"Legend" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Iames, [Footnote: According to the legend, the relics of this saint were miraculously conveyed to Spain in a ship of marble from Jerusalem, where he was bishop.] about which you wrote vnto vs, we haue sent you word by M Herbert, and by William the Clerke. Witnes Thomas our Chancelour ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... all attention; the wood listened as I went, and held its breath to number my footfalls. One could not help feeling that there ought to be some reason for this stillness; whether, as the bright old legend goes, Pan lay somewhere near in siesta, or whether, perhaps, the heaven was meditating rain, and the first drops would soon come pattering through the leaves. It was not unpleasant, in such an humour, to catch sight, ever and anon, of large spaces of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... certainly come from another world. Their own most ancient legends described just such a world as his: a world of many races of many colors, who fought many wars among themselves. Their ancestors had fled from such a world, according to legend through a twisting cavern which they had sealed behind them. The conditions Tommy described had been the cause of their ancestors' flight. They, the people of Yugna, would do well to follow the example of their forebears: strip these Earth folk of their weapons, exile them to the jungles, ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... to the river, where the Saskatchewan swung in a half-moon to the south and west, he found a low, squat building with a light hung over the door illuminating a bit of humor in the form of a printed legend which said that it was "King Edward's Hotel." The scrub bush of the forest grew within a hundred yards of it, and in this bush Jan tied his dogs and left his sledge. It did not occur to him that now, when he had entered civilization, he had come also into the land of lock ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... instance. But all blue diamonds are unlucky. I could tell you some gruesome stories connected with them. The previous wearer of the Heredith necklace—Philip's mother—died in giving birth to him. Incidentally, there is a curious legend attached to the moat-house in the form of a curse laid on it by the original builder, who was burnt alive in the old house. He prophesied that as the house of the Herediths was founded in horror it should end in horror. These old family curses sometimes come home to roost after a long ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... I must get to cover without loss of time. No doubt the holly thickets would have proved a very suitable retreat, but there was mounted on the wall a sort of signboard not uncommon in the country of Great Britain, and very damping to the adventurous: SPRING GUNS AND MAN TRAPS was the legend that it bore. I have learned since that these advertisements, three times out of four, were in the nature of Quaker guns on a disarmed battery, but I had not learned it then, and even so, the odds would not have been good enough. For a choice, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "The legend of the Saracen exile tells the story of penitence and shame; and to the last moment of his sad life he sighs in the sultry desert for the fair home of his ancestors, the gorgeous Alhambra. We, too, are descended from a race of conquerors, who crossed ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... story" is perhaps the "golden legend", a book in the darker ages of popery much read, and doubtless often exquisitely embellished, but of which Canus, one of the popish doctors, proclaims the author to have been homo ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... was splendid fun! One of our girls was in debt, and she had to sell her things. Oh, it was capital! I wish you could have seen her acting as her own auctioneer. Some of us were greedy and wanted her best things. I was one of those. She sold a sealskin jacket, an expensive one, quite new. There is a legend in the college that eighty guineas were expended on it. Well, I bid for the sealskin and it was knocked down to me for ten. It is a little too big for me, of course, but when it is cut to my figure, it will make a superb ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... Hercules, Buddha, or Mahomet? In all probability we are not. In point of fact, moreover, their real lives are of slight importance to us. Our interest is to know what our great men were as they are presented by popular legend. It is legendary heroes, and not for a moment real heroes, who have impressed the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... legend of the Piasau is well known. Within the recollection of men now living, rude paintings of the monster were visible on the cliffs above Alton, Illinois. To these images, when passing in their canoes, the Indians were accustomed to make offerings of maize, tobacco, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Himera, among other writers, made Aeneas, a Homeric hero (cf. Il. xx. 307-8), settle in Italy; and Naevius is said to have adopted the legend in the form given by Timaeus, the Sicilian historian of the third century B.C. The legend probably arose from the worship of Aphrodite on the coasts of Italy, and was disseminated by the Greeks of Cumae to please the Romans. ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... 