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Mermaid Novels
In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events such as storms, shipwrecks, and drownings (cf. ). In other folk traditions (or sometimes within the same traditions), they can be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with humans. The male equivalent of the mermaid is the merman, also a familiar figure in folklore and heraldry. Although traditions about and reported sightings of mermen are less common than those of mermaids, they are in folklore generally assumed to co-exist with their female counterparts. The male and the female collectively are sometimes referred to as merfolk or merpeople. The Western concept of mermaids as beautiful, seductive singers may have been influenced by the sirens of Greek mythology, which wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John William Waterhouse
John William Waterhouse (baptised 6 April 184910 February 1917) was an English painter known for working first in the Academic style and for then embracing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter. His paintings are known for their depictions of women from both ancient Greek mythology and Arthurian legend. A high proportion depict a single young and beautiful woman in a historical costume and setting, though there are some ventures into Orientalist painting and genre painting, still mostly featuring women. Born in Rome to English parents who were both painters, Waterhouse later moved to London, where he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art Schools. He soon began exhibiting at their annual summer exhibitions, focusing on the creation of large canvas works depicting scenes from the daily life and mythology of ancient Greece. Many of his paintings are based on authors such as Homer, Ovid, Shakespeare, Tennyson, or Keats. Waterhouse's work is displayed in m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wayland The Smith
In Germanic mythology, Wayland the Smith (; , ; Old Frisian: Wela(n)du; ; ; (); from ', lit. "crafting one") is a master blacksmith originating in Germanic heroic legend, described by Jessie Weston as "the weird and malicious craftsman, Weyland".Weston, J. (1929). 'Legendary Cycles of the Middle Age', in Tanner, J.R. (ed.), ''The Cambridge Medieval History'' Vol. VI, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, p. 841f. Wayland's story is most clearly told in the Old Norse sources '' Völundarkviða'' (a poem in the ''Poetic Edda'') and '' Þiðreks saga''. In them, Wayland is a smith who is enslaved by a king. Wayland takes revenge by killing the king's sons and then escapes by crafting a winged cloak and flying away. A number of other visual and textual sources clearly allude to similar stories, most prominently the Old English poem ''Deor'' and the Franks Casket. Wayland is also mentioned in passing in a wide range of texts, such as the Old English '' Waldere'' and ''Beow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Witege
Witege, Witige or Wittich (; Gotho-) or Vidrik "Vidga" Verlandsson ( + ''Viðga'' or ''Videke'' + ''Verlandsson'', ''Vallandsson'', or ''Villandsson'') is a character in several Germanic heroic legends, poems about Dietrich von Bern, and later Scandinavian ballads.The article Vidrik Verlandsson' in '' Nordisk familjebok'' (1921). In German legends, he was one of the warriors of Dietrich von Bern, but betrayed him and took instead the side of his wicked Uncle Ermenrich. In one of the Scandinavian ballads ( TSB E 119), he won particular fame in his duel with Langben Rese/Risker (the giant Etgeir in the '' Þiðrekssaga''). During the Middle Ages, he became the son of Wayland the Smith and Böðvildr, and this entitled him to carry a hammer and tongs in his coat of arms. Later the origin of his name "Wayland's son" was forgotten, but the fame of the character prevailed. During the 16th and the 17th centuries, this led to the idea that his name "Villandsson" referred to V ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rabenschlacht
''Die Rabenschlacht'' (The Battle of Ravenna) is an anonymous 13th-century Middle High German poem about the hero Dietrich von Bern, the counterpart of the historical Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great in Germanic heroic legend. It is part of the so-called "historical" Dietrich material and is closely related to, and always transmitted together with another Dietrich poem, ''Dietrichs Flucht''. At one time, both poems were thought to have the same author, possibly a certain Heinrich der Vogler, but stylistic differences have led more recent scholarship to abandon this idea. ''Die Rabenschlacht'' concerns a failed attempt by the exiled Dietrich to reclaim his kingdom in Northern Italy from his treacherous uncle Ermenrich, with the help of an army provided by Etzel, king of the Huns. In the course of this attempt, Dietrich's younger brother and Etzel's young sons by his wife Helche are killed by Dietrich's former vassal Witege outside of Ravenna. Witege then flees into the sea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle High German
Middle High German (MHG; or ; , shortened as ''Mhdt.'' or ''Mhd.'') is the term for the form of High German, High German language, German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German (OHG) into Early New High German (ENHG). High German is defined as those varieties of German which were affected by the High German consonant shift, Second Sound Shift; the Middle Low German (MLG) and Middle Dutch languages spoken to the North and North West, which did not participate in this sound change, are not part of MHG. While there is no ''standard'' MHG, the prestige of the Hohenstaufen court gave rise in the late 12th century to a supra-regional literary language () based on Swabian dialect, Swabian, an Alemannic German, Alemannic dialect. This historical interpretation is complicated by the tendency of modern editions of MHG texts to use ''normalised'' spellings based on this variety (usually called "Classical MHG"), which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Physiologus
