Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sam W. and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Most accented letters in this book are used to indicate pronunciation. They are usually used in the introductory matter at the beginning of each story, but not in the stories themselves.
The notes at the end include lists of place names. These originally used breves (u shapes) or breves with acute accent above letters. As these characters are not available in the character set for this ebook, the transcriber has instead used circumflexes (e.g. Bohêm) in place of breves. Where the breve was combined with an acute accent, these letters are shown with an apostrophe before the letter with a circumflex (e.g. Iw'îljami).
Bold text is indicated with equals signs, =like this=.
_The Religious History and Mental Development of Mankind_
Author of "Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland," "Myths and Folk-Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars," "Hero-Tales of Ireland," etc.
University Press John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A.
Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland. Hero-Tales of Ireland. Irish Fairy Tales. Myths and Folk-Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars. Creation Myths of Primitive America.
[Illustration: _Jeremiah Curtin in the Ruins of Palenque, Central America._]
_Director of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, LL.D. of Harvard and Heidelberg:_
Sir,--You lost your right hand in fighting to save American unity; but though the hand went from you its cunning remained, with the power to plan and to execute.
The same kind of impulse that sent you to the field of battle to serve the country and the world, sent you to the field of science to serve as a geologist and an explorer in the majestic region of the Colorado, and finally brought you to found the Bureau of Ethnology. Through your labors, combined with those of the men whom you have associated with you, the world has learned more of the great primitive race of our country than it learned from the discovery of the continent till the day when the Bureau was founded.
I beg to inscribe this book to you as a mark of my respect and friendship.