Free summaries
Mythology, Legends & Folklore — page 6
450 public-domain mythology, legends & folklore books, summarised. Page 6 of 10.

Goblin Tales of Lancashire
James Bowker
The ancient hills of England hold secrets that refuse to stay buried, manifesting in the spectral boggarts and restless spirits that haunt the shadows of these northern landscapes.

Kalevala : the Epic Poem of Finland
John Martin Crawford
The ancient songs of the Northland rise from the mist, weaving the destinies of heroes, magic smiths, and the very fabric of the world. Through the power of the spoken word, a legendary era is brought to life, where the line between mortal struggle and celestial wonder dissolves.

The Weird Orient: Nine Mystic Tales
Henry Iliowizi
Across the arid landscapes of the East, ancient legends and spectral figures collide in a series of nine mystical narratives that blend history, folklore, and the supernatural. These tales explore the fragile boundary between the mortal realm and the unseen world, where vanity is punished, faith is tested, and the…

The Coming of Cuculain
Standish O'Grady
A legendary Irish hero rises from his humble boyhood to become the "star that is to shine forever" upon the forehead of his people, destined to defend the Red Branch Knights.

The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales
H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen
A mother perishes in a deep glacier, but her rescued infant grows into a fearless mountain hunter, unaware that the icy nature spirit who spared him intends to claim him in the end.

Zuñi Folk Tales
Frank Hamilton Cushing
A legendary ethnographer gathers the foundational myths, trickster tales, and moral fables of the Zuni people into a vivid anthology of transformation, survival, and sacred tradition.
Fiends, Ghosts, and Sprites: Including an Account of the Origin and Nature of Belief in the Supernatural
John Netten Radcliffe
An investigation into human credulity traces how ancient mythologies, optical illusions, and neurological ticks conspire to convert ordinary natural phenomena into ghosts, devils, and mischievous sprites.

Parsifal: A Mystical Drama by Richard Wagner Retold in the Spirit of the Bayreuth Interpretation
Richard Wagner
A pure-hearted youth wanders into a sacred forest, unaware that his innocence holds the key to healing a broken kingdom and redeeming a fallen world.

Stories from the Greek Tragedians
Alfred John Church
Fate, divine commands, and human passions collide in dramatic retellings that strip ancient theater down to its essential, unforgettable narratives.

The Islands of Magic: Legends, Folk and Fairy Tales from the Azores
Elsie Spicer Eells
Born from the volcanic fury of the Atlantic, these legends capture the fading echoes of a mystical archipelago where islands vanish, fairies haunt rocky crags, and faith governs the passage of life and death.

The Ebbing Of The Tide: South Sea Stories - 1896
Louis Becke
The South Seas serve as a sanctuary for the desperate and the damned, where the boundaries between civilization and savagery dissolve in the heat of the tropics.

Mr. Faust
Arthur Davison Ficke
A restless seeker challenges the Devil to a duel of wills, only to find that the ultimate battle for his soul is fought not in heaven or hell, but within his own defiant heart.

Pictures of Sweden
H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen
The world is a tapestry of wonders waiting to be translated, provided one listens to the songs of the birds and the secrets of the stones.

Bewick's Select Fables of Æsop and others.: In three parts. 1. Fables extracted from Dodsley's. 2. Fables with reflections in prose and verse. 3. Fables in verse
Aesop
Fables offer a mirror to the human condition, reflecting our follies and virtues through the lives of animals and ancient archetypes. This collection serves as both a moral guide and an enduring testament to the power of wisdom distilled into simple, sharp narratives.

Legends of the City of Mexico
Thomas A. (Thomas Allibone) Janvier
These tales capture the vanished pulse of a historic capital, where ancient stone walls harbor ghosts, secrets, and the lingering echoes of colonial tragedy. They serve as a bridge between the living city and the shadows of its past.

The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Translated into English Prose: Sabha Parva
Kisari Mohan Ganguli
The second book of the great Indian epic presents a harrowing transformation of glory into ruin, charting the thin line between a righteous kingdom and a catastrophic fall. It is a study of hubris, the seduction of power, and the inescapable weight of one’s own character.

The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A psychological interpretation of mythology
Otto Rank
Mythology is not a collection of ancient whimsy, but a profound projection of the universal human psyche, revealing the secret, often turbulent, childhood fantasies we all harbor toward our own parents.

The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser: A Romantic Novel
Aubrey Beardsley
A weary traveler slips into the underworld, seeking refuge from the mundane world in the decadent, eternal embrace of a goddess’s court. This imaginative journey explores a landscape defined by artifice, desire, and the rejection of all moral constraints.

A Collection of Scotch Proverbs
Pappity Stampoy
These are the sharp, unvarnished voices of a landscape where wit is a weapon and endurance is the only currency. This collection offers an unfiltered look at the hard-won wisdom of a people who know that "a hungry man sees far.

Bubbles of the Foam
F. W. (Francis William) Bain
A divine romance born of celestial pride meets a tragic end in the shifting sands of a desert kingdom. This mythic tale explores the intersection of fatal love and the inevitable reach of human vanity.

The Other World
Unknown
Beyond the veil of our physical perception lies a realm of spectral shadows and spiritual intelligence, challenging the materialist boundaries of the Victorian age. This collection serves as a formal bridge between the ancient traditions of the unseen and the burgeoning, often controversial, science of modern…

Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 09
Unknown
The stories of the Borders breathe with the quiet, persistent pulse of history, capturing the triumphs, heartbreaks, and moral tests of a people living on the edge of memory.

Zanzibar Tales: Told by Natives of the East Coast of Africa
George W. Bateman
Wise animals and cunning humans navigate a world of shifting fortunes, where the smallest creatures often outwit the strongest predators in these classic tales from the East African coast.

