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salderson's review against another edition
2.0
2.5 stars
This was not what I had expected. I had wanted to read a book of myths but this was more like an explanation of the myths. It was an interesting albeit biased bit of information on a few of the more popular folktales.
This was not what I had expected. I had wanted to read a book of myths but this was more like an explanation of the myths. It was an interesting albeit biased bit of information on a few of the more popular folktales.
poisonenvy's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
3.0
I don't know what I was expecting from a book about myths of the Middle Ages, but I really should not have been surprised by how many of them revolved around Christianity. This was, overall, a fairly interesting collection, relayed more in an academic style than anything involving storytelling, and did, unfortunately, fell, not a few times, into the racism and antisemitism if the time.
It often sometimes went into more modern superstitious (for it's time). There's a ten point summary about why some people might see Napoleon as a mythological hero akin to Apollo, and a chapter on the superstition of numbers detailed to a large extent the reign of kings from the 18th and 19th centuries while hardly touching at all on the Middle Ages.
I also laughed at one section where Baring-Gould complains of many scholars just assuming every myth is about the rising and the setting of the sun (which is actually what set them off on the Napoleon mythology). I laughed aloud because I had just finished reading American Hero-Myths by Daniel Brinton where Brinton spent literally the entire book talking about how ever single Indigenous myth was really just a sun myth.
But overall this was a short, quick read of some interest.
It often sometimes went into more modern superstitious (for it's time). There's a ten point summary about why some people might see Napoleon as a mythological hero akin to Apollo, and a chapter on the superstition of numbers detailed to a large extent the reign of kings from the 18th and 19th centuries while hardly touching at all on the Middle Ages.
I also laughed at one section where Baring-Gould complains of many scholars just assuming every myth is about the rising and the setting of the sun (which is actually what set them off on the Napoleon mythology). I laughed aloud because I had just finished reading American Hero-Myths by Daniel Brinton where Brinton spent literally the entire book talking about how ever single Indigenous myth was really just a sun myth.
But overall this was a short, quick read of some interest.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Antisemitism, and Racial slurs
sebuktegin's review against another edition
5.0
An anthology unlike any other. An investigative approach to European fables of the middle ages, and tracing their origins across time and space, even to places as far away as Persia and India. A must read for anyone interested in a retelling of old myths and legends from an anthropological perspective, it nevertheless makes for a very interesting read even if you're only looking for something to while away some time.
thuja's review
3.0
Really very interesting. There are parts that are very obviously written from the Victorian point of view, which made me wonder how much of that interpretation was still worthwhile. However, I did get to read about a bunch of myths I'd never heard of before, and the parallels drawn between "Jack and Jill went up the hill" and Nordic myths about children in the moon and the phases of the moon were fascinating.
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