Wonder Stories - Carolyn Sherwin Bailey (sci fi books to read txt) 📗

Iris crossing the Rainbow Bridge

Iris crossing the Rainbow Bridge.   Page 222

WONDER STORIES
THE BEST MYTHS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

BY CAROLYN SHERWIN BAILEY

 

Author: "For the Children's Hour," "For the Story Teller,"
"Stories Children Need," "Tell Me Another Story,"
"Stories of Great Adventures," etc.

 

WITH SIX PICTURES IN COLORS
By CLARA M. BURD

 

1920
MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
SPRINGFIELD MASSACHUSETTS

Copyrighted, 1920 by
MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY
Springfield, Mass.
———
All Rights Reserved

 

Bradley Quality Books
for Children

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE How the Myths Began 7 What Prometheus Did with a Bit of Clay 13 The Paradise of Children.—Nathaniel Hawthorne    22 What Became of the Giants 33 How Vulcan Made the Best of Things 40 How Orion Found His Sight 48 The Wonders Venus Wrought 56 Where the Labyrinth Led 65 How Perseus Conquered the Sea 74 Pegasus, the Horse Who Could Fly 84 How Mars Lost a Battle 92 How Minerva Built a City 102 Cadmus, the Alphabet King 113 The Picture Minerva Wove 120 The Hero with a Fairy Godmother 126 The Pygmies.—Nathaniel Hawthorne 136 The Horn of Plenty 148 The Wonder the Frogs Missed 154 When Phaeton's Chariot Ran Away 163 When Apollo was Herdsman 174 How Jupiter Granted a Wish 181 How Hyacinthus Became a Flower 189 How King Midas Lost His Ears 196 How Mercury Gave up his Tricks 205 A Little Errand Girl's New Dress 215 When Proserpine was Lost 224 The Ploughman who Brought Famine 234 The Bee Man of Arcadia 242 When Pomona Shared Her Apples 252 How Psyche Reached Mount Olympus 261 How Melampos Fed the Serpent 272 How a Huntress Became a Bear 281 The Adventure of Glaucus 287 The Winning of the Golden Fleece 297 Medea's Cauldron 304 How a Golden Apple Caused a War 311 How a Wooden Horse Won a War 322 The Cyclops.—Alfred Church 329 GLOSSARY 339

ILLUSTRATIONS

Iris crossing the Rainbow Bridge. _Page 222_ Pandora saw a crowd of ugly little shapes. "Bellerophon took the golden reins firmly in his hand." "What design will Arachne embroider to-day?" asked one of the nymphs. Apollo charms the wild beasts. Paris and the Golden Apple.

HOW THE MYTHS BEGAN

Long ago, when our earth was more than two thousand years younger, there was a wonderful place called Mount Olympus at the top of the world that the ancients could see quite clearly with the eyes of hope and faith. It did not matter that the Greek and Roman people had never set foot on this mountain in the clouds. They knew it in story and reverenced the gods and goddesses who inhabited it.

In the days when the myths were told, Greece was a more beautiful country than any that is the result of civilization to-day, because the national ideal of the Greeks was beauty and they expressed it in whatever they thought, or wrote, or made with their hands. No matter how far away from home the Greeks journeyed they remembered with pride and love their blue bays and seacoast, the fertile valleys and sheep pastures of Arcadia, the sacred grove of Delphi, those great days when their athletes met for games and races at Athens, and the wide plains of Olympia covered and rich with the most perfect temples and statues that the world has ever known. When the Greeks returned the most beloved sight that met their eyes was the flag of their nation flying at Corinth, or the towers of the old citadel that Cadmus had founded at Thebes.

It was the youth time of men, and there were no geographies or histories or books of science to explain to the ancients those things about life that everyone wants to know sooner or later. There was this same longing for truth among the Roman people as well as among the Greeks. The Romans, also, loved their country, and built temples as the Greeks did, every stone of which they carved and fitted as a stepping stone on the way to the abode of the gods.

But who were these gods, and what did a belief in their existence mean to the Greek and Roman people?

