The folklorist behind The Legend of Perseus collects his studies in the history of religion: the relation of magic to worship, ceremonies of sacrifice and purification, and the ritual beating of images with squills recalled in Theocritus. Hartland ranges across classical antiquity, European folk custom and ethnographic reports from around the world.
A window on early comparative anthropology; its talk of savage and civilized peoples carries the evolutionary assumptions of 1914. Download the free EPUB.