PREFACE. BUT few words are needed to introduce this little book. It forms the first volume of the Young Folks' Library, a series of works suitable for boys and girls, free from the superstition which spoils, for many, literature issued for the young. Herein all mythologies are placed on the same level, and the legends of one faith are regarded as neither less nor more sacred than those of any other. The two concluding tales have a historical nucleus, and tell how the dying science of the ancient world and the new born science of the modern world were alike martyred by Christianity. ANNIE BESANT. LEGENDS. Ganga, the River Maid. A LEGEND OF HINDUSTAN. FAR away, in the vast range of mountains that close Hindustan against the barbarians of Thibet, the great God Siva lay asleep. Around him rose the sky-piercing, snowcapped peaks of the mighty Himalayas; and as he slept his tangled hair, storm-tossed, wind-driven, was played with by King Frost, and the snow-maidens and ice-maidens of his court hung ice-drops on the hairs of head and face. And Siva slept for many a hundred years, for he was weary with all his work in Hindustan; and while he slept the sun blazed down on the vast plains and slopes and valleys, and burned up cruelly the green herbs and glorious trees, for there were no rivers to water the arid soil; and the people cried aloud to Siva for water, and Siva slept unheeding. Now in the mountains there lived a great king, King Himavat, with his fair wife, Menaka, a nymph of the air, and the king and queen had one child only, a lovely maiden whom they named Ganga. As Ganga one day wandered through her father's snowy realm, she came to a beautiful ice-cavern that she had never seen before. Long icicles hung from the glittering walls; pillars of ice held |