Natural history, lore and legend : being some few examples of quaint and by-gone beliefs gathered in from divers authorities, ancient and mediaeval, of varying degrees of reliability / by F. Edward Hulme.

Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural history, lore and legend : being some few examples of quaint and by-gone beliefs gathered in from divers authorities, ancient and mediaeval, of varying degrees of reliability / by F. Edward Hulme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    cautiously evades fathering all the wonderful tales he tells of the men who live by scent alone,* of those who by eating the heart and liver of a dragon attain to the understanding of the language of beasts, of those who have the power of making themselves invisible, and so forth, but of these I doubt not but that the understanding reader knoweth how to judge and what to believe. On the isle called Dondum, an island that Maundevile seems to have discovered, or developed from his inner consciousness, are folk of gret stature, as Geauntes : and thei ben hidouse for to loke upon : and thei han but on eye, and that is in the myddylle of the Front, and thei eten no thing but raw Flessche and raw Fyssche. And in another yle towards the Southe duellen folk of foule Stature and of cursed kynde that han no Hedes : and here Eyen ben in here Scholdres. These are both mentioned by Pliny, but this passage of Maundevile must not be considered as con- firmatory of Pliny's wonders, as it is considerably * Burton probably got this notion from Megasthenes, an old writer who, not to be outdone in the introduction of the marvellous, tells us of a nation in the extreme East of India that are wholly mouthless, and that live only by the smells that they draw in at their nostrils, partaking of no food whatever, but flourishing on the pleasant odours given off by various roots, blossoms, and fruits that they are careful to carry about with them when travelling. Unfortunately, if the scent be too strong it deprives them of life and they die as effectually of a surfeit of good things as the famous British sovereign who overdid his devotion to lamprey stew.