'this' he said 'was Hugh's at Agincourt; And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon: A good knight he! we keep a chronicle With all about him'—which he brought, and I Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights, Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings Who laid about them at their wills and died; And mixt with these, a lady, one that armed Her own fair head, and sallying through the gate, Had beat her foes with ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... every song or legend came the inevitable "What nelse?" from little Fay—and Jan only escaped after the most solemn promises had been exacted for a triple ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... picture presents two battles—the one on earth, the other in the air, according to the legend that warriors, after their death, continue fighting incessantly as spirits. In the middle of the picture appears the Cross and its mystic light; on this my "Symphonic Poem" is founded. The chorale ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... encountered, prove also the richness and population of the country. Vespasian and Titus caused medals to be struck with trophies, in which Palestine is represented by a female under a palm-tree, to signify the richness of he country, with this legend: Judea capta. Other medals also indicate this fertility; for instance, that of Herod holding a bunch of grapes, and that of the young Agrippa displaying fruit. As to the present state of he country, one perceives that it is not ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... of breath, she came to a halt outside the ground glass door with the legend painted across ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... box used by Sir Francis in sending his papers to the Postmaster-General is one of the prized articles. A very handsome gold seal cut with the Royal Arms, and bearing the legend—General Post Office Secretary—is another of the relics. Likewise a smaller gold seal with a Crown, and "God Save the King," as ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... although comprising the oldest and most unmixed race in Europe, did not realize until very late the value of writing chronicles or reviews of historic events. Thus the names of heroes and kings of the remotest past are helplessly forgotten, save as they come to us in legend and folk-song, much of which we must conclude is imaginary, beautiful as it is. But Mother Earth has revealed to us, at the spade of the archaeologist, trustworthy and irrefutable accounts of the age and the ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... bad men," she replied. "Some of my people do not believe that there are such creatures. But we have a legend—a very old, old legend, that once the men from there came across to Grabritin. They came upon the water, and under the water, and even in the air. They came in great numbers, so that they rolled across the land like a great gray fog. They brought with them thunder and lightning ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... embroidered mats upon the washstand, tiles upon the stove, everything a deep, dark red. Four mugs stood upon the mantelpiece, and ... she rubbed her eyes ... was it possible that one had an iron cross upon its porcelain, one the legend "Got mit uns," the third the head of the Kaiser, the fourth the head of the Kaiserin? "That is too much! The people I shall write to ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... at the stated season, just to whisper a few sweet notes, and would then retire. Other said it was only an echo borne upon the waters (when the wind was in a certain direction), from the playing of the waves against the sandy shore of an island, three miles distant. There is an Indian legend, which I will relate, that gives a more interesting account of this phenomenon than either of these. A war party of the Pascagoula tribe, headed by their chief, having been hotly pursued by a victorious enemy, ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... of her life had been in smoothing the pillow of exile for banished conspirators. Her refugees had been very precious to her; she was always trying to raise money for some cadaverous Pole, to obtain lessons for some shirtless Italian. There was a legend that an Hungarian had once possessed himself of her affections, and had disappeared after robbing her of everything she possessed. This, however, was very apocryphal, for she had never possessed anything, and it was open to grave ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... traced back a little farther streams which had already been followed far up their course; those of Schliemann and Evans revealed the reality of one which, so to speak, had hitherto been believed to flow only through the dreamland of legend. It was obvious that mighty men must have existed before Agamemnon, but what manner of men they were, and in what manner of world they lived, were matters absolutely unknown, and, to all appearance, likely to remain so. An abundant wealth of legend ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... in the theory of the instinct of philoprogenitiveness are silent on the subject of the best and most suitable subject for the purpose; is it the law-abiding citizen? the restless reformer? or the artist and thinker? Strange to say, the legend of the instinct of philoprogenitiveness, intuitively conscious of the right way, is to-day accepted even by scientists who are in sympathy neither with Schopenhauer's nor with any other metaphysic. It is taken for granted that love can only serve the purpose of the species; ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... legend!" and the Princess smiled, turning her dark eyes with a bewitching languor on Gervase, who, for some reason or other which he could not explain, felt as if he were walking in a dream on the edge of a deep chasm of nothingness, into which he must presently sink to utter destruction. "All ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... "This is the legend of my people, White Man, that Jal, God of Death and Evil, slew his mother, Aca, in the far past. There where the stones are found he slew her, and the red gems are her blood, and the blue gems are her tears which she shed praying to him for mercy. