These ancient fables have many variants and ramifications.
The summaries that follow include only those parts of them echoed in the stories in this book.
Orpheus
Orpheus was a musician whose singing was so beautiful it could shift rocks and tame wild beasts. His wife Eurydice died and was dragged down into the Underworld. Orpheus followed her there, gaining access to the realm of the dead by the power of his music. He pleaded with Hades, King of the Underworld, and his wife, Persephone. Moved by his singing, they agreed Eurydice could follow Orpheus back to life, but he was warned that he must not look back at her as they travelled towards the light. He turned. He looked. She died a second time, and for ever.
Actaeon
Diana was the virgin goddess of wild animals and of hunting. Out hunting in the woods, the hero Actaeon chanced upon Diana bathing, naked, surrounded by her nymphs. Angered by his intrusion, the goddess transformed him into a stag. In that form, he was torn apart by his own hounds.
Psyche
Psyche, whose name means ‘mind’, was a mortal woman so lovely and amiable that Venus, the goddess of love, grew envious of her and instructed her son Cupid to humiliate the girl by making her fall in love with a monster. On seeing Psyche, Cupid fell in love with her. Disregarding his mother’s orders, he bore Psyche off to an enchanted palace where he visited her each night, in pitch-darkness, telling her that they could be happy together so long as she never insisted on seeing him. One night, as Cupid slept, Psyche lit a lamp. When she saw his wings, and realised he was a god, she was so startled that she let a drop of hot oil fall from the lamp onto his shoulder. He woke and flew away.
Pasiphae
Pasiphae was the wife of Minos, the legendary king of Crete. When a mysterious bull appeared on the beach Pasiphae was seized with desire for it. She confided in Daedalus, the great architect and inventor, and he made a cow-like contraption for her. Climbing inside it, Pasiphae coupled with the bull. The resulting baby, the Minotaur, had the body of a man but the head of a bull. Daedalus constructed the labyrinth – a maze of underground tunnels – as a prison for it.
One of King Minos’s sons was killed in Athens: as compensation Minos demanded that twelve young Athenians should be sent to Crete each year and fed to the Minotaur.
For Ariadne, the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, Daedalus made a dancing floor. For himself he made wings, and flew away to Egypt.
Joseph
Joseph was a native of Bethlehem but worked as a carpenter in Nazareth. When he found that the young woman whom he was to marry, Mary, was already pregnant, he considered rejecting her. She told him she was a virgin, and that her baby had been miraculously conceived by the agency of the Holy Ghost. The marriage went ahead.
About the time the baby was due the authorities decreed that all immigrants should return to their own birthplaces for registration. Joseph took Mary to Bethlehem. They were homeless there. The baby, Jesus, was born in the temporary accommodation of a stable.
Mary Magdalen
One of Jesus’s female followers, she has traditionally been identified with another unnamed biblical character – a ‘sinful woman’, a prostitute.
Once, when he was weary, she came to where Jesus was seated and washed his feