

Acerca del autor (1884)

Andrew Lang was born at Selkirk in Scotland on March 31, 1844. He was a historian, poet, novelist, journalist, translator, and anthropologist, in connection with his work on literary texts. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy, St. Andrews University, and Balliol College, Oxford University, becoming a fellow at Merton College. His poetry includes Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), Ballades in Blue China (1880--81), and Grass of Parnassus (1888--92). His anthropology and his defense of the value of folklore as the basis of religion is expressed in his works Custom and Myth (1884), Myth, Ritual and Religion (1887), and The Making of Religion (1898). He also translated Homer and critiqued James G. Frazer's views of mythology as expressed in The Golden Bough. He was considered a good historian, with a readable narrative style and knowledge of the original sources including his works A History of Scotland (1900-7), James VI and the Gowrie Mystery (1902), and Sir George Mackenzie (1909). He was one of the most important collectors of folk and fairy tales. His collections of Fairy books, including The Blue Fairy Book, preserved and handed down many of the better-known folk tales from the time. He died of angina pectoris on July 20, 1912.

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