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... people, like a prayer that, once learned, is forever remembered. The Chinese writer makes no mention of any city nor of any province, although even in the relation of the most ancient traditions such an omission is rare; we are only told that the name of the hero of the legend was Tong-yong, and that he lived in the years of the great dynasty of ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... on him and eats him at leisure. The people of those isles call the bird 'Rukh.'" Yule has an interesting note (vol. II, p. 348) showing how old and widespread the fable of the Rukh was, and is of opinion that the reason that the legend was localized in the direction of Madagascar was perhaps that some remains of the great fossil Aepyornis and its colossal eggs were found in that island. Professor Sayce states that the Rukh figures much—not only in Chinese folk-lore—but also ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... had been known since long before the Christian era. A Greek legend relates how a shepherd named Magnes found that his crook was attracted by a strange rock. Thus was the lodestone, the natural magnetic iron ore, discovered, and the legend would lead us to believe that the words magnet and magnetism were derived from the name ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... houses, its prim church, and sleepy quay, where the blue waters lap and sparkle in innocent sunlight, is, it is to be feared, a town of small virtue and the habitation of scoundrels. For this is the stronghold of those contrabandistas whom song and legend have praised as the boldest, the merriest, and most romantic of law-breakers. Indeed, in this country the man who can boast of a smuggling ancestry holds high his head and looks down ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... localised (cf. Gaston, Paris, Histoire Poetique de Charlemagne, p. 383). Petrarch has given a succinct account of it in a letter written from Cologne, in which he states that he learnt it from the priests of the city, and it is through his narrative that the legend appears to have reached England. John Skelton in his poem 'Why come ye not to court?' quotes the story, and refers to the Italian poet as his authority (cf. Dyce's Skelton, II. 48 and 364, where the letter is printed at length). Southey has also made the tradition the ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... we arrived off Funchal, passing, at the eastern extremity of the island, Machico Bay, where the lovers mentioned by Larkyns landed and lived and died, according to the legend. This, the Spanish captain said was quite true, for he had seen the grave himself and the little church erected to their memory, a statement that quite delighted our friend Larkyns, as he was able to throw it in the teeth of Mr Stormcock ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of himself, they by common consent voted him a spy and a public menace, telling each other that he was undoubtedly engaged in drawing plans of the coast in order to facilitate' the landing of some enemy; for did not the legend run:— ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... hole in the head of each can to let out the air. Then they solder them up again, and little girls paste on them bright-colored labels showing merry little cupids riding the happy salmon up to the cannery door, with Mount Tacoma and Cape Disappointment in the background; and a legend underneath says that this is "Booth's," or "Badollet's Best," or "Hume's," or "Clark's," or "Kinney's Superfine Salt Water Salmon." Then the cans are placed in cases, forty-eight in a case, and five hundred thousand ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... passant and a leopard's head crowned. In the centre are the arms and crest of Shakespeare, and on an escutcheon of pretence three stags' heads caboshed. It bears the inscription, 'William Powlett Powlett, Esq., D.D. William Powlett Shakspear, 1821.' There is a legend this was made from plate owned by the poet. What is ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... The domestic legend which follows, is founded upon actual events of comparatively recent occurrence in the state of Kentucky. However strange the facts may appear in the sequel—however in conflict with what are usually supposed to be ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... an untruth concerning vivisection may be worked to create prejudice against reform is afforded by a curious legend concerning the late Lord Lister, one of the most eminent men of ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... between the unblessed suffering which plagues the soul, and that which we welcome as a process of purgation. The first terzet makes heaven and hell respectively consist of a clean and a burdened conscience. The second, referring to a legend of S. Peter's controversy with Simon Magus, finds a proof of immortality in this ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... he has the splendid centuries of Greece and Rome behind him, and can begin his poem with invoking a goddess from whom legend derived the planter of his race. His eyes looked out on a landscape saturated with glorious recollections; he had seen Caesar, and heard Cicero. But who shall conjure with Saugus or Cato Four Corners,—with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Ceylon a granite cippus, or monumental pillar, of immemorial antiquity; and to this pillar a remarkable legend is attached. The pillar measures six feet by six, i. e. thirty-six square feet, on the flat tablet of its horizontal surface; and in height several riyanas, (which arc Ceylonese cubits of eighteen inches each,) but ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... an American of only one generation, who reminded her of the legend that Washington had stopped there overnight on his way to take command of the army in Cambridge; but she was too deeply absorbed in thinking how handsome he was and how much he seemed the mayor to listen with attention to his remarks. She took his intellectual ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... weekly paper to pore over for seven nights hand-running, and conversation as meditative and vacant as the chewing of a heifer's cud. From a wood engraving on the wall a slender, angelic girl looked down upon them, and underneath was the legend: "Our Future Queen." And from a highly coloured lithograph alongside looked down a stout and elderly lady, with ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... their innocence. Yet their eulogy must be short, for though their customs, language, and appearance vary with the districts they inhabit and the