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Legend   Listen
noun
Legend  n.  
1.
That which is appointed to be read; especially, a chronicle or register of the lives of saints, formerly read at matins, and in the refectories of religious houses.
2.
A story respecting saints; especially, one of a marvelous nature.
3.
Any wonderful story coming down from the past, but not verifiable by historical record; a myth; a fable. "And in this legend all that glorious deed Read, whilst you arm you."
4.
An inscription, motto, or title, esp. one surrounding the field in a medal or coin, or placed upon an heraldic shield or beneath an engraving or illustration.
Golden legend. See under Golden.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Legend" Quotes from Famous Books



... the chastity and poverty of the saint, who flies from his virgin bride, lives among beggars, returns unrecognised to his father's house, endures the insults of the servants, and, dying at Rome, receives high posthumous honours; finally, he is rejoined by his wife—the poet here adding to the legend—in the presence of God, among the company of the angels. Some of the sacred poems are derived from the Bible, rhymed versions of which were part of the jongleur's equipment; some from the apocryphal gospels, or ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... legend!" and the Princess smiled, turning her dark eyes with a bewitching languor on Gervase, who, for some reason or other which he could not explain, felt as if he were walking in a dream on the edge of a deep chasm of nothingness, into which he must presently ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... formed an impenetrable barrier around the sleeping Palace. The old people of the country died, and their children grew up and died also, and their children, and their children, and the story of the sleeping Princess became a legend, handed down from one generation to another; and a cloud of mystery, as thick and impenetrable as the hedge of thorns, lay over the old castle. Many brave and gallant Princes tried to force their way through the magic hedge, ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall

... Legend. In the world of creatures, as in the world of men, the story precedes and outlives history. There are many instances of the fact that if an insect attract our attention for this reason or that, it is given a place ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... his own lifetime a man in the mountain desert passes swiftly from the fact of history into the dream of legend. The telephone and the newspaper cannot bring that lonely region into the domain of cold truth. In the time that followed people seized on the story of Andrew Lanning and embroidered it with rare trimmings. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... legend had gifted him with supernatural powers. Yes, it was said, there had been many ropes cunningly disposed, and a strange contrivance that turned by the efforts of many men, and each gun went up tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... whether they wished it or no, they looked upon him as an exceptional being endowed with special faculties, a being of whom they could not think without conjuring up the image of the amazing Arsene Lupin, with his legend of daring, genius, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... as his last work, three letters. They were done with some very poor instrument, and hurriedly, with an unsteady hand. At first, they were read as D. I. C.; but, on being more carefully examined, the last letter was found to be G. There was no record or legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many fruitless guesses were made what the name could have been. At length, it was suggested that the letters were not initials, but the complete word, DIG. The floor was examined very ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... of her beauty went through many kingdoms, and with the legend of her loveliness was told the strange ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl

... composed a chronicle in English verse, following in the main the authority of the Latin chronicles, and he was succeeded by other rhyming chroniclers in the 14th century. In the hands of these the true history of the Saxon times was overlaid with an ever-increasing mass of fable and legend. All real knowledge of the period {18} dwindled away until in Capgrave's Chronicle of England, written in prose in 1463-64, hardly any thing of it is left. In history as in literature the English had forgotten their past, and had turned to foreign sources. It is noteworthy ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... when Arthur was King, a thousand years ago, when he held his court in the palaces of the lost land. And the Islands of Scilly, as men say, be the summits of the mountains, that towered once hoary and barren over the green forests and the rich cities." [This story is a veritable legend of the ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... sides of this gully were worn quite smooth by the innumerable feet of the tortoises, about a dozen of which were now quietly crouching at the water's edge, filling themselves up with the cooling fluid. I did not see the patriarch upon whom a sailor once reported that he had read the legend carved, "The Ark, Captain Noah, Ararat for orders"; perhaps he had at last closed his peaceful career. But strange, and quaint as this exhibition of ancient reptiles was, we had other and better employment for the limited time at our disposal. There ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... mentions that the relations between husband and wife in Sparta were at first secret (Plutarch, Lycurgas). The story told by Pausanias about Ulysses' marriage points to the custom of the husband going to live with his wife's family (Pausanias, III. 20 (10), Frazer's translation). The legend of the establishment of monogamy by Cecrops, because, before his time, "men had their wives in common and did not know their fathers," points clearly to a confused tradition of a period of mother-descent. ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... and simply stood for the general sense of the women-folk, or something of the sort. It was perhaps stupid of me, but the story of Mistrelde, who died young, leaving only eight children, I had regarded as a mere legend or ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... need of books; for many a tale Traditionary round the mountains hung, And many a legend, peopling the dark woods, Nourished Imagination in ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... only to be expected that these great megalithic monuments of a prehistoric age should excite the wonder and stimulate the imagination of those who see them. In all countries and at all times they have been centres of story and legend, and even at the present day many strange beliefs concerning them are to be found among the peasantry who live around them. Salomon Reinach has written a remarkable essay on this question, and the following ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet

