Any investigation into vampire legends leads inevitably to the works of Montague Summers (1880–1948), whose research and writings in the 1920s established him as the subject’s preeminent authority. This study examines vampire lore in fantastic detail, constituting a record of folk beliefs unequaled in its sheer scope and depth. It features all the apparatus of an academic work, including footnotes and references to rare sourc ...
Written by a venerable author of occult studies, The Werewolf in Lore and Legend is the first definitive book on werewolfery and the remarkable successor to Montague Summers's popular work, The Vampire. Unsurpassed in its sheer scope and depth, it employs an extensive range of historical documentation and folklore from throughout Europe to powerfully portray the horror associated with belief in werewolves.Summers adopts a comprehensive theo ...
No creature has provided man with so much wholesome food as the honey bee. Equally impressive is the number of beliefs and superstitions the industrious insect has inspired. Its honey, which was known to the ancient Greeks as the “food of the Gods,” played an important role in early religious rites and was also mentioned in the folklore of many peoples. Hilda Ransome's well-documented and copiously illustrated study of b ...
The member of a distinguished British literary family, A. B. Mitford traveled widely with his parents as a youth and lived in various European countries. From 1866-70, he served as an attaché with the British legation at Edo (Tokyo) — one of the first foreign diplomats to do so. During his brief stay there, Mitford lived through a period of dramatic and tumultuous change in Japanese history. A feudal nation on his arrival, Jap ...
Gods and giants bestride these ancient tales, in which warrior queens and noble heroes battle with elves, dwarves, and fearsome monsters. Spanning the dawn of the world's creation to its fiery destruction, these gripping Norse legends chronicle the triumphs and tragedies of a lost era. Resounding with a poetic instinct for the picturesque, the dramatic, and the human, they form vivid portraits of the characters' personalities. They als ...
Twenty folk tales representing hundreds of years of the collective Irish imagination transport readers to a world where everything is alive and anything can happen! Vivid descriptions of battles with giants, dead men who come back to life, humans imprisoned in animals' bodies, heroes with incredible strength, and more. ...
Over the centuries, Northern mythology has exerted much influence on Western customs, language, and literature. Its principal theme of the perpetual struggle of the beneficent forces of nature against the injurious, and its twin characteristics of dark tragedy and grim humor, tinge much European literature and music, most notably Wagner’s Ring Cycle.In this volume, a noted scholar of myth and folklore has assembled a rich collection of ...
The Ozark region of Missouri and Arkansas has long been an enclave of resistance to innovation and «newfangled» ideas. Many of the old-time superstitions and customs have been nurtured and kept alive through the area's relative isolation and the strong attachment of the hillfolk to these old attitudes. Though modern science and education have been making important inroads in the last few decades, the region is still a fertile source of quai ...