subdivisions to which they belong, the history of all is a confused legend of strife and misery, their natures are uniformly cruel and thriftless, and their condition is one of equal ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... following a new fashion, wore a coif of slashed black velvet, a head-dress that recalls memories of mediaeval legend to a young imagination, to amplify, as it were, the dignity of womanhood. Her red-gold hair, escaping from under her cap, hung loose; bright golden color in the light, red in the rounded shadow of the curls that only partially hid her neck. Beneath a massive ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... He thought now with irony of his interest in them. Since then he had heard them a hundred times from Walker himself. Walker knew that he was a character, and, proud of his reputation, deliberately acted up to it. He was jealous of his "legend" and anxious that you should know the exact details of any of the celebrated stories that were told of him. He was ludicrously angry with anyone who had told them to the ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... His bombing waistcoat sagging low, His rifle slung across his back: Poised in the very act to throw. And let some graven legend tell Of those weird battles in the West Wherein he put old skill to use, And played old games ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... and after consulting a wall directory stepped into the antigrav chute and was whisked high up into the heart of the building. He stepped out before a plain door and as he advanced the center panel fluoresced briefly with the printed legend—GALACTIC PRISON AUTHORITY, Ary Mefford, ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... the chair could have but contrived to get into it, I caught a glimpse of my friend's printing press and his case of types, canopied overhead by the blue ancient of the vessel, bearing, in stately six-inch letters of white bunting, the legend, "FREE CHURCH YACHT." A door opened, which communicated with the forecastle, and John Stewart, stooping very much, to accommodate himself to the low-roofed passage, thrust in a plate of fresh herrings, splendidly toasted, to give substantiality and relish to our tea. The little rude ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... doubt That as some tyrants use from their chain'd rout Of slaves to pick out one whom for their sport They keep afflicted by some ling'ring art; So we are merely thrown upon the stage The mirth of fools and legend of the age. When I see in the ruins of a suit Some nobler breast, and his tongue sadly mute Feed on the vocal silence of his eye, And knowing cannot reach the remedy; When souls of baser stamp shine in their store, And he of all the throng is only poor; When ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... police. Gerald Burton, the young American, not entirely platonic in his solicitude, is baffled; Salgas, a famous enquiry agent, is baffled; and I am ready to take very long odds against the reader's unravelling the mystery, unless he happens to be familiar with a certain legend of the plague (though no plague comes in here). Indeed, it is only a chance conversation in the last chapter that throws light, my dear Watson, on this particularly bizarre affair. And what then, you ask, had happened to Jack Dampier after ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... as Brasseur translates it, but sounds of nature. Tohil was the name of the principal Quiche divinity, and was supposed by Brasseur and Ximenez to be an abbreviated form of Tohohil. But I have given reasons for supposing it to mean "justice," "equity," and this legend was devised to explain it, when its true etymology had become lost. (See my Names of the Gods in the Kiche ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... dragon. In the second, the 'Judgment of Paris,' she appears as Aphrodite, to whom Paris (the Duke) gives the apple. The third is 'Europa and the Bull,' Europa being personified by Esperance. The Duke does not wish to look ridiculous in a bull's hide, so takes liberties with the legend and transforms the bull into a centaur. I have said 'Amen' to everything. Finally to complete the fete, which will no doubt be well attended and very profitable, there will be little shops of all kinds. Esperance is to sell flowers from the Duchess's gardens. I have ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... tale of love and adventure with King Olaf Tryggveson for the hero. The story opens with a scene at a fair in Ireland, where Olaf meets a beautiful Irish princess, and later changes to Norway, where Olaf returns to be received as King. Such history and legend as have come to us of that time furnish fertile imagination a frame for stirring incident and ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... have heard the age-old legend of the Mother Vein of Gold, which appears and vanishes, now and again, in this corner of the world. Superstition regarding this great original vein of gold is found wherever men seek the precious metal. The feverish Spaniards called this phantom lode the Madre d'Oro, or "Mother of ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... an old and apt saying, that "the wilder the tale, the wider the ear;" and experience proves, that from the nursery to the tomb, no legend is too marvellous for the faith of the credulous, and that in many instances, the more incomprehensible the story, the more confirmed ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... genuine worth, When late the[A] surly Rambler wandered forth In brown[B] surtout, with ragged staff, Enough to make a savage laugh! And sent the faithless legend from his hand, That Want and Famine ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... house and the man who was reaping a rich harvest by engaging the army of persons who had done the work therein. He rejoiced openly at each delay on the part of the plumber, the tinsmith, the decorator; and openly gave a thanksgiving when the illustrated wall paper for the halls, which told the legend of Psyche and Cupid, had been sent to Davy Jones's locker