... cold analytical light which the "Juventui Mundi" pours upon the nebulous realm of Hellenic lore and Heroic legend, we learn that Homer knew "no destiny fighting with the gods, or unless in the shape of death, defying them,"—and that the "Nemesis often inaccurately rendered as revenge, was after all but self-judgment, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... its building have given rise to the tradition that it is a secular basilica applied to the purposes of a Christian church. As a matter of fact, the Roman brick-work has been re-used in obvious ignorance of Roman methods; so that this circumstance alone would make the legend improbable. The date of the building can hardly be earlier than about 680 A.D., when a monastery was founded here by a colony of monks from Peterborough. The plan originally consisted of (1) a western entrance ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson

... at Oxford may be seen an antique jewel, consisting of an enameled figure in red, blue, and green, enshrined in a golden frame, and bearing the legend "Alfred mec heht gewyrcean" (Alfred ordered me made). This was discovered in 1693 in Newton Park, near Athelney, and through it one is enabled to touch the far-away life of a thousand years ago. But greater and more imperishable than ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... resuming his normal size, and looking slightly ashamed of his recent outburst as well as uncommonly foolish. "The bottle truly is of no value; and as for the stopper, since it is but lent, it is no great matter. If there be any legend upon the seal, perchance this learned man of whom thou speakest will by this ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... foot of the Kutub Minar the famous Iron Pillar commemorates the victories of the "Sun of Power," the Hindu Emperor of the Gupta dynasty with whose name, under the more popular form of Raja Bikram, Indian legend associates the vague memories of a golden age of Hindu civilisation in the fifth and sixth centuries. The Pillar was brought there by one of the Rajput princes who founded in the middle of the eleventh century the first city really known to history as Delhi. ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... in tradition, patterns for our children, very Turveydrops of collegiate deportment. The belfry clangs with a louder peal; even Clarian's Picture, though it hath utterly perished to the eye of sense, lives vivid in a thousand memories, and, having found in the tenderness of tradition and legend an engraver whose burin is as faithful as Raphael Morghen's, has left the damp dark wall, like Leonardo's Cenacolo, to accompany all of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... 40,000 shiftless, unprincipled persons who lived by their wits and the labor of others. The trade of a part of these was turning primary elections, packing nominating conventions, repeating, and breaking up meetings." Wood also systematized naturalization. A card bearing the following legend was the open ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth

... Nyach, which is connected with Tarrytown by a steam ferry. In passing from Tarrytown to Mr. Bartlett's house, we drove through the Sleepy Hollow, the scene of one of Washington Irving's tales, and passed the old Dutch church, which is mentioned by him in the legend, as the place of sanctuary where Ichabod took refuge. In fact, the whole scenery is classic ground here; and Mr. Irving himself, who has rendered it so, lives only two miles off, ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... each it was home. To the old homestead many a successful business man returns to show his grandchildren the attic with its disused loom and spinning-wheel; the shop where farm-implements were made, in the days of long winter storms, to the accompaniment of legend and gossip; the dairy, no longer redolent of cream. These are reminders of a time past and gone, before the greed of gain had robbed even these houses of their peace. The backward glance of this generation is too apt to stop at the transition period, when the ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... the British Isles abounds with quaint beliefs and stories concerning birds. There is a charming Welsh legend concerning the robin, which the Rev. T. F. T. DYER quotes from Notes and Queries:—"Far, far away, is a land of woe, darkness, spirits of evil, and fire. Day by day does this little bird bear in his bill a drop of water to quench the flame. So near the burning stream does ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... hill is crowned by the ruins of the ancient castle of Weissenstein,—the castle of Bellrem, the crusader, who fell from the lofty ramparts on a moonlight night in the twelfth century, terrified by the ghost of a woman he had loved and wronged. At least, the legend says so, and as the ruined ramparts are still there it is probably all quite true. On the back of the hill, where the narrow path descends from the inn to the road, the still, deep waters of the great mill pool lie stagnant in the hot air, and the long-legged water spiders shoot over the surface, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... the Indian. "The path whereon the tongue of Sassacus travels is a straight path. A great chief disdains to tell a lie. Know then, that, for a long, long time—our oldest men cannot recollect so far back, for they heard the legend from their grandfathers, and they again from theirs—it hath been told among us, that a race with a skin like the snow should come to our land, with strange manners, and speaking a strange language; and when I heard of Owanux, I came to see whether they were the men, for it becomes a chief to ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... morning at Office. At noon with W. Pen to Duke of York, and attended Council. So to piper and Duck Lane, and there kissed bookseller's wife, and bought Legend. So home, coach. Sailor. Mrs. Hannam dead. News of Peace. Conning ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... some six inches square, adorned with the picture of a pink cuttlefish on a bright blue ground. These are ex-votos, destined to be offered up at the Temple of Yakushi Niurai, the Buddhist AEsculapius, which stands opposite, and concerning the foundation of which the following legend is told. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... to Tahiti, but a mysterious voice called to me from the dusky valleys. I could not leave without penetrating into those abrupt and melancholy depths of forest, without endeavoring, though ever so feebly, to stir the cold brew of legend and tale fast disappearing ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... Darley who did the deadly wrong to an Eden. But one thing was certain—the two families had carried on their petty warfare in the most determined way. Edens had fallen by the sword; so had Darleys. There was a grim legend, too, of an Eden having been taken prisoner, and starved to death in one of the dungeons of Cliffe Castle, in Queen Mary's time; and Ralph had often gone down below to look at the place, and the ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn

