6 posts tagged “story”

This news caused quite a stir in the Western world. Augustus Le Plongeon, a nineteen century traveler, writer, and antiquarian just returned from the Maya ruins in Yucatan peninsula. Upon his return he made a sensational announcement. He stated that he managed to translate ancient Mayan writings.

These writings showed that the Maya of Yucatan were older than later civilizations of Egypt and Atlantis. They also told the story of even older continent of Mu, which had perished like Atlantis and, that its survivors founded the Maya civilization. During my research in archives of local funeral home directory, I learned that Le Plongeon mistranslated the writings, to put it mildly.

This is, basically, how the myth of the hypothetical lost continent Mu started. Very soon, this myth got second birth: it was popularized in the serious of books written by James Churchward.

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One of the most controversial tales of inner-Earth-dwellers is the so-called "Shaver Mystery". In 1945 a story was published by some Richard Shaver, who claimed he had recently been the guest of what remained of an underground civilization. Although few really believed the story, Shaver always averred that his story was true. He contended that the Elder Race, or Titans, came to this planet from another solar system in our prehistoric past.

After a time of living on the surface, they realized our sun was causing them to age prematurely, so they escaped underground, building huge subterranean complexes in which to live. Eventually, they decided to seek a new home on a new planet, evacuating the Earth and leaving behind their underground cities populated by artificial beings: detrimental robots and integrated robots. It was these beings that Shaver claimed to have met. Despite the enormous popularity of the "Shaver Mystery" the location of the entrance to this underground world was never divulged.

We often use word Shangri-La in a similar context to Garden of Eden, It means for us some kind of a perfect paradise that exists hidden from modern man. In some cases we use it as an analogy for a life-long quest or something elusive that is much sought by man in the form of love, happiness, or Utopian ideals. Shangri-La has its place with other mythical and famous examples such as The Holy Grail, El Dorado, The Fountain of Youth. But, in fact, this word came to us from ... fiction.

This word first appeared in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. In the book, Shangri-La is a mystical, harmonious valley, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. The novel was so popular, that this word became synonymous with any earthly paradise but particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia. From my web analytics company archives I found, that the author based the story of Shangri-La is based on the concept of Shambhala, a mystical city in Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

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I had to gather bits and pieces of information about the myth of the lost kingdom of Lyonesse. The legend of a sunken kingdom Lyonesse appears in both Cornish and Breton mythology. In Christian times it even came to be viewed as a sort of Cornish Sodom and Gomorrah story. Lyonesse is identified as a sunken land lying off the Isles of Scilly, to the south-west of Cornwall. Lyonesse is a fictional country in Arthurian legend, birthplace of the knight Tristan. In the medieval story, after Battle of Camlann, that took place supposedly in 537, King Arthur’s men fled west across Lyonesse. They were pursued by Mordred and his men. Arthur’s men survived by reaching what are now the Isles of Scilly, but Mordred’s men perished in the inundation.

Other versions of the medieval story mention that Lyonesse is the home of Guinevere, a small land situated between Camelot and Malagant’s territory. This kingdom was ruled by Guinevere’s father until his death, after which Guinevere received the title of the Lady of Lyonesse.

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Ys is a Celtic word for a mythical city. According to the legend it was built in in the Douarnenez bay in Brittany by Gradlon, King of Cornouaille, for his daughter Dahut. Ys was built below sea level, protected from inundation by a dike. The only keys of the gate in the dam were held by Gradlon. I had to spend some hours on Internet and in my local web analytics company to find what this story was about.

Satan made Gradlon’s daughter Dahut steal them and give them to him. He then opened the gate and Ys was flooded. In some versions of the story, Satan was sent by God to punish the city, whose inhabitants were becoming decadent. Other versions tell that Dahut stole the keys either at her lover’s request or in order to open the gates of the city to let her lover in. The only survivor was the King Gradlon, who was advised to abandon his daughter. Everyone who lived in the city died, while the souls of the dead children were then swallowed by the ocean as a punishment. The legend claims that, one can still hear the bells of Ys, warning of a storm.

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In fact, this is all a hoax, you know. There were several extremely popular books published in nineteen century that popularized the myth of buried pirate treasure. Mind you, these books were written by great authors and they still excite minds of the children and grown-ups. Naturally, we are talking about nobody else, but Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving and Robert Louis Stevenson!

All three famous writers separately learned about one and only one story about buried pirate treasure. It seems that for all those centuries there was only one more or less verifiable story that some pirate buried part of his treasure. It was infamous William Kidd, a.k.a. Billy the Kid. He was an English privateer who went astray. He did not want to die on the gallows for all his sins, so as story goes, he hid some of his wealth on Long Island before sailing to New York.  That hidden stuff was his bargaining chip in negotiations with authorities. But this did not work, they hanged Billy the Kid by the neck for piracy.

As far as I know, nobody found Kidd's treasure on Long Island yet. But as a result, we have great fiction stories: Treasure Island, The Gold-Bug and Wolfert Webber written by the authors mentioned above.