British Myths & Legends

By Albert Jack

From the bestselling author of Red Herrings & White Elephants, Shaggy Dogs, Pop Goes the Weasel, Urban Myths & Legends, Ten Minute Mysteries and many more......

A wonderful collection of short stories recalling some of the popular British legends and heroes who, once upon a time, made Britain great.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Albert Jack Publishing
• Release date: Mar 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386151319

Book preview

British Myths & Legends

Good Short Stories: Legends that made Britain Great

(2018 eBook Edition)

Albert Jack

Albert Jack Publishing

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Copyright Page

British Myths & Legends

Good Short Stories: Legends that made Britain Great

(2018 eBook Edition)

Copyright ©December 2015 Albert Jack

Cover Art: Albert Jack Publishing

Cover Design: Albert Jack Publishing

All rights are reserved to the author. no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This is largely a work of fiction although the author could not resist the temptation to be creative with historical detail wherever possible. Any reference to any real life character or name used is purely coincidental, for the most part. However, some of these tales are true.

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About the Author

Albert Jack, is a writer and historian. His first book, Red Herrings and White Elephants explored the origins of well-known idioms and phrases and became an international bestseller in 2004.

It was serialised by the Sunday Times and remained in their bestseller list for sixteen straight months. He followed this up with a series of bestsellers including Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep, Pop Goes the Weasel and What Caesar did for My Salad.

Fascinated by discovering the truth behind the world’s great stories, Albert has become an expert in explaining the unexplained, enriching millions of dinner table conversations and ending bar-room disputes the world over.

He is now a veteran of hundreds of live television shows and thousands of radio programmes worldwide. Albert lives somewhere between Guildford in England and Cape Town in South Africa.

More from Albert here

The Story of Albion

THE DAWN OF BRITAIN

Albion is an ancient and romantic name for Britain that some believe evolved from the Latin word albus (meaning ‘white’) in reference to the famous cliffs at Dover and Seaford that greet the (seaborne) traveller from mainland Europe, providing his first view of the country.

Ancient Britain was occupied by a series of tribes who all had different names for the areas that they lived in; it was the traders and the potential invaders who needed to name the whole place, generally basing what they called it on the small amount of knowledge they had of the country.

White cliffs apart, it is equally possible that the name Albion for the British Isles could have arisen from ‘Albany– derived from the Gaelic word ‘Alba’ – the ancient name for the northern part of Scotland, later renamed Caledonia by the Romans (see The Britannia).

The name found on many a pub sign throughout Britain could derive from another source, however – classical mythology. Albion, the giant son of Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, is said to have discovered the islands and ruled over them for forty-four years. According to another legend, ‘Albion’ has more female connotations.

The fifty daughters of the King of Syria all married on the same day and marked the occasion by murdering their husbands on the communal wedding night. As punishment they were all set adrift in a ship and finally ran ashore on the coast of what is now known as Britain.

Here they established a colony and each daughter, the eldest of whom was called Albia, married local natives and formed their own community of Albions, never to return to their homeland.

In 1579 Sir Francis Drake, the great Elizabethan explorer, annexed an area of land now known as California during his circumnavigation of the globe and claimed it for the Virgin Queen. He marked this discovery with a brass plaque naming the territory New Albion and this plate, it is recorded, eventually turned up somewhere near San Francisco in 1937, but by then Old Albion had seen what the settlers had done with the place over the previous three-hudred and fifty-years and decided they didn’t want it after all.

The Rising Sun

BACK FROM THE DEAD EACH MORNING.

From the dawn of human history, the sun, so vital for life, has been central to people’s belief systems. The Aztecs, for example, believed the sun and the earth had already been destroyed