... board as we fared along we fell short of the Arcadian theory of walking-tours in which the wayfarer, like a mendicant friar, takes toll of lunch and dinner from the hospitable farmer of sentimental legend, and sleeps for choice in barns, hayricks or hedgesides. Now, sleeping out of doors in October, if you have ever tried it, is a very different thing from sleeping out of doors in June, and as for rural hospitality—well, if you are of a sensitive constitution you shrink from obtruding yourself, ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... dress of what you call the Koster, a transplanted Phenician tribe," answered the other. "They who knocked 'em in the road of Old Kent—know you not the legend?" As he spoke, he lifted his superb form to a ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... things. Oh, it was capital! I wish you could have seen her acting as her own auctioneer. Some of us were greedy and wanted her best things. I was one of those. She sold a sealskin jacket, an expensive one, quite new. There is a legend in the college that eighty guineas were expended on it. Well, I bid for the sealskin and it was knocked down to me for ten. It is a little too big for me, of course, but when it is cut to my figure, it will ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... years, his face lose its broad colour, his hair grow scant and grey, his figure, per chance, stoop a little, his eyes acquire the malignity of miserly old age—and there you have the hero of a Dunfield legend. Even thus do ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... even a pill can impair. [Laughter.] But I was informed in confidence—it caused me some distress—that the same enterprising firm which has placarded our rural recesses, has offered a mainsail free of expense to every ship that will accept it, on condition that it bears the same hideous legend upon it to which I have referred. [Laughter.] Think, Mr. President, of the feelings of the illustrious Turner if he returned to life to see the luggers and the coasting ships which he has made so glorious in his paintings, converted into a simple vehicle for the advertisement ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... wandered up and down Galilee and Judaea in the reign of Tiberius, that he may have been a religious reformer, that he may have been put to death by Pontius Pilate for sedition. All this is perfectly likely, and to allow it in no way endorses the mass of legend and myth encrusted round this tiny nucleus of possible fact. This obscure peasant is not the Christian Jesus, who is—as we shall later urge—only a new presentation of the ancient Sun-God, with unmistakeable ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... sign the recantation. On arising from his knees, legend declares that he said, "Yet the earth ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... and sought counsel of Mr Gladstone, a youngish Mr Gladstone in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester: "At last, my friends, I have come amongst you . . . unmuzzled," said the legend ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... drawn to the Invalides surrounded by the striking figures and uniforms of a handful of surviving veterans, acclaimed by the ringing rhetoric of Victor Hugo, who in prose and in verse vividly formulated the Napoleonic legend. And just before and just after this event, so made to strike the imagination and to prepare changes of opinion, came a series of notable books. They were all similar in that they bore the stamp of the romanticism of the thirties and forties, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... be, but is!" the Master answered. "The old legend is coming true, that's all. Have you no eyes in your head, Major? If that shine isn't the shine of gold, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... failures. The Divine in man must emerge one day; its glory pierce through the gloom of his sin and shame, and transfigure him anew after the beautiful and pathetic image of the holy Christ in the legend,[1] whose closing days on earth, they say, were illumined by one supreme wonder—his face calm and blissful, glowing radiant like the glory of a setting sun, his very raiment turned white like the driven snow. A beauteous imagery! But there was no ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... streets. During these days he looked down from an immeasurable height on the truckling, mean, sordid doings of Griffenbottom, Underwood, and Westmacott. A huge board had been hoisted up over the somewhat low frontage of the Cordwainers' Arms, and on this was painted in letters two feet high a legend which it delighted him to read, MOGGS, PURITY, AND THE RIGHTS OF LABOUR. Ah, if that could only be understood, there was enough in it to bring back an age of gold to suffering humanity! No other Reform would be needed. In that short legend everything necessary ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... to his infantine bewilderment; he passed away, like some poor dumb, lowly creature of a day, a joyous insect that mighty, impassive Nature, in her relentless fatality, has caught and crushed. In him died all a legend. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... far less acumen and knowledge of the world than he possessed to make it clear to him that the old race of de la Molle was doomed. This story of farms thrown up and money not forthcoming pointed its own moral, and a sad one it was. Even Ida's almost childish excitement about the legend of the buried treasure showed him how present to her mind must be the necessity of money; and he fell to thinking how pleasant it would be to be able to play the part of the Fairy Prince and step ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... value for clover; and there is a story told of Benjamin Franklin which illustrates the very striking nature of its action on this crop. It is related that he once printed with gypsum the words "This has been plastered" on a field of clover, and that for a long time afterwards the legend was plainly discernible on account of the luxuriance of the clover on the parts of the field ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... Vrouw, was elevated in front of this chapel, in the center of what in modern days is called the Bowling Green—on the very spot, in fact, where he appeared in vision to Oloffe the Dreamer. And the legend further treats of divers miracles wrought by the mighty pipe which the saint held in his mouth; a whiff of which was a sovereign cure for an indigestion—an invaluable relic in this colony of brave trenchermen. As however, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... is known that, according to the legend, the Wandering Jew was a shoemaker at Jerusalem. The Saviour, carrying his cross, passed before the house of the artisan, and asked him to be allowed to rest an instant on the stone bench at his door. "Go on! go on!" said the Jew harshly, pushing him away. "Thou shalt go on till ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... the Duchess except that she was shriveled and bent and almost wordless and was seemingly without emotions. But of course there were rumors. She was so old, and had been so long in the drab little street, that she was as much a legend as a real person. No one knew exactly how she had come by the name of "Duchess." There were misty, unsupported stories that long, long ago she had been a shapely and royal figure in colored fleshings, and that her title had been ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor—idleness—was a condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but because our moral nature is ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... used to say first, "Here to see old Grid, I suppose," and then, "Funny how he sticks here. They say he was offered seven thousand at the University of California." In the absence of any known motive for this steadfastness, the village legend-making instinct had evolved a theory that he did not wish to move away from a State of which his father had been Governor, and where the name of Gridley was like a ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... answered the doctor, pointing to a ruin which crowned a hill on the right. "That is the Castle of Ehrenfels. There is a legend connected with about every one of them. ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... the lawful heir to the throne, so Richard II imprisoned and murdered his uncle Thomas of Gloucester, who was dangerous to himself. Richard II, like Edward II, died by the hand of a relative who had wrested the crown from him; of the details of his death we have not even a legend left. Another Gloucester, who had for many years guarded the crown for the infant Henry VI, was, at the very moment when he might become dangerous to the new government, found dead in his bed. So Henry VI perished in the Tower the day before Edward IV made his entry into London. Edward ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... Westminster claimed a tithe of all the fish caught in the river between Gravesend and Staines. When St. Peter (according to the legend I have already told you) consecrated his own church on Thorney, he said, on parting with Edric the fisherman, "Go out into the river; you will catch a plentiful supply of fish, whereof the larger part shall be salmon. This have I granted on two conditions: first, that ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... house, of whom not a word was uttered. No portrait of her was shown. Why was she absent from her home so long? where was she? How could her name be started? And was it she who was the sinner in her father's mind? But the idolatrous love between Adiante and her father was once a legend: they could not have been cut asunder. She had offered up her love of Philip as a sacrifice to it: Patrick recollected that, and now with a softer gloom on his brooding he released her from the burden of his grand charge of unfaithfulness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... had stored up in his wonderful treasure-house of memory. Everything the Indian possessed had associated with it some wild tale of early Canadian history, some strange half-forgotten Indian custom or legend, so he listened now to the story of the last time that the ancient Indian law of "a life for a life" was carried out in the beautiful Province of Ontario, while the low, even voice of the Mohawk described the historical event, giving to the tale the Indian term for the word "peace," which means ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... us follow them, as along the Rhine they journey. Across the fields—beyond the river—southward through wilderness and vineyard, they go—marching by an occasional castle rising from some lofty crag, connected in many a childish mind with oft-heard legend and ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... that from this stone the Roman roads radiated, and that by it the distances were reckoned, seems now generally received. Stow, who thinks that there was some legend of the early Christians connected with it, says:—"On the south side of this high street (Candlewick or Cannon Street), near unto the channel, is pitched upright a great stone, called London Stone, fixed in the ground very deep, fastened ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... last four years, we have made the exercise of all power more democratic; for we have begun to bring private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public's government. The legend that they were invincible—above and beyond the processes of a democracy—has been shattered. They have ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... stalls is of great interest. The panels on the south represent the miraculous preservation of the arm of S. Oswald. This arm was one of the greatest treasures of the house, and was reputed to be the cause of many cures. The legend is given hereafter in the notice of Abbot Elsinus, the great collector of relics. In the corresponding position on the north side is represented the story of S. Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester. ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... gone. He went back a little, and threw himself against it. Lock and hinges too gave way, and it fell right out before him. He went staggering on, and was brought up by a bed, half-falling across it. He was in the spare room, the gruesome centre of legend, the dwelling of ghostly awe. Not yet apparently had its numen forsaken it, for through him passed a thrill at the discovery. From his father's familiar room to this, was like some marvellous transition in a fairy-tale; the one was home, a place of use and daily custom; the other a hollow in the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... observations from the indignant old gentleman were cut short by the announcement of the song, which Mr. Anthony Humm gave out two lines at a time, for the information of such of his hearers as were unacquainted with the legend. While it was being sung, the little man with the drab shorts disappeared; he returned immediately on its conclusion, and whispered Mr. Anthony Humm, with a face of the deepest importance. 'My friends,' said Mr. Humm, holding up his hand in a deprecatory manner, to bespeak the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... countless champions; millions of manly hearts mourning for you. From generation to generation we take up the fond tradition of your beauty; we watch and follow your tragedy, your bright morning love and purity, your constancy, your grief, your sweet martyrdom. We know your legend by heart. You are one of the saints of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... splendour of colour, I wish you also to remember, in connection with it, the cause of Proserpine's eternal captivity—her having tasted a pomegranate seed,—the pomegranate being in Greek mythology what the apple is in the Mosaic legend; and, in the whole {103} worship of Demeter, associated with the poppy by a multitude of ideas which are not definitely expressed, but can only be gathered out of Greek art and literature, as we learn their symbolism. The chief character on which these thoughts are founded is the fulness of ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... towards individualisation. But even so it was merely a question of instinct, and did not bear the least resemblance to love as we understand it to-day. Love did not exist in the old world. I admit that in the legend of Orpheus we are face to face with a sentiment which is not unlike modern love, but, as far as I am aware, this is an isolated case in Greek history, and may be regarded as a divination of something new, just as we find unmistakable ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... of Alexander the Great less to be honored because he happened to be black? Was Terence less famous? The medieval European world, developing under the favorable physical conditions of the north temperate zone, knew the black man chiefly as a legend or occasional curiosity, but still as a fellow man—an Othello or a Prester John or ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... that I stared, all eyes, when Dinky-Dunk brought home a figure like this, in the shape of a Finn girl named Olga Sarristo? Olga is to work in the fields, and to help me when she has time. But I'll never get used to having a Norse Legend standing at my elbow, for Olga is the most wonderful creature I have ever clapped eyes on. I say that without doubt, and without exaggeration. And what made the picture complete, she came driving a yoke of oxen—for Dinky-Dunk will have need of every horse and hauling animal he can lay his ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... romance is any fictitious narrative of heroic, marvelous, or supernatural incidents derived from history or legend, and told at considerable length. "The Idylls ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... as told by these two honest companions, was something like the vulgar legend of other people's money, so eagerly craved, and so madly dissipated. Easily-gotten wealth is easily gotten rid of. Stolen money has fatal tendencies, and turns irresistibly to gambling, horse-jockeys, fast women, all the ruinous ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... during the time went to Pompeii to witness a special excavation among the ruins of the buried city, which search was instituted on account of our visit. A number of ancient household articles were dug up, and one, a terra cotta lamp bearing upon its crown in bas-relief the legend of "Leda and the Swan," was presented to me as a souvenir of the occasion, though it is usual for the Government to place in its museums everything of such ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... 385 ff.—Leto, beloved of Zeus, was the mother of Artemis and Apollo, who were born in the holy island of Delos.— One legend, already rejected by Pindar, said that the crime of Tantalus was that he had given his child Pelops ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... a painting which takes us back, not to any legend of pagan times, nor to any Bible story, nor to any incident of the Reformation in other lands, but to a scene in the history of our own country, and it is well worthy of its place among the other historical pictures in the Commons' Corridor of the ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick

