The Project Gutenberg eBook, Storyology, by Benjamin Taylor

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Title: Storyology
Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore

Author: Benjamin Taylor

Release Date: September 6, 2009 [eBook #29921]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORYOLOGY***

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STORYOLOGY:

Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore

by

BENJAMIN TAYLOR.

London:
Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, E.C.
1900.

To
HER MEMORY
IN
WHOSE DEAR COMPANIONSHIP
THESE PAPERS
WERE WRITTEN

PREFACE.

The principal object of this Foreword is to inform the expert
Folkloreist and the case-hardened Mythologist (comparative or otherwise)
that the following pages are intended for those who, being neither
expert nor case-hardened, come under that gracious and catholic
term--general reader. The writer addresses not the scholiast, but the
ordinary person who likes to read about what he has not time to study.

Some portion of what is here printed has appeared in a once popular
magazine now defunct. The author hastens to add, for the relief of the
irreverent, that the journal long survived the ordeal of the
publication. Nevertheless this book appears on its merits, or otherwise,
and seeks no support from past attainment. Neither does it make any
pretension to originality of matter or method, though it may, perhaps,
contain one or two new ideas.

It is unnecessary to add that the publication is made only at the
tearful entreaty of multitudinous friends. That, of course, is well
understood among myth-hunters.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

PREFACE vii

I. STORYOLOGY 1

II. THE MAGIC WAND 23

III. THE MAGIC MIRROR 41

IV. THE MAGIC MOON 58

V. THE DEVIL'S CANDLE 78

VI. THE SEA AND ITS LEGENDS