History
Fearful Stupidity
“They sail in ships, and whenever two of their boats meet, the sailors lash the two together, and then they draw their swords and fight. This is their form of greeting.” […]
Genre
Britons and Celts
Dreams of Merlin
“The Fox will devour its mother and then put on an Ass’s head. Once it has assumed this monstrous guide, it will terrify its brothers and drive them away to Normandy. In that country they will in their turn stir up the tusky Boar. Back they will come in a boat and in that way, they will meet the Fox once more.” […]
Violence
Let God Guide the Sword of the Righteous
“Thierry sees he is wounded in the face – bright blood is falling on the grassy plain – hits Pinabel upon his smooth steel casque and cracks it, splits it open to the nasal, and busts his skull, so brains come spilling out, then wrenches free and lets him fall down dead.” […]
Eastern Europe
Law of the Rich, Laws of the Poor
“. If a Russ commits assault with a sword, spear, or any other weapon, he who has committed this crime shall pay five pounds of silver according to the Russian law, but if he is poor, all his available property shall be sold, even to the garments he walks in, and those too shall be taken from him.” […]
Orient
Fates Worse Than Death
“The rebellious nobles who had revolted against me and whose skins I had stripped off, I made into a trophy: some in the middle of the pile I left to decay; some on the top of the pile on stakes I impaled.” […]
Britons and Celts
A Ghostly Reminder of Dark Deeds
“Then, sword in hand, with daring front erect,
Mov’d to the gate, where, to his odd surprise,
The frightful Faudon stood before his eyes,
Holding his bloody head in his right hand.” […]
Greek and Roman
The Most Powerful Fruit Addict in the World
“For he says that Albinus, when hungry, ate give hundred dried figs, a hundred Campanian peaches, ten Ostian melons, twenty pounds of Labican grapes, a hundred fig-peckers and four hundred oysters.” […]
Supernatural
A Fateful Encounter
“About this time Hother chanced, while hunting, to be led astray by a mist, and he came on a certain lodge in which were wood-maidens; and when they greeted him by his own name, he asked who they were. They declared that it was their guidance and government that mainly determined the fortunes of war. ” […]
Britons and Celts
A Noble and Ignoble Outlaw
“It is asserted by the credible relation of many persons, the walls of the church which he had seized and of the adjoining cloister exuded real blood, by which, as it afterwards appeared, was signified, as well the heinousness of his crime as its impending punishment.” […]
Medieval Mentality
A Christian Discovers Reincarnation
“They hold that as soon as a man is dead he enters into another body; and according as he has conducted himself well or ill in life, he passes from good to better or from bad to worse.” […]