en route from Florence. Steve's name for the Villa ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... volume from Papaverius, through the agency of a person specially bribed and authorised to take any necessary measures, insolence and violence excepted—but the power of extraction that must have been employed in such a process excites very painful reflections. Some legend, too, there is of a book creditor having forced his way into the Cacus den, and there seen a sort of rubble-work inner wall of volumes, with their edges outwards, while others, bound and unbound, the plebeian ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... worship, and love, and wait. Their hope and expectation grow ever stronger and brighter, that one day, ere long, the Father will show Himself amongst them, and thenceforth dwell in His own house for evermore. What was once but an old legend has become the one ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... Afterwards. The poetical legend by Drayton, here alluded to, will be found in the collected works ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... palm still seems a creature rather than a tree,—gives you the idea of personality;- -you could almost believe each lithe shape animated by a thinking force,—believe that all are watching you with such passionless calm as legend lends to beings super-natural.... And I wonder if some kindred fancy might not have inspired the name given by the French colonists to the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... one important day, the great ex-trust man, whose name is inscribed on granite buildings over half the earth. This man—so the legend runs—is on the lookout for unusual personalities. The first hint of a new one puts him on the trail, and he sends out a detective to gather facts, all of which are card-indexed under the personality's name. Then, if the report is attractive, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... that it was deemed desirable to adorn his wrists with a pair of handcuffs. In one of the cells, it was clear some of our British soldiers had at an earlier date been incarcerated, and were fairly well satisfied with the treatment meted out to them. Written on the wall I found this interesting legend: No. 28696, I. M'Donald, 4th Reg. M. Inf., Warwick's Camp; taken prisoner 7-3-1900; arrived here 11-3-1900. Also this, by a would-be poet called Wynn, a scout belonging to ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... wanderings, from which they were ultimately driven back into their present hill fastnesses by a great flood, after a more or less peaceful occupation of that district. It was on the occasion of this great flood, the legend runs, that the Khasi lost the art of writing, the Khasi losing his book whilst he was swimming at the time of this flood, whereas the Bengali managed to preserve his. Owing to the Khasis having possessed no written character before the advent of the Welsh missionaries there ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... Vesuvius. The volcano was supposed to have become for ever extinct ages ago. On the ancient lava-streams old trees grew, the most luscious grapes ripened on the flanks of the mountain, and from their descendants is pressed out at the present day a wine called Lachryma Christi. A legend relates that when the Saviour once went up Vesuvius and stood in mute astonishment at the beautiful landscape surrounding the Bay of Naples, He also wept from grief over this home of sin and vanity; and where His tears moistened the ground there grew up a tendril which ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... The flesh and blood heroes of the more modern times regularly and slowly pass from view, and in their places the unsubstantial worthies of dreamy tradition start up. The transition is so gradual, however, that it is at times impossible to draw the line between history and legend. Fortunately for the purposes of this volume it is not always necessary to make the effort. The early traditions of the Eternal City have so long been recounted as truth that the world is slow to give up even the least ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... people that carry back to Germany all the awful tales of my goings-on. Do you know, there was once a poor devil of a musician who had set my Zwei Grenadiere, and to whom I gave no end of help and advice, when he wanted to make an opera on the legend of the Flying Dutchman, which I had treated in one of my books. Now he curses me and all the Jews together, and his name is ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... eye on the above title, may possibly recognize something in it familiar to him, especially should he ever have resided on the classic shores of Galway or of Clare, our own "Far West;" but to others who may chance to honor our legend with a perusal, some few words of introduction are necessary to transport them, "in their mind's eye," from the city of "brotherly love," to the far distant and far different land of the O'Malleys, the Macnamaras,[1] ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... many plans for the days that were to come. They would live in the country, but not so far away from Paris that they would be deprived of its advantages. They would have a little cottage, over the door of which should be inscribed this legend: Parva domus, magna quies. There he could work, write a book—a novel, and later, a volume of poems. The titles of both were in readiness, ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... tortoises, about a dozen of which were now quietly crouching at the water's edge, filling themselves up with the cooling fluid. I did not see the patriarch upon whom a sailor once reported that he had read the legend carved, "The Ark, Captain Noah, Ararat for orders"; perhaps he had at last closed his peaceful career. But strange, and quaint as this exhibition of ancient reptiles was, we had other and better employment ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... mendicant, but poured upon her a torrent of abuse, adding that she had no right to put herself in the way of having children whom she could not support.