The ''Physiologus'' () is a didactic Christian text written or compiled in Greek by an unknown author in Alexandria. Its composition has been traditionally dated to the 2nd century AD by readers who saw parallels with writings of Clement of Alexandria, who is asserted to have known the text, though Alan Scott has made a case for a date at the end of the 3rd or in the 4th century. The ''Physiologus'' consists of descriptions of animals, birds, and fantastic creatures, sometimes stones and plants, provided with moral content. Each animal is described, and an anecdote follows, from which the moral and symbolic qualities of the animal are derived. Manuscripts are often, but not always, given illustrations, often lavish. The book was translated into Armenian in 5th century, into Latin by the early 6th century or possibly even by the mid-4th century and into Ethiopic and Syriac, then into many European and Middle-Eastern languages, and many illuminated manuscript copies such as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old High German
Old High German (OHG; ) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally identified as the period from around 500/750 to 1050. Rather than representing a single supra-regional form of German, Old High German encompasses the numerous West Germanic languages, West Germanic dialects that had undergone the set of sound change, consonantal changes called the High German consonant shift, Second Sound Shift. At the start of this period, dialect areas reflected the territories of largely independent tribal kingdoms, but by 788 the conquests of Charlemagne had brought all OHG dialect areas into a single polity. The period also saw the development of a stable linguistic border between German and Gallo-Romance languages, Gallo-Romance, later French language, French. Old High German largely preserved the synthetic language, synthetic inflectional system inherited from its ancestral Germanic forms. The eventual disruption of these patterns, which led to the more analytic language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corpus Glossary
The Corpus Glossary is one of many Anglo-Saxon glossaries. Alongside many entries which gloss Latin words with simpler Latin words or explanations, it also includes numerous Old English glosses on Latin words, making it one of the oldest extant texts in the English language. History The manuscript of the Corpus Glossary, Cambridge Corpus Christi College, 144, dates to the 8th century. The manuscript in fact contains two glossaries, the first of which is short, and the second of which (fols. 4–64v, to which the name 'Corpus Glossary' usually refers) is much longer. This latter contains almost the full text of the Épinal-Erfurt glossary (deriving independently from the same archetype as the Épinal and Erfurt manuscripts), along with about as much extra material again.Phillip Pulsiano, ‘Prayers, Glosses and Glossaries’, in ''A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature'', ed. by Phillip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne (Oxford, 2001), pp. 209–30 (p. 218). It also shares much materia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literature dates from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman language, Anglo-Norman (a langues d'oïl, type of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles (tribe), Angles, Saxons and Jutes. As the Germanic settlers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first edition in 1884, traces the historical development of the English language, providing a comprehensive resource to scholars and academic researchers, and provides ongoing descriptions of English language usage in its variations around the world. In 1857, work first began on the dictionary, though the first edition was not published until 1884. It began to be published in unbound Serial (literature), fascicles as work continued on the project, under the name of ''A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles; Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by The Philological Society''. In 1895, the title ''The Oxford English Dictionary'' was first used unofficially on the covers of the series, and in 1928 the full dictionary was republished in 10 b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scandinavian Folklore
Nordic folklore is the folklore of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. It has common roots with, and has been under mutual influence with, folklore in England, Germany, the Low Countries, the Baltic countries, Finland and Sápmi. Folklore is a concept encompassing expressive traditions of a particular culture or group. The peoples of Scandinavia are heterogenous, as are the oral genres and material culture that has been common in their lands. However, there are some commonalities across Scandinavian folkloric traditions, among them a common ground in elements from Norse mythology as well as Christian conceptions of the world. Among the many tales common in Scandinavian oral traditions, some have become known beyond Scandinavian borders – examples include The Three Billy Goats Gruff and The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body. Legends * Tróndur was a powerful Viking chieftain who lived in the Faroe Islands during the 9th century. According to legend, T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