... mention of these islands on La Frechette's "Chart of the Indian Ocean" (published by W. Faden, London, 1803). They are placed thereon in 32 deg. and 34 deg., N. lat., and in 160 deg. and 164 deg. E. long., respectively, with the following legend: "Kin-sima, la Rica de Oro, or Gold Island. Gin-sima, la Rica de Plata, or Silver Island. These Two Islands, which are Known to the Japanese, are laid down according to the report of the former Spanish ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various

... the portals of eternity and are lost to mortal sight. Some of these legends, though exceedingly beautiful, will hardly bear close examination in the light of Catholic dogma. Of this class is "The Faithful Soul," of Adelaide Procter, which is merely given here as an old French legend, nearly connected with Purgatory, and having really nothing in it contrary to faith, though in a high degree improbable, but yet from its intrinsic beauty and dramatic character, no less than the subtle charm of Miss Procter's verse, eminently worthy of a place in this collection. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... filled with mystery, romance and stories of intrigue, cruelty and barbarities, involving internal wars, uprisings, almost continuous struggles with practically all of the European countries and massacres that aroused the whole world. Legend assigns Oghuz, son of Kara Khan, father of the Ottoman Turks, whose first appearance in history dates back ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... assertion is well illustrated by what occurred respecting an equestrian statue in the metropolis, with respect to which a legend existed that the sculptor hanged himself, because he had neglected to put a girth to the horse. This story was currently believed for many years, until it was inspected for altogether a different purpose, and it was found to have had a girth ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... also recorded some of the most important legends, which resemble the Bible history; particularly the legends with regard to the great flood, which has been in our language for many centuries, and the legend of the great fish which swallowed the prophet Ne-naw-bo-zhoo, who came out again alive, which might be considered as corresponding to the story of ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird

