Another well-known and often practised form of divination was for a young woman to take an article to wash, such as a stocking, to the water-spout or pistyll, and with her she carr...
Early in this century a man named Ainsley appeared at Holyoke, Massachusetts, and set up a forge in a wood at the edge of the village, with a two-room cottage to live in. A Yankee...
There was once upon a time an old man and an old woman, and the old man had a daughter, and the old woman had a daughter. And the old woman said to the old man, "Go and buy a heife...
Crowds of all kinds are easily swayed, but it is said that nowhere is it so easy to rouse a panic or a revolution as in Manila. Several times during the earlier months of the Ameri...
There was once a girl who was wiser than the King and all his councilors; there never was anything like it. Her father was so proud of her that he boasted about her cleverness at h...
A certain wood-chopper lost or broke From his axe's eye a bit of oak. The forest must needs be somewhat spared While such a loss was being repair'd. Came the man at last, and humbl...
If a woman has an illegitimate child and from fear or shame will not name its father the bastard is called a child of Chando. At its birth there is no assembly of the neighbours; i...
In following the southern coast of Cuba, Columbus supposed he was working toward India. He died ignorant of the fact that he had discovered a new world, and he gave up the explorat...
There was once a King who had three sons, and he loved them all equally, one no more than the other. When he had grown old and felt his strength leaving him, he called the three Pr...
There was once a Brahman who had two wives; like many Brahmans he lived by begging and was very clever at wheedling money out of people. One day the fancy took him to go to the mar...
Santals are very much afraid of burial grounds; for dead men become bongas and bongas eat men. If a man meet such a bonga in a burial ground it is of little use to fight for the bo...
For years after Bellamy's pirate ship was wrecked at Wellfleet, by false pilotage on the part of one of his captives, a strange-looking man used to travel up and down the cape, who...
A wolf, affirming his belief That he had suffer'd by a thief, Brought up his neighbour fox-- Of whom it was by all confess'd, His character was not the best-- To fill the prisoner'...
This is a story of the old days when the Santals both men and women were very stupid. Once upon a time the men of a certain village had fixed a day for sacrificing a bullock; but t...
Hopi (Arizona) After the Hopi had been taught to build stone houses, they took separate ways. My people were the Snake people. They lived in snake skins, each family occupying a se...
The maids of Staten Island wrought havoc among the royal troops who were quartered among them during the Revolution. Near quarantine, in an old house,--the Austen mansion,--a soldi...
"The Leap of Ka Likai" is the name given to a beautiful waterfall on the Khasi Hills, a few miles to the west of Cherrapoonjee, which, at certain points, is visible from great dist...
An old man, riding on his ass, Had found a spot of thrifty grass, And there turn'd loose his weary beast. Old Grizzle, pleased with such a feast, Flung up his heels, and caper'd ro...
When the earth was created, it was one great plain, full of vast forests and smooth rivers. Then it happened that the mother of the three goddesses, Ka Ding, Ka Um, and Ka Sngi, di...
In a certain forest there once lived a fox, and near to the fox lived a man who had a cat that had been a good mouser in its youth, but was now old and half blind. The man didn't w...
Surmounting Red Banks, twelve miles north of Green Bay, Wisconsin, on the eastern shore, and one hundred feet above the water, stands an earthwork that the first settlers found the...
From Brooklyn Heights, or Ihpetonga, highplace of trees, where the Canarsie Indians made wampum or sewant, and where they contemplated the Great Spirit in the setting of the sun ac...
Young girls are taught witchcraft against their wills and if they refuse to "eat" their father or brother they die or go mad. There was a girl in my own village and she went out ga...
I will now tell you something I have seen with my own eyes. In the village of Dhubia next to mine the only son of the Paranik lay ill for a whole year. One day I went out to look a...
So few States in this country--and so few countries, if it comes to that--are without a lover's leap that the very name has come to be a by-word. In most of these places the disapp...
In the village of Mohulpahari there was a youth named Jerba. He was servant to Bepin Teli of Tempa and often had to come home in the dark after his day's work. One night he was com...
The Rev. Mr. Thomas Baddy, who lived in Denbigh Town, and was a Dissenting Minister in that place, went into his study one night, and while he was reading or writing, he heard some...
Once upon a time the son of a Raja and the son of a merchant were great friends; they neither of them had any taste for lessons but would play truant from school and waste their ti...
After mankind began to multiply on the earth and had become numerous, and scattered into many regions, they lost much of their knowledge of the laws of God, and in their ignorance...
Another tale, similar to the preceding one, is told by my friend, Mr. Hugh Derfel Hughes, in his Hynafiaethau Llandegai a Llanllechid, pp. 35, 36. The following is a translation of...