There have been certain changes in two thousand years on our earth. We have automobiles instead of chariots, our ships are propelled by steam instead of by a favorable wind, and we have books that attempt to tell us why spring always follows winter and that courage is a better part than cowardice. But we still have hard winters and times when it is most difficult to be brave. We still experience war and famine and crime, and peace and plenty and love in just about the same measure that they were to be found in Greece and Rome. The only difference is that we are a little closer to understanding life than the ancients were. They tried to find a means of knowing life facts and of explaining the miracles of outdoors and of ruling their conduct by their daily intercourse with this higher race of beings, the gods, on Mount Olympus.

There was a gate of clouds on the top of Mount Olympus that the goddesses, who were known as the Seasons, opened to allow the inhabitants of the Mount to descend to the earth and return. Jupiter, the ruler of the gods, sat on the Olympian throne holding thunderbolts and darts of lightning in his mighty hands. The same arts and labors as those of men were practised by these celestial beings. Minerva and her handmaidens, the Graces, wove garments for the goddesses of more exquisite colors and textures than any that could be made by human hands. Vulcan built the houses of the gods of glittering brass. He shaped golden shoes that made it possible for them to travel with great speed, and he shod their steeds so that their chariots could ride upon the water. Hebe fed the gods with nectar and ambrosia, prepared and served by her own fair hands. Mars loosed the dogs of war, and the music of Apollo's lute was the song of victory and peace when war was ended. Ceres tended and blessed the fields of grain, and Venus, clad in beautiful garments by the Seasons, expressed the desire of the nations, of dumb beasts and of all nature for love.

There were many more than these, making the great immortal family of the gods, like men, but different in their higher understanding of life and its meaning. They lived apart on their Mount, but they descended often to mingle with the people. They stood beside the forge and helped with the harvest, their voices were heard in the rustling leaves in the forest and above the tumult and crash of war. They guarded the flocks and crowned the victors in games and carried brave warriors to Elysian fields after their last battles. They loved adventure and outdoors; they felt joy and knew pain. These gods were the daily companions of the ancients who have given them to us in our priceless inheritance of the classics and art.

When you read the poems of the blind Roman, Homer, and those of Ovid and Virgil; when you see a picture of a columned Greek temple or the statue of the Apollo Belvedere or the Guido Reni painting of Aurora lighting the sky with the torches of day, you, too, are following the age-old stepping stones that led to Mount Olympus. The myths were the inspiration for the greatest writing and architecture and sculpture and painting that the world has ever known. They were more than this.

Among the ruins of the ancient cities there was found one temple with a strange inscription on the altar: "To the unknown God." The temple was placed on Mars Hill as if, out of the horrors of war, this new hope had come to the people.

The word mythology means an account of tales. The myths were just that, tales, but most beautiful and worth while stories. So that people who made them and retold them and lived as the gods would have had them live came, finally, to feel that there was need for them to build this other, last altar.

WONDER STORIES

WHAT PROMETHEUS DID WITH A BIT OF CLAY

Every boy and girl has the same wonder at one time or another.

"How was the world made?" they ask.

So did the boys and girls of that long ago time when the myths were new, and the Greek teachers told them that the earth and sky were all a huge Chaos at first until the gods from their thrones, with the help of Nature, straightened out all things and gave order to the world. They separated the earth from the sea, first, and then the sky from both of these. The universe was all a flaming mass in the beginning but the fiery part was light and ascended, forming the skies. The air hung just below the skies. The waters were very heavy and took the lowest place where the earth held them safely in its hollows.

Just as one takes a ball of clay and moulds it into shape, some one of the gods, it was said, moulded the Earth. He gave places to the rivers and the bays, raised mountains, planted the forests and laid out fertile fields. And, next, the fishes swam in the waters, birds flew through the woods and built nests, and four-footed beasts began to be seen everywhere.

But the earth was not finished then by any means. There were two giants of the race of the Titans who inhabited the earth at that time, and both of these brothers, Prometheus and Epimetheus, could do marvellous things with their hands. Prometheus took a little of the new earth in his hands and as he looked it over he saw, hidden in it, some heavenly seeds, very tiny of course but they gave him an idea about something wonderful that he might be able to do. So Prometheus mixed some water with this handful of earth and seed; he kneaded it well, and then he skilfully moulded it into a form as nearly like the gods as he could make it. This figure of clay stood upright. Instead of turning its eyes down to the ground as the four-footed creatures did, this form that Prometheus had made looked up toward the