• Cover
• Once Told: An Anthology of World Folklore
• Publication Information
• Chapter 1: Conquests, Tests, and Quests
• East of the Sun and West of the Moon
• The Song of Hiawatha
• Rumpelstiltskin
• The Three Delicate Wives of King Virtue
• Juan and Clotilde
• The King's Treasure
• Lady Godiva
• The Three Billy Goats Gruff
• The Goose Girl
• The Story of Aladdin; or, The Wonderful Lamp
• Additional Readings: Conquests, Tests, and Quests
• Chapter 2: Tricks and Tricksters
• The Valiant Little Tailor
• Puss in Boots
• Peik
• Big Peter and Little Peter
• The Emperor’s New Clothes
• The Fox and the Crow
• How the Tortoise Provoked a Contest of Strength Between the Tapir and Whale
• Old Nick and the Girl
• Hymn to Hermes
• The Simpleton and the Sharper
• Additional Readings: Tricks and Tricksters
• Chapter 3: Heroes and Heroines
• Niagara
• Li Chi Slays the Serpent
• Molly Whuppie and the Double-Faced Giant
• The Three Golden Hairs: The Story of a Charcoal Burner’s Son Who Married a Princess
• Theseus and the Minotaur
• Orpheus
• Perseus the Hero
• Additional Readings: Heroes and Heroines
• Chapter 4: Taboo
• Blue Beard
• Little Snow-White
• The Fisher-Boy Urashima
• Rapunzel
• The Fairy Dwelling on Selana Moore
• The Twelve Brothers
• Our Lady's Child
• How the Devil Married Three Sisters
• Hymn to Demeter
• The Story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
• Additional Readings: Taboo
• Chapter 5: Shapeshifters
• The Frog-Prince
• The Blacksmith’s Wife of Yarrowfoot
• The She-Wolf
• The Mermaid Wife
• The Princess Peony
• The Magician and his Pupil
• The Seven Iron Slippers
• How Uther Pendragon made war on the duke of Cornwall, and how by the mean of Merlin he lay by the duchess and gat Arthur
• The Woman Who Humored Her Lover at Her Husband’s Expense
• The Second Kalandar’s Tale
• Additional Readings: Shapeshifters
• Chapter 6: Magic and Curses
• The Snow, The Crow, and The Blood
• The Charcoal-maker who Became King
• The Black School
• The Flying Dutchman
• The Book of Magic
• Briar Rose
• The Shoemaker and the Elves
• The Crystal Ball
• Cinderilla; or The Little Glass Slipper
• The Tale of the Trader and Jinni
• Additional Readings: Magic and Curses
• Chapter 7: The Dead
• Orpheus and Eurydice
• The Story of the Messenger from Heaven
• A Story from the Time of the Romans
• A Ghost Story
• Dividing Souls
• Maku Mawu and Maku Fia or "I Will Die God's Death" and "I Will Die the King's Death"
• The White Butterfly
• The Old Woman Who Never Dies
• The Galloping Hessian
• Sila Tsarevich and Ivashka with the White Smock
• Fair Margaret and Sweet William
• The Suffolk Miracle
• Additional Readings: The Dead
• Chapter 8: Animals and Creatures of the Other World
• The Monster Mosquitoe
• Miss Britton’s Poker
• Bruce and the Spider
• The Griffin and the Minor Canon
• Beauty and the Beast
• The White Cat
• The Farmer and the Devil on Island of the Popefigs
• How the Fairies Worked Magic
• Three Leprechauns
• The Little Mermaid
• The Vampire Cat
• The Fourth Voyage of Sinbad
• Additional Readings: Animals and Creatures of the Other World
• Bibliography
• Conquests, Tests, and Quests
• Tricks and Tricksters
• Heroes and Heroines
• Taboo
• Shapeshifters
• Magic and Curses
• The Dead
• Animals and Creatures of the Other World

Theseus and the Minotaur

Ovid

Minos, having overcome the Athenians, obliges them to pay a tribute of youths and virgins of the best families, to be exposed to the Minotaur. The lot falls on Theseus, who, by the assistance of Ariadne, kills the monster, escapes from the labyrinth, which Dædalus made, and carries Ariadne to the island of Naxos, where he abandons her. Bacchus wooes her, and, to immortalize her name, he transforms the crown which he has given her into a Constellation.

Theseus Slaying Minotaur by Antoine-Louis Barye, 1843

Minos paid, as a vow to Jupiter, the bodies of a hundred bulls, as soon as, disembarking from his ships, he reached the land of the Curetes; and his palace was decorated with the spoils there hung up. The reproach of his family had now grown up, and the shameful adultery of his mother was notorious, from the unnatural shape of the two-formed monster. Minos resolves to remove the disgrace from his abode, and to enclose it in a habitation of many divisions, and an abode full of mazes. Dædalus, a man very famed for his skill in architecture, plans the work, and confounds the marks of distinction, and leads the eyes into mazy wanderings, by the intricacy of its various passages. No otherwise than as the limpid Mæander sports in the Phrygian fields, and flows backwards and forwards with its varying course, and, meeting itself, beholds its waters that are to follow, and fatigues its wandering current, now pointing to its source, and now to the open sea. Just so, Dædalus fills innumerable paths with windings; and scarcely can he himself return to the entrance, so great are the intricacies of the place. After he has shut up here the double figure of a bull and of a youth; and the third supply, chosen by lot each nine years, has subdued the monster twice before gorged with Athenian blood; and when the difficult entrance, retraced by none of those who have entered it before, has been found by the aid of the maiden, by means of the thread gathered up again; immediately, the son of Ægeus, carrying away the daughter of Minos, sets sail for Dia, and barbarously deserts his companion on those shores.

Her, thus deserted and greatly lamenting, Liber embraces and aids; and, that she may be famed by a lasting Constellation, he places in the heavens the crown taken from off her head. It flies through the yielding air, and, as it flies, its jewels are suddenly changed into fires, and they settle in their places, the shape of the crown still remaining; which is in the middle, between the Constellation resting on his knee, and that which holds the serpents.