Myths, Scenes Worthies of Somerset

Excerpt from Myths, Scenes Worthies of Somerset

The author has somewhat departed from her original intention of making a collection of the myths and legends of Somerset. Unwittingly, fiction glided into fact, and the story developed into history, and it was found difficult, if not impossible, to define their respective limits. For instance, though Arthur is an impalpable and shadowy personage, while Alfred is a most real and substantial one, yet the mingling of truth and fable in the story of each - as connected with Somerset - is only one of degree; and even in later times, myth is so entertwined with the lives of St. Dunstan, of Sir John de Courcy, of Roger Bacon, &c., that, if one tries rudely to tear away the accretions of myth and fable, a maimed and distorted picture is all that is left.

Among the legends of Saints are some of rare beauty, full of earnest thought and quaint suggestiveness. It has been endeavoured to show that, instead of being - as they are generally and conveniently classed, with a charming simplicity as - the "lying inventions of the monks," they are in most cases but the loving exaggerations of a simple age, to which every unexplained wonder was a miracle.

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