Legends of The Middle Ages Narrated With Special Reference to Literature and Art

The object of this work is to familiarize young students with the legends which form the staple of mediaeval literature. While they may owe more than is apparent at first sight to the classical writings of the palmy days of Greece and Rome, these legends are very characteristic of the people who told them, and they are the best exponents of the customs, manners, and beliefs of the time to which they belong. They have been repeated in poetry and prose with endless variations, and some of our greatest modern writers have deemed them worthy of a new dress, as is seen in Tennyson’s “Idyls of the King,” Goethe’s “Reineke Fuchs,” Tegnér’s “Frithiof Saga,” Wieland’s “Oberon,” Morris’s “Story of Sigurd,” and many shorter works by these and less noted writers. These mediaeval legends form a sort of literary quarry, from which, consciously or unconsciously, each writer takes some stones wherewith to build his own edifice. Many allusions in the literature of our own day lose much of their force simply because these legends are not available to the general reader. It is the aim of this volume to bring them within reach of all, and to condense them so that they may readily be understood. Of course in so limited a space only an outline of each legend can be given, with a few short quotations from ancient and modern writings to illustrate the style of the poem in which they are embodied, or to lend additional force to some point in the story.