Myths and Legends of Our Own Land

Myths and Legends of Our Own Land

by Charles Montgomery Skinner

Folk tales and legends from the United States

Genres: Mythology, Folklore, Nonfiction, Ebooks, Classics

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1896

About the author

1852-1907

Reviews

[David Welch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a large collection of folklore from across the United States, first published in 1907. But be particular about which version you get, the edition I got is a very unprofessional print job. It doesn't have chapters, it doesn't have page numbers!(??) So you might want to find a different version. But I rate on content, and that, at least, is good.

The book focuses mostly on the eastern United States, the longest settled part of the country, giving it more time to come up with these types of myths. There's a good number of witches, and scary people, a good number of ghost stories, and plenty of tales of historic figures interacting with certain localities. There's tales of people doing impressive things for the time, and plenty of revenge tales. Skinner also collects a number of American Indian myths, or at least myths ascribed to American Indians that might be of dubious origin (It was popular in the 1th century to make up romantic tales of 'noble savages.') A large number of these stories follow the pattern of Indian woman loves a man, but another suitor wants her, does something to break them up, and one or both go to their deaths because they can't stand to live apart. Give the sheer number of these tales, you'd think no Indian woman ever lived to adulthood! There are some other shortcomings. There's not many western tales, especially compared to today, given 1907 was barely out of the 'wild west' era. Maybe there just hadn't been time yet. And there's a definite bias towards the northeast, even over the equally aged south (which is just full of folklore-type stories). But as a large collection of tales (many of which are no longer really remembered) it works well. Definitely adds more color to the people and places of the United States.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

You'll find the stories of the headless horseman and Rip Van Winkle here, along with many others.

Ghost stories, love stories, Indian stories, magic and witchcraft stories, creation legends...

I have never heard of most of these. I found it pretty interesting. There are several mentions of places around where I grew up such as Onondoga Lake and Seneca Lake.

One thing to note is these are not stories that have been written to be entertaining, so the entertainment value is not quite what you might expect compared to just reading a book of short stories.

You can get this for free online at Project Gutenberg.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't read every single entry in this massive collection, but then I don't think it's the type of book one ought to read straight through. When I first started experimenting with bookbinding about 7 years ago, this was the first book I printed and bound; it's still a decent little paperback.

This is a 2-volume collection of 266 brief stories and accounts of local lore. Skinner was interested in showing that America, although a young nation, had her own legends and stories. There's Indian legends, some war stories and a lot of ghost stories. Most stories here seem to involve the supernatural in some way. There's stories of how places got their names -- the Potomac River's "Moaning Sisters" for example, three rocks near which three sisters, and many others have drowned. The wind is said to moan peculiarly before a drowning is going to occur!

I think this book is interesting because it covers a lot of old legends that are mostly forgotten now, and not in the annals of a typical ghost story collection. Certainly I've never heard of 99% of what's in this book, but I don't believe it's all made up either -- the "moaning sister's" legend is a real story, well, according to Wikipedia anyway!

A good essay on Skinner's work is in Wayland D. Hand's anthology of folklore essays "American Folk Legend," written by Richard Dorson titled, "How Shall We Rewrite Charles M. Skinner Today?" This isn't the most scholarly collection of folklore. The stories feel pretty embellished at times and there's no sources mentioned.

Unlike several reviewers here I found this book pretty entertaining, but it's probably best in small doses and would be of interest mostly to those who are fascinated by obscure lore like myself.

There's 266 legends in this book and Skinner would go on to write similar books, namely another, two-volume follow up, "American Myths and Legends" containing 171 more. He published two shorter collections, "Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders" and "Myths and Legends of Our New Possessions and Protectorate." The later being about legends in countries gained by the US in the Spanish-American War.

He also wrote a pretty fascinating book on plant folklore and superstitions entitled "Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants."

All of these books are available free on Gutenberg.org and Archive.org.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of the stories weren't very storylike. There were several that were "There was once a guy who fought in a war and then he died. The end." Luckily, they were short enough that being uninteresting was okay.

However, some of the legends were fleshed out and interesting. Most I hadn't heard before. One I recognized from my favorite book of ghost stories: it was about a young soldier, flirty girl who broke a promise to him, and waltz of death.

[Rich Meyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative but appallingly dull book on various legends of the continental US. Very dated (obviously), but does give some interesting gleamings into the history of the country, through the various Native peoples and settlers. The book is also heavily weighted toward the East Coast states and territories. The anecdotes are more along the lines of Native American legends and ghost stories told by the US settlers.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

These United States with all the mystery behind the Native Americans, Brits, and colonists.

[Mark Schlechty]

Long and boring

I usually find these types of books interesting, but this one just didn't hold my interest. Most of the legends are not interesting and don't have a point either. The one interesting thing I did find, was how superstitious early Americans were.