... Station, the highest point on the Union Pacific Railroad, stands a monument some sixty feet square and about the same height, bearing the simple legend, "In Memory of Oakes Ames and Oliver Ames." This was erected in compliance with a resolution passed at the meeting of the Company's stockholders held in Boston, March 10th, 1875, which read as follows, ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey

... very probably replied that "other woman appreciated him better, and that LEDA, for example, would be more apt to call him a duck or a swan, than a degraded and abject goose." So, too, in regard to the story that he disguised himself as a bull, and in that eccentric costume made love to EUROPA. One legend expressly states that he pretended to be an Irish bull. This is, of course, a figurative way of saying that he proclaimed himself an Irish gentleman, a descendant of BRIEN BORU and a graduate of Trinity College. EUROPA was probably a child's nurse, and the fascinating Irish gentleman ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... Tom say that, to whom the legend of St. Dorothea, and, indeed, that whole belief in a better land, was as a dream fit ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... speak to her? He wanted to; but only a few days ago his eyes had been caught by the placard of a weekly paper bearing the title of 'Squibs,' on which in large letters was the legend "Men Who Speak to Girls," and he had gathered that the accompanying article was a denunciation rather than a eulogy of these individuals. On the other hand, ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... to sentimental recollections), "Is she releegious?" he asked, and was shortly after, at his own request, presented. The acquaintance, which it seems profane to call a courtship, was pursued with Mr. Weir's accustomed industry, and was long a legend, or rather a source of legends, in the Parliament House. He was described coming, rosy with much port, into the drawing-room, walking direct up to the lady, and assailing her with pleasantries, to which the embarrassed fair one responded, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... me wrought, in the streets I would straight make known: "When this marvel of mine is heard, without cavil shall men receive Any legend of haloed saint, staring up through the sealed stone!" So I spake in the trodden ways; but ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... himself, they by common consent voted him a spy and a public menace, telling each other that he was undoubtedly engaged in drawing plans of the coast in order to facilitate' the landing of some enemy; for did not the legend run:— ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... Without a ready means of communication the myriad human units who perform the varied tasks necessary for the economic well-being of a body-politic would be unable to coordinate their manifold activities with success, and the structure of civilized societies at least would collapse. It needs no legend of a Tower of Babel to make this plain. So fundamental is this truth that although we may not have recognized it explicitly, we unconsciously form the belief that speech and language are exclusive properties of the human species, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... the game. And Upper House had suffered, too, for across the floor Carl Jones was viewing the last of the contest from the inglorious vantage of the side line. Upper and Lower were still shouting hoarsely and singing doggedly. On the scoreboard the legend ran: ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... tankard made by Samuel Minott, who worked in Boston from about 1765 to 1803, can be accurately placed by the account of ownership thoughtfully inscribed on its base by one of its later owners. The legend reads: ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor

... and with her perfect face dividing their rippling flow she looked like some immaculate saint of legend being led to martyrdom. Rowland's eyes presumably betrayed his admiration, but her own manifested no consciousness of it. If Christina was a coquette, as the remarkable timeliness of this incident might have suggested, she was not ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... stupid legend," said Squire Vane gruffly. "But come up into the garden; I want to ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton

... later she received her letter back with a stamped legend across its face informing her with dreadful terseness that the party to whom the letter was addressed was deceased. She divined a blunder, but for all that, and with conflicting emotions, sought confirmation in the daily ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... of Athelstan and Edmund the first have only a rose with a legend of the king's name, that of the Moneyer, and Leicester; from Etheldred the second, they bear the impress of the royal head and sceptre, with the same stile ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts

... he said 'was Hugh's at Agincourt; And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon: A good knight he! we keep a chronicle With all about him'—which he brought, and I Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights, Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings Who laid about them at their wills and died; And mixt with these, a lady, one that armed Her own fair head, and sallying through the gate, Had beat her foes with ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... Wynne had fatefully wrenched his coat and hat, to go lurching out into oblivion, half-drunk and maddened with something more than intoxication—if Merriton had told his story truly, and Cleek believed he had. It was, in fact, in that very smoking-room that the legend which had led up to the tragedy had been told. Hmm. There certainly was much to be cleared up here while he was waiting for that other business at the War Office to adjust itself. He wouldn't find time hanging heavily upon his hands there ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... omnibuses bearing the legend 'Qita.' Then we met one which said: 'Empire Theatre. Valdes, the matchless juggler,' and Sally smiled ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... the early independence of the Forest Cantons, the Magna Charta of Switzerland." The formation of this confederacy may be regarded as the first combined preparation of the Swiss for that great struggle in defence of their liberties, in the history of which fact and legend, as shown in Baker's discriminating ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... struck their eyes at the first steps they took. They walked up to them: a procession of sandwich-men was moving along in single file. In their hands they carried heavy ferruled canes, with which they tapped the pavement in unison as they went; and their boards bore the above legend in front and a further huge poster ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc

