The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang

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Title: A Book of Myths

Author: Jean Lang

Illustrator: Helen Stratton

Release Date: September 21, 2007 [EBook #22693]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A
BOOK OF MYTHS

BY JEAN LANG

(MRS. JOHN LANG)

WITH SIXTEEN ORIGINAL
DRAWINGS IN COLOUR
BY HELEN STRATTON

[Illustration]

THOMAS NELSON & SONS
NEW YORK

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

[Illustration: "WHAT WAS HE DOING, THE GREAT GOD PAN, DOWN IN THE
REEDS BY THE RIVER?" (See page 209)]

PREFACE

Just as a little child holds out its hands to catch the sunbeams, to
feel and to grasp what, so its eyes tell it, is actually there, so,
down through the ages, men have stretched out their hands in eager
endeavour to know their God. And because only through the human was
the divine knowable, the old peoples of the earth made gods of their
heroes and not unfrequently endowed these gods with as many of the
vices as of the virtues of their worshippers. As we read the myths of
the East and the West we find ever the same story. That portion of the
ancient Aryan race which poured from the central plain of Asia,
through the rocky defiles of what we now call "The Frontier," to
populate the fertile lowlands of India, had gods who must once have
been wholly heroic, but who came in time to be more degraded than the
most vicious of lustful criminals. And the Greeks, Latins, Teutons,
Celts, and Slavonians, who came of the same mighty Aryan stock, did
even as those with whom they owned a common ancestry. Originally they
gave to their gods of their best. All that was noblest in them, all
that was strongest and most selfless, all the higher instincts of
their natures were their endowment. And although their worship in time
became corrupt and lost its beauty, there yet remains for us, in the
old tales of the gods, a wonderful humanity that strikes a vibrant
chord in the hearts of