Ivan Matveich, the most ordinary person you might hope to meet, is swallowed alive by a crocodile at a sideshow. Finding life inside the belly of the beast quite comfortable, he makes a home for himself there. His disquisitions on the state of the world from inside the crocodile make him quite a name for himself; while all the while the discussion rages outside as to whether the beast is going to be cut open to release him or not, its value as a sideshow attraction having massively increased owing to the presence of the human voice buried inside it. One of Jorge Luis Borges' seven most favourite stories. - Summary by Tony Addison

"Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio" or "Strange Tales of Liaozhai" is a collection of nearly five hundred mostly supernatural tales written by Pu Songling during the early Qing Dynasty. It was written in Classical Chinese rather than Vernacular Chinese. Pu is believed to have completed the majority of the tales sometime in 1679, though he could have added entries as late as 1707. He borrows from a folk tradition of oral storytelling to put to paper a series of captivating, colorful stories, where the boundary between reality and the odd or fantastic is blurred...

Heimskringla is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson ca. 1230. The name Heimskringla was first used in the 17th century, derived from the first two words of one of the manuscripts . Heimskringla is a collection of sagas about the Norwegian kings, beginning with the saga of the legendary Swedish dynasty of the Ynglings, followed by accounts of historical Norwegian rulers from Harald Fairhair of the 9th century up to the death of the pretender Eystein Meyla in 1177...

Masterful artist, illustrator, and storyteller Howard Pyle brings new life to the legends of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. The first in Pyle's series of four books about King Arthur, this volume takes readers to the very beginning and the miracle of Arthur pulling the sword from the anvil and claiming his birthright as King of Britain. We are reintroduced to Pyle's Lady Guinevere, the Enchanter Merlin, the evil Morgana Le Fay, the chivalrous knights Sir Pellias and Sir Gawaine and follow their noble adventures. A book to be enjoyed by children and adults, alike. - Summary by Jill Engle

Once upon a time, a princess was born, and a fairy cursed her with a mind: "She is a woman-child, and yet she shall think. She shall be alien to her own sex, and undesired by the other. She shall ask and it will not be given her. She shall achieve and it shall count her for naught. Men shall point the finger at her like this...and shall whisper, 'There goes the woman with brains, poor thing!" This and four other joyful feminist fairy tales make up The Princess Pourquoi. - Summary by wildemoose

The stories in Volume 1 centre on dreams, psychic presentiments, traces, wraiths, doppelgängers, apparitions, and imaginings of the after-life. Crowe's vivid tales, written with great energy and imagination, are classic examples of nineteenth-century spiritualist writing and strongly influenced other authors as well as providing inspiration for later adherents of ghost-seeing and psychic culture. - Summary by Cambridge University Press

Seventeen ghost stories centered around the ruined medieval cathedral of Saint Andrew in the Scots city of that name. The author was famous in his time for his interest in ghostly apparitions.

This 1905 collection is of the author’s short animal stories, some previously published in magazines. - Summary by David Wales

A collection of legends and myths of the Hawaiian islands and their 'strange people' as told by His Majesty King Kalakaua, the last king of Hawaii. Introduction, including a history, geography and social and religious commentary on the islands by R.M. Daggett, United States Minister to the Hawaiian Islands 1882-1885.

"Now I suppose most people will think I am but entertaining myself with a toy, and using much the same kind of licence in expounding the poets’ fables which the poets themselves did in inventing them; and it is true that if I had a mind to vary and relieve my severer studies with some such exercise of pleasure for my own or my reader’s recreation, I might very fairly indulge in it. But that is not my meaning. Not but that I know very well what pliant stuff fable is made of, how freely it will follow any way you please to draw it, and how easily with a little dexterity and discourse of wit meanings which it was never meant to bear may be plausibly put upon it...

Wilhelm Hauff was a German poet and novelist, perhaps best known for his fairy tales . Some of his stories, such as the Caliph Stork found in this volume, are popular in German-speaking countries to this day. In this book of fairy tales, we find the tale of the beautiful Swanhilde and various other stand-alone fairy tales, as well as a frame story "The Caravan" which includes multiple fairy tales within it. Hauff's freshness and originality shine through in these tales.

Collection of Irish Fairy Tales set in a wooded, Medieval Ireland filled with larger-than-life hunters, warriors, kings, and fairies - Summary by Anthony K. Futterer

Sanni Metelerkamp was a South African playwright and author born in 1867. She is well known for her biography of her great-grandfather, George Rex, the British born entrepreneur who founded the town of Knysna and was rumoured to have been an illegitimate son of King George III. Possibly her greatest legacy however is the publication of a collection of folk tales which in her own words "… are the common property of every country child in South Africa." By the time she published "Outa Karel’s Stories: South African Folk-Lore Tales" in 1914, South Africa had come through a time of great turmoil...

