Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sourcesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sources
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends
A Welsh legend is this:—“One of the most dreadful of events was the
outbreak of Llyn Llion, the sea of seas, which overwhelmed the world and
drowned all men except Dwyan and Dwyvach, who escaped in a bare boat and
colonized Britain. This ship was one of the three masterpieces of Hu,
and was built by the heavenly lord, Reivion; and it received into it a
pair of every kind of beast when the Llyn Llion burst forth.” This
Reivion is the same as Hu Cadarn, the discoverer of the vine; and it is
said of him that “he built the ark laden with fruit, and it was stayed
up in the water, and carried forward by serpents;” and of the rainbow it
was said, that the Woman of the silver wheel, Arianrhod, to control the
wizards of night and evil spirits of tempest, and out of love to the
Britons, “wove the stream of the rainbow,—a stream which drives the
storm from the earth, and makes its former destruction stay far from it,
throughout the world’s circle.”[228]
The Norse legend in the younger Edda is, “Bör’s sons (Odin, Vilj, and
Ve) slew the giant Ymir; and when he fell, so much blood (in poetic
phraseology Ymir’s blood signified water) ran out of the wounds, that
the whole race of the giants was drowned in it, except one, who with his
family escaped; this one is called Bergelmr. He got into a boat along
with his wife, and was thus saved.”[229]
The Lithuanian myth was this:—When Pramzimas, the most high God, looked
out of his heavenly house upon the world through a window, he saw that
it was filled with violence. Then he sent Wind and Water to devastate
the earth, and this they did for twenty days and nights. Pramzimas
looked on, and as he looked on, he ate nuts at his window, and threw the
shells down. One shell fell on the top of a mountain, and some men,
women, and beasts scrambled into it and were saved alive, while all the
rest of the inhabitants of the world were drowned. When the flood
drained away, the pairs in the nut-shell left it, and were scattered
over the earth. Only one aged couple remained, and they complained; then
God sent them the rainbow to console them, and bade them jump over the
bones of the earth. They jumped nine times, and nine pairs of living
human beings started to life, and founded the nine races of Lithuanian
blood.[230]
Among the negroes of Africa, traditions are faint, or have been little
sought after and collected. The Jumala negroes say that once when the
earth was full of cruelty and wickedness, the god Til destroyed it with
fire, and that one man alone was saved alive, named Musikdgen, _i.e._
the mountain chief, because he was found without blame.
In America the crop of traditions is abundant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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