—The woman dropped on her knees, and prayed "that the lady might have as many children at one birth as there were days in the year!" and so, (as the legend runs,) ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... summits, taken between the sun and the mists that rose behind him, a gigantic Tartarin was outlined on the sky, broader, dumpier, his beard bristling beyond the muffler, like one of those Scandinavian gods enthroned, as the legend has it, among ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... fell softly but clearly on the dim and faded canvas from which looked the saintly features of the martyred woman, whose continued presence with her descendants was the old family legend. But underneath it Myrtle was surprised to see a small table with some closely covered object upon it. It was a mysterious arrangement, made without any knowledge on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... same talisman of memory that has preserved to our time the names and the deeds of the actors of old will preserve to future times the names and the deeds that are distinguished now in the mimic world of the stage. Legend, speaking in the voice of the veteran devotee of the drama, will say, for example, that of all the actors of this period there was no light comedian comparable with Lester Wallack; that he could thoroughly identify himself with character,—though it did not always please him to do so; ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Frederick William IV. did everything possible to hamper and curtail the author's ambitions. But to give truth its due, I will not neglect to mention that this last prohibition was softened by assigning as its motion the allusion made in the play to that legend of the Berlin Castle, "The White Lady," who is supposed to bring a presage of death to the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... ancient popular poetry the adventure of King Edward and Robin Hood will seem the least eligible portion of this circle of story for the foundation of an historical theory. The ballad of King Edward and Robin Hood is but one version of an extremely multiform legend, of which the tales of "King Edward and the Shepherd" and "King Edward and the Hermit" are other specimens; and any one who will take the trouble to examine will be convinced that all these stories are one and the same thing, the personages being varied for the sake of novelty, and the name ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... be only a legend. The old Mamsells' measure is full. Death rides about on the road to the church to meet the last one of us. Before the next midnight mass she will be dead, the ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... Rosicrucian order, and the founder of modern Freemasonry; and gives an exhaustive account of his career on the authority of family archives. The following paragraphs contain the substance of her narrative, the "legend of Philalethes," as it was told to Miss Vaughan by her father and her uncle, who were ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... the cartoon-posters issued by the Democratic National Campaign Committee in the fall of 1864 is given here. It had the legend, "Running the Machine," printed beneath; the "machine" was Secretary Chase's "Greenback Mill," and the mill was turning out paper money by the million to satisfy the demands of greedy contractors. "Uncle Abe" is pictured as about ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... out flaming. He knew not where to turn. Temporarily he turned on his heel again and stared despairingly at the shop window. Again he read the legend: ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... previously ever got to it was when he saw Olga awake on the mountain-top and felt that he had missed his vocation in not being Siegfried, but from that he guessed. This time, too, it was about Olga, not about her as framed in the romance of legend and song, but of her as she appeared at Riseholme, taking as she did now, an ecstatic interest in the affairs of the place. So short a time ago, when she contemplated coming here first, she had spoken of it as a lazy backwater. Now she knew better than that, for ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... short Northern summer, Atven spent his evenings in searching about amongst "Thor's balls" for traces of the warriors of the old legend; and one night, in the soft clearness of the twilight, he came upon something that rewarded him ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... the human heart for the beauty of God's working—to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment,—are their higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture, first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is impossible to examine, in their connected system, the features of even the most ordinary mountain scenery, without concluding that it has been prepared in order to unite as far as possible, and in the closest compass, every means of delighting and sanctifying ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... point of peace was only temporary. The dread returned when the party approached again the turmoil of the American Fall, and fell again under the influence of the merciless haste of the flood. And there every islet, every rock, every point, has its legend of terror; here a boat lodged with a man in it, and after a day and night of vain attempts to rescue him, thousands of people saw him take the frightful leap, throwing up his arms as he went over; here a young woman slipped, and was instantly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... but so placed in relation to each other that always one leg is vertical and mounting guard on behalf of the other two, which, therefore, are enabled to sprawl aloft in the air—in fact, to be as absurdly negligent as they choose, relying upon their vigilant brother below, and upon the written legend or motto, STABIT QUOCUNQUE JECERIS (Stand it will upright, though you should fling it in any conceivable direction). What gave another feature of distraction and incoherency to my position was, that