The purpose of The Junior Classics is to provide, in ten volumes containing about five thousand pages, a classified collection of tales, stories, and poems, both ancient and modern, suitable for boys and girls of from six to sixteen years of age, but adults will enjoy these just the same! This volume contains stories about heroes such as Robin Hood, King Arthur, and Don Quixote. Summary by Foon

Cenydd Morus's imaginative retelling of tales from the Mabinogion, the great work of Welsh literature first recorded in the 12th-13th century. Written while he was working for the Theosophical Society in California, Morris's version restores the Gods that he believed had disappeared from the written record but must have been present in the oral tradition of the Druid bards. First published in 1914 and republished in the 1970s as the 15th volume in the celebrated Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library. - Summary by Phil Benson

Mark Twain wrote this fairytale style story about 3 boys who meet Satan's cousin and they experience many things during this time. The story is narrated by one of the boys many years later. Mark Twain ends the story expressing the idea that will blow you away. Ideas that can be traced back thousands of years in many religions. What is existence really ... to quote that well known song by Eliphalet Oram Lyte ... Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream, Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream .... so dream on. - Summary by Patrick79

Tales of Folklore are often of special interest. Anything may happen to ordinary mortals in the world painted by folklore. But it becomes even more interesting when you dive into folklore of places away from your own culture. This volume is a collection of ancient Japanese tales. We hear of ordinary mortals interacting with the spirit world, sometimes to their benefit, sometimes to their doom, we hear of love and hate, and of war and peace. Some of the stories will be entirely new to most readers, some of them will be uncannily familiar. - Summary by Carolin

Armenians trace their history back to before the time of the Babylonians and earliest recorded history - in fact, to Togarmah, a grandson of Japhet, Noah's son, who settled in Armenia after the Ark came to rest on mount Ararat. Armenia was also the first State in the world to adopt Christianity as their official religion, around the 3rd Century AD. This book contains many wonderful folk and fairy tales culled from this long history of the Armenian country people, to whom all nature is full of stories, by the scholar and storyteller Mr. A. G. Seklemian. - Summary by Noel Badrian

Everywhere on earth the fairy world of each country is older and perhaps more enduring than the one we see and feel and tread upon. So I tell in this book the folk lore of the Korean people, and of the behavior of the particular kind of fairies that inhabit the Land of Morning Splendor.

This is the prequel of the Nibelungenlied. It tells the tale of Siegfried as a young man when he sets forth to earn a name for himself so he will be able to stand proudly with his ancestors. - Summary by Fritz

A pleasant kind of fantasy set in Japan concerning a woman and a prince. - Summary by KevinS

The Dialogues of the Sea-Gods are 15 miniature dialogues mocking the Homeric conception of the Greek gods, originally written in Attic Greek by Syrian author Lucian of Samosata. Almost 1900 years old, these dialogues still retain a lot of their original humor and wit. - Summary by Foon Cast: Alpheius/Menelaus: ZoinkMeister Patrick Amphitrite/Panope: alanmapstone Cyclops: Nemo Delphines/Amymone: Leanne Yau Doris: Foon Enipeus: Rob Marland Galateia: Anita Sloma-Martinez Galene/Xanthus: Jeanne Viray Iphianassa: Pseudonymous Nerd Iris: Availle Notus: Stefan Von Blon Poseidon: Larry Wilson Protheus/Triton: Adam Bielka Thalassa: B L Newman Thetis: K...

Edith Ogden Harrison's first published work, Prince Silverwings, is a collection of seven fairy tales for young readers. It is perhaps best known as the source of an unsuccessful stage collaboration with L. Frank Baum, ultimately providing inspiration for several of Baum's Oz books.

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. Appropriate stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore. - Summary by Lynette Caulkins

The object of the present venture is to do something to revive the interest of the ordinary English reader in Ariosto. The present volume is intended to give some of the chief stories of the "Orlando Furioso" in such a way as to bring out also the main plot. The "Orlando Furioso" is a conglomeration of stories of all kinds, from the most delicate and ideal romance to the broadest humor.

"I have called the present volume "Legends of Saints and Sinners," which to a certain extent it is; but I mean it for a book of Irish Christian folk-lore. My idea in compiling it has been to give for the first time a collection of genuine Irish folk-lore which might be called "Christian." By this I mean folk-stories and folk-poems which are either entirely founded upon Christian conceptions, or else are so far coloured by them, that they could never have been told—at least in their present shape—had not Christianity established itself in Ireland...

More fairy tales from the early days of the British Isles, collected and edited by Joseph Jacobs. - Summary by bookworm360

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures. - Summary by Lynette Caulkins

This collection is dedicated to recordings of short mythical or legendary works which are in the Public Domain. The stories tell of legends, heroes, myths, and ancient lore from many different cultures.

There is a witty and absurdist character to this contemporary setting of the plight of Prometheus, in which Zeus appears as a tremendously wealthy banker, meting out gratuitous fortune. Prometheus' troubled relationship with his liver-devouring eagle provides a means of insight for those he encounters. Rather than a myth the story has the nature of a fable.

These Norwegian tales of elemental mountain, forest and sea spirits, have been handed down by hinds and huntsmen, wood choppers and fisher folk. They are men who led a hard and lonely life amid primitive surroundings. The Norwegian Fairy Book has an appeal for one and all, since it is a book in which the mirror of fairy-tale reflects human yearnings and aspirations, human loves, ambitions and disillusionments, in an imaginatively glamored, yet not distorted form. [from the book's preface]

You get to choose what you want to read! So long as the source is Public Domain for you, any short story or chapter that tells of legends, heroes, myths, or ancient lore, is welcome. We are looking for representations of many different cultures within each collection. If you have questions of whether a source is Public Domain for you , I recommend asking about that in this project's discussion before you begin recording. Simply post the question with a link to the source you've found. :) Limit of 2 sections per reader in a given Myths & Legends collection. - Summary by Lynette Caulkins