... province of Marmaros. This latter province or county, which the Russians invaded through the Carpathian passes, lies in the northeast of Hungary, bordering on Galicia, Bukowina and Transylvania. There was a legend that the eastern Carpathians are impregnable, but this legend was destroyed by ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... references to a still earlier story, which probably narrated only the episode of Thomas's adventure in Elfland, and to which the prophecies of Thomas Rymour of Ercildoun were added at a later date. The story of Thomas and the Queen of Elfland is only another version of a legend of Ogier le ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick

... Duttons of Dutton retained the power. On midsummer-day, they used to ride through Chester, attended by all the minstrels playing on their several instruments, to the Church of St. John, and there renew their licenses. It is a good theme for a legend. Sir Peter Leycester, writing in Charles the Second's time, copies the Latin deed from the constable to Dutton; rightly translated, it seems to mean "the magisterial power over all the lewd people . . . . in the whole of Cheshire," but ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... fully confirmed. Gouache had heard the gossip, and had immediately made a lively sketch on the back of a half-finished picture, representing Donna Tullia, in her bridal dress, leaning upon the arm of Del Ferice, who was arrayed in a capuchin's cowl, and underneath, with his brush, he scrawled a legend, "Finis coronat opus." ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... him, and I saw there was some secret. One day, Susan asked me to prevent Master Maurice from teaching baby such ugly words, that she could not sleep—not bad words, but she thought they were Latin. So I watched, and I heard Maurice singing out some of the legend of Hiawatha, and insisting on poor little Awkey telling him what m-i-s-h-e-n-a-h-m-a, spelt. Poor little Awk stared, as well she might, and obediently made the utmost efforts to say after him, Mishenahma, king of fishes, but he was terribly discomposed at ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... are the first Europeans, and, I believe, I may add, the first human beings who have reached this point, where it is probable none will come after us. A common report prevails, indeed, in England, concerning Sir Francis Drake, who is said to have visited the antipodes, which the legend expresses by "his having passed under the middle arch of London bridge:" but this is a mistake, as his track lay along the coast of America, and probably originates from his having passed the periaeci, or the point ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... a subject of Greek legend, anything in the way of an actual revival must always be impossible. Such vain antiquarianism in a waste of the poet's power. The composite experience of all the ages is part of each one of us: to ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... creation. I remember that when I was a child the tradition was whispered round among us little folks that if we tried to count the stars we should drop down dead. Nevertheless, the stars have been counted and the astronomer has survived. This nursery legend is the child's version of those superstitions which would have strangled in their cradles the young sciences now adolescent and able to take care of themselves, and which, no longer daring to attack these, are watching with hostile ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of the romantic Robin Hood and his "merrie" band of robbers, the subject of legend and adventure. To-day there are in this beautiful region, within two or three miles of each other, the seats of the Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey, the Duke of Newcastle at Clumber, the Earl Manvers (whose family formerly had the title of Duke of Kingston) at Thoresby, and Worksop Manor, formerly ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard

... copied this history, or more truly legend, give no credence to various incidents narrated in it. For, some things herein are the feats of jugglery of demons, sundry others poetic figments, a few are probable, others improbable, and even more invented for the delectation ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... create a sensation by his elaborate toilet. And so he did! For as he sauntered beautifully up the hall to his seat in front, he was wholly unconscious that a startling label was hanging gracefully on the back buttons of his coat with this legend inscribed thereon— ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... strive To win fair Greece out of the tyrants' hands, And those usurping Ismaelites deprive Of woful Thrace, which now captived stands, You must from realms and seas the Turks forth drive, As Godfrey chased them from Juda's lands, And in this legend, all that glorious deed, Read, whilst you arm you; arm ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... later to say that he had no clear opinions on the question, Eck uses an interesting expression: 'To ask what I think is like looking for Arthur and his Britons.'[16] The reference is to the Arthurian legend and the long-expected, never-fulfilled, return of the great king; but the humanists usually leave the whole field of mediaeval ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... short-story are as varied as life itself. Addison, Lamb, Irving, Warner, and many others have used the story in their sketches and essays with wonderful effect. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is as impressive as any of Scott's tales. The allegory in The Great Stone Face loses little or nothing when compared with Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. No better type of detective story has been written than the two short-stories, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... was Burns's Alloway Kirk we paid for, and we find we have bought a share in the griefs of James Russell, seedsman; for is not the stone that tells this blinding sorrow of real life the true centre of the picture, and not the roofless pile which reminds us of an idle legend? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... knightly legend on thy shield betrays The moral of thy life; a forecast wise, And that large honor that deceit defies, Inspired thy fathers in the elder days, Who decked thy scutcheon with that sturdy phrase, To be, rather ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... named the "Devil's Causeway" by the natives, who have a way of bestowing all particularly grand and rugged sites upon that disagreeable personage; but Sara, having no mind to give up her favorite spot to his satanic majesty, always named it to herself the "Mermaid's Castle," and had a childish legend of her own about an enchanted princess confined here and guarded by the sea until the coming ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... into a poetic ecstacy in that wonderful chapter where Red Hugh, escaping from the Pale, rides through the Mountain Gates of Ulster, and sees high above him Slieve Mullion, a mountain of the Gods, the birthplace of legend "more mythic than Avernus" and O'Grady evokes for us and his hero the legendary past, and the great hill seems to be like Mount Sinai, thronged with immortals, and it lives and speaks to the fugitive boy, "the last ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... the John Doree having a dark spot, like a finger-mark, on each side of the head, believe this to have been the fish, and not the Haddock, from which the Apostle Peter took the tribute-money, by order of our Saviour. The modern Greeks denominate it "the fish of St. Christopher," from a legend which relates that it was trodden on by that saint, when he bore his divine burden across an arm of the sea. Some species of Echini, fossilized, and seen frequently in Norfolk, are termed by the ignorant peasantry, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... This was the legend, and Hazel believed it implicitly. When she had found Foxy half dead outside her deserted earth, she had been quite sure that it was the death pack that had made away with Foxy's mother. She connected it also with her own mother's death. Hounds symbolized everything she hated, everything that ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... from our rough Lyonesse, and beheld That victor of the Pagan throned in hall— His hair, a sun that ray'd from off a brow Like hillsnow high in heaven, the steel-blue eyes, The golden beard that clothed his lips with light— Moreover, that weird legend of his birth, With Merlin's mystic babble about his end, Amazed me; then, his foot was on a stool Shaped as a dragon; he seem'd to me no man, But Michael trampling Satan; so I sware, Being amazed: but this went by—the vows! O ay—the wholesome madness of an hour— They served ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... it an angel of Victory, observe, with assurance; although there is no legend claiming victory, or distinguishing this angel from any other of those which adorn with crowns of flowers the nameless crowds of the blessed. For Botticelli has other ways of speaking than by written legends. I know by a glance at this angel that he has taken the action ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... seriousness. Something liturgical, with repetitions of a consecrated form of words, is traceable in one of his elegies, as part of the order of a birthday sacrifice. The hearth, from a spark of which, as one form of old legend related, the child Romulus had been miraculously born, was still indeed an altar; and the worthiest sacrifice to the gods the perfect physical sanity of the young men and women, which the scrupulous ways of that religion of the hearth had tended to maintain. A religion of usages and ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... nothingness. When the late Sir Gilbert Aubyn, the famous neo-Gothic architect, was called in (1885) to restore Porthennis Church—or, as we say in Cornwall, to "restroy" it—he swept the remnants away. But the legend survives, ferro perennius. ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... counsellor, Bernard the Dane, Count of Harcourt, fetched from Bayeux his only child, Richard, only eight years old, to be solemnly invested with the ducal sword and mantle, and to receive the homage of the Normans. [Footnote: This is the Norman legend. The French Chronicles point to Norman treachery.] The bitter hatred of the French to the Normans could not but break ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... cut; an election contest at Newark; a visit from Mr. Mundella; the pacifying of the tribes; and finally the golden legend of Hine-Moa ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... of the confusion of tongues seems also to have existed in the country, not long after the Conquest, having very probably been learnt from the missionaries; but it does not seem to have been connected with the Tower-of-Babel legend of Cholula. Something like it at least appears in the Gemelli table of Mexican migrations, reproduced in Humboldt, where a bird in a tree is sending down a number of tongues to a crowd of ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... admirable and brought forth immediate applause form the audience, under which Hermia hid her gasp of dismay. There were even pictures like those which Philidor had painted, of Cleofonte breaking chains and of the child Stella flying in mid-air, and at one side the legend "Artistide Bruant, painter of portraits at two francs fifty—soldiers ten sous." Sure now of the scene which was to follow, but outwardly quite composed, Hermia listened carelessly to the dialogue, saw the acrobat appear, and the "Lady ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... civilizer,—the very keystone and foundation of all progress. From the plain, prosy, earthy fact that man is a hungry animal, and must eat, has sprung all the civilization of the world! I shall demonstrate this in my book, beginning with the scriptural legend of Adam's greed for an apple. Adam was evidently hungry at the moment Eve tempted him. As soon as he had satisfied his inner man, he thought of his outer,—and his next idea was, naturally, tailoring. From this simple conjunction of suggestions, combined with what 'God' would have to say to him ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... the place is not so rich in legend as that of much humbler localities, but there is at least one Indian story which will bear telling over again. It concerns Jacob Wetzel, the brother of the famous Lewis Wetzel, who was one day returning from a hunt ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... granite, twelve feet wide, flanked by heavy buttresses. At the top of the steps is the entrance porch, eleven feet wide, six feet deep, and arched overhead. Polished granite columns with carved capitals on either side support the archway above. In the belt of sandstone above this arch is cut the legend "Library and Art Building." Above this belt is a row of windows separated by columns of brick. Above these is a sandstone belt in which is cut the name of the donor, by vote of the City Government. The title of the structure is therefore "Wallace Library and Art Building." Above is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various



Words linked to "Legend" :   Isolde, urban legend, Arthurian legend, round table, King Arthur's Round Table, Sangraal, fable, Sisyphus, legendary, Tristram



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