A Draught of the Blue, together with An Essence of the Dusk
F. W. (Francis William) Bain
A fatal encounter in a wild forest transforms a marriage-hating king into an obsessed lover, binding his soul across lifetimes in a cycle of desire, separation, and tragic illusion.

Allegheny Episodes: Folk Lore and Legends Collected in Northern and Western Pennsylvania
Henry W. (Henry Wharton) Shoemaker
Ancient ridges, timber-choked valleys, and ghost-haunted rivers converge in a collection where wilderness lore and local memory preserve the forgotten heart of Pennsylvania.

Australian Legendary Tales: folk-lore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies
K. Langloh (Katie Langloh) Parker
An ancient landscape shapes its creatures, and every bird, beast, and star carries the memory of an ancestor who broke a sacred law.

Gods and Heroes
Ferdinand Schmidt
A divine trickster steals cattle from a cradle, a grieving husband's song fails to reclaim his wife from the underworld, and a foolish boy sets the sky ablaze. These timeless tales chart humanity's fragile place beneath the gods.

The Awakening of the Soul
Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Malik Ibn Tufayl
A newborn infant, cast adrift on an uninhabited equatorial island, grows up entirely isolated from human contact to discover the deep structure of the physical universe and the ultimate nature of the divine.

David: A Tragedy
Cale Young Rice
This dramatic rendering reimagines the rise of the shepherd-king as a tumultuous collision between divine destiny and human frailty. It is a work of high-stakes conflict, centering on the psychological unraveling of a monarch who feels his power slipping away.

The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Volume IV
John Payne
A storyteller’s tapestry of shifting fates and sudden fortunes, these pages gather the restless spirits of Baghdad and beyond into a cycle of wit, peril, and the inescapable whims of divine decree.

True Irish Ghost Stories
Unknown
The restless dead of Ireland rarely stay in their graves, preferring to walk the halls of old mansions and schoolrooms, leaving behind only the cold air of their passing and the terror of those who encounter them.

Legends of the Northwest
Hanford Lennox Gordon
The past lingers like a ghost in the Minnesota woods, where spirits walk the shores and the echoes of a vanishing culture still haunt the river’s mist.

Myths and Folk Tales of Ireland
Jeremiah Curtin
This collection preserves the vanishing oral traditions of a culture, offering a window into the supernatural landscape of Ireland. These tales capture the raw, imaginative power of a people who once saw giants, magic, and destiny in every hill and stream.

Cinderella in the South: Twenty-Five South African Tales
Arthur Shearly Cripps
The veld holds secrets that city-dwellers often overlook, yet those who wander its quiet paths find that the land—and its people—refuse to be governed by the rigid expectations of the old world.

Japanese folk stories and fairy tales
Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
This collection of Japanese folklore captures the moral heartbeat of a culture, weaving together spirits, samurai, and common folk in a series of timeless, cautionary tales.

Judith, a Play in Three Acts
Arnold Bennett
A defiant widow saves her starving city from an invading army by infiltrating the enemy’s camp to execute their general, only to face the suffocating vanity of the leaders she liberated.

Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsany
Lord Dunsany
This collection of plays and short stories serves as a doorway into a realm where the laws of our world dissolve, replaced by the inexorable, rhythmic power of Time. It is a portrait of a writer who does not merely tell stories, but constructs entire mythologies out of shadow, desert sand, and the fading echoes of…

An Essence of the Dusk, 5th Edition
F. W. (Francis William) Bain
Love is a trap of memory and illusion, where the soul’s desire becomes the instrument of its own destruction. Two lovers, bound by the echoes of a past life, reach for a joy that leads only to the grave.

The Triads of Ireland
Unknown
Wisdom arrives in threes in this ancient collection of Irish maxims, offering a crisp, window-like view into the values, anxieties, and daily textures of a world long past.

Gods and Heroes
R. E. (Robert Edward) Francillon
The ancient gods and heroes of Greece come to life in these brisk, evocative retellings, where mortals grapple with divine caprice and the heavy burden of destiny.

The King's Threshold
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
The poet Seanchan challenges a king’s authority through a hunger strike, while the warrior Cuchullain faces a tragic reckoning born of his own past. These two dramas explore the high, often perilous costs of honor and duty.

The symbolism of colour
Ellen McCaffery
The world is not merely a collection of objects, but a vibrant tapestry of meaning where every hue acts as a bridge between the physical plane and the spiritual realm.

Red Hunters and the Animal People
Charles A. Eastman
The wild world holds a mirror to the human soul, revealing a kinship between the hunter and the hunted that transcends the simple struggle for survival.

The Divine Vision, and Other Poems
George William Russell
The ancient gods of the Celtic landscape stir within these verses, bridging the gap between the mundane rhythm of human life and the burning, eternal light of the spirit.

Folk-Lore and Legends: Scandinavian
Unknown
HOOK This collection gathers the ghosts, giants, and ancient gods of the North into a single volume. It captures the haunting, moral, and often capricious spirit of Scandinavian folklore through tales passed down across generations.

Fairy Realm: A Collection of the Favourite Old Tales Told in Verse
Tom Hood
A whimsical reimagining of classic folklore, this collection breathes fresh, rhythmic life into legendary tales through lighthearted verse and a distinctively Victorian wit.

Folk tales of Sind and Guzarat
C. A. (Charles Augustus) Kincaid
A collection of regional Indian folklore and historical vignettes unfolds with quiet affection for the landscapes of Sind and Gujarat.

Folk tales from Tibet
Unknown
A young tiger learns humanity's trickery, a foolish boy accidentally shatters his dreams with an overzealous footstep, and a clever hare leaves a lioness trapped in a stone wall.