I still occupied the position of a reputed boy, nay, a child, in the estimate ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... seventy-four. A writer of the 6th century asserts that St. Luke was a painter, and attributes to him a certain picture of the Blessed Virgin. Another such picture is preserved in the great church of S. Maria Maggiore at Rome. The legend finds no support in early Christian writers. At the same time, it bears witness to the fact that this Gospel contains the elements of beauty in especial richness. It is the work of St. Luke that inspired Fra Angelico's pictures of the Annunciation, ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... It is the old idea of sorrowful men, a hermitage. I have often wondered in London, in Rome, in Athens, whether a hermitage is of any avail. Men went out into the desert in old days. Legend has it that holiness alone guided them there. All their disciples believed that. Reading about them I ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... as himself. A short sword is at his side, and he wears enormous jack-boots. In the distance rise peaked mountains, perhaps those of Southern France or Savoy; and the inn to which he seems bound bears the legend, Poste Royale, with the three fleur-de-lys. Our Courier belongs evidently to the ancien regime, and might indeed have stepped—or galloped—to us out of Sterne's "Sentimental Journey." The drawing of these prints is clumsy and coarse in technique, ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... sermon. It was of course occasional. The text, 1 Kings, chap. ii. ver. 19.—"And the king rose up to meet his mother, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the "king's mother, and she sat on his right hand." The application of this text to the legend of the Assumption is obvious, and occupied the first division of the discourse. The second part consisted in an application of the history of the early part of Solomon's reign to the present circumstances of Brazil; the restoration of the kingdom, the triumph over ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... front of my horse, while the third brought up the rear. They conducted us down the most frightfully steep paths until we had descended beneath the clouds, when the light from our torches threw our shadows in gigantic form upon the mists above, reminding us of the legend of the 'Spectre of the Brocken.' At last the torches began to go out, one by one, and just as the last light was expiring we arrived at a small village, where we of course found that everybody was asleep. After some delay, during which Mabelle and I were ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... to the sword. The conqueror had the plates of gold and a vast number of rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. But many of the finest rubies slipped out of his grasp. The priests fled and carried them off. Since that day the city has been a desert. And so you have the legend." ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Tahiti, but a mysterious voice called to me from the dusky valleys. I could not leave without penetrating into those abrupt and melancholy depths of forest, without endeavoring, though ever so feebly, to stir the cold brew of legend and tale fast ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... land of their appearance in this world as being in the far northwest; from, there they were accompanied by [A]h-ai-[u]-ta and M[a]-[a]-s[e]-we. These little gods occupy important positions in Zuni myth and legend. After long journeying, it was decided that the Priest Doctor (K[a] wi-m[o] sa) should send his son and his daughter in advance to discover some favorable spot upon which to build a village. The youth and the maiden finally ascended a peak from, which to have an extended view of the country. "Rest ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson
... to mean a cross between a servant and a scholar. The Dominie Sampson called Wagner, is appended to Faust for the time somewhat as Sancho is to Don Quixote. The Doctor Faust of the legend has a servant by that name, who seems to have been more of a Sancho, in the sense given to the word by the old New England mothers when upbraiding bad boys (you Sanch'!). Curiously enough, Goethe had in early life a (treacherous) friend named Wagner, who ...
— Faust • Goethe
... the first as a strange and mysterious creation the fruit of a higher power than human ingenuity. The solemn foundation of the city was the subject of a legend: on March 25, 1413, at midday, emigrants from Padua laid the first stone at the Rialto, that they might have a sacred, inviolable asylum amid the devastations of the barbarians. Later writers attributed to the founders the presentiment of the future greatness of the city; ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... sweeping ban; so, as a concession to weakness, we may allow white-line engravings and half-tones if they are printed apart from the text and separated from it, either by being placed at the end of the book or by having a sheet of opaque paper dividing each from the text. In this case the legend of the picture should face it so that the reader will have no occasion to look beyond the two pages when he has them before him. The printers of the sixteenth century, especially the Dutch, did not hesitate to send their pages through two presses, one the typographic press, ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... my novels, to understand them, to see them clearly in their entirety, before bringing forward the ready-made opinions, ridiculous and odious, which are circulated concerning myself and my works. Ah! if people only knew how my friends laugh at the appalling legend which amuses the crowd! If they only knew how the blood-thirsty wretch, the formidable novelist, is simply a respectable bourgeois, a man devoted to study and to art, living quietly in his corner, whose sole ambition is to leave as large ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... describes in this canto is an old German legend which poets and painters have found to be a fertile source of inspiration. The wild huntsman must ride through the world every night, followed by all evil-doers, and wherever he appears, thither, according to old folk-belief, does ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... its author is unknown. Some authors attribute it to St. Gregory the Great (590-604). Others, following a venerable tradition, say that the three first lines were the composition of angels, and the fourth, Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia, was added by Pope Gregory. The legend tells us that when in the year 596 Rome was desolated by the plague, Pope Gregory the Great exhorted his people to penance and prayer, and carrying in his hands the picture of the Blessed Virgin, said to be painted by St. Luke, he led ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... natural soldier. He is affable and courteous, or stern and scathing, as circumstances demand. One instant genial smiles overspread his expressive countenance, whereon the faintest emotion writes its legend with instantaneous and responsive touch; the next, on occasion, a Jove-like sternness settles on his face, and, with a facility of expression bewildering to less gifted tongues, scathing invective, cutting sarcasm, or bitter irony impress upon an offender the gravity of a breach of discipline. Withal, ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... the same, saving for the following exception: that in the beginning it was a Darley who did the deadly wrong to an Eden. But one thing was certain—the two families had carried on their petty warfare in the most determined way. Edens had fallen by the sword; so had Darleys. There was a grim legend, too, of an Eden having been taken prisoner, and starved to death in one of the dungeons of Cliffe Castle, in Queen Mary's time; and Ralph had often gone down below to look at the place, and the staple ring and chain in the gloomy place, shuddering ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... of her I get from a Roman Catholic legend, which I, being a Protestant, and because it seems to me absurd, cannot credit; but which many good, simple-hearted people find no difficulty in believing—especially such as have had a lame leg cured by the well, and have hung up a ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... am living over again the lovely legend of Sarpedon; and that exquisite flower of Greek poetry really gives me comfort. If you will read this passage of the Iliad in my beautiful translation by Lecomte de l'Isle, you will see that Zeus utters in regard to destiny certain words in which the ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... say is that the correspondents who permitted this legend to go over the world must have been grandly entertained by the Germans in special sections of their trenches set aside as quarters for the officers. I believe that these trenches, which I saw on this trip, must compare favorably with any they ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... account of its simplicity of form and splendour of colour, I wish you also to remember, in connection with it, the cause of Proserpine's eternal captivity—her having tasted a pomegranate seed,—the pomegranate being in Greek mythology what the apple is in the Mosaic legend; and, in the whole {103} worship of Demeter, associated with the poppy by a multitude of ideas which are not definitely expressed, but can only be gathered out of Greek art and literature, as we learn ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... the old Palace was now given over to curio stores and offices. Everywhere the new era compromised with the old. He passed the office of the lawyer he had come to consult, and upon one side of the sign ran the legend: ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... lines made would just include the portions of the earth around the globe that thus receives the rays of the sun at midsummer. These lines compose what are termed the arctic and antarctic circles, with the last of which our legend has now a most serious connection. After all, we are by no means certain that we have made our meaning as obvious as we could wish, it being very difficult to explain phenomena of this nature clearly, without ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... in which Mr. Pope wrote his poem on Silence, he began an Epic Poem, intitled Alcander, which he afterwards very judiciously committed to the flames, as he did likewise a Comedy, and a Tragedy; the latter taken from a story in the legend of St. Genevieve; both of these being the product of those early days. But his Pastorals, which were written in 1704, when he was only 16 years of age, were esteemed by Sir William Trumbull, Mr. Granville, Mr. Wycherley, Mr. Walsh and others of his friends, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Seward, who had to the very last minute contended with her friend against Mr. Edgeworth and in support of his less fortunate predecessor, now met him with open arms. No pains were spared by her to alleviate, since she could not remove, the disappointment that evidently possessed him. A legend is preserved in connection with this visit that is curious, though manifestly of very uncertain credibility. It is said that an engagement had been made by Miss Seward to introduce her friend to two gentlemen of some note in the neighborhood, Mr. Cunningham and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... who listen unto this legend old (Upon my shoulder blending your locks of brown and gold), From out the hands of sinners whose hearts are foul to see, Behold! the dear Lord Jesus appeals to ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... into European literature. The researches of Leonardo da Vinci upon the muscles of birds and the principles of the flight of birds brought over to the realm of science ideas long familiar in tale and legend. Francis Bacon did not hesitate to suggest in his Natural History (Experiment 886) that there are possibilities of human flight by the use of birds and "advises others to think further upon this experiment as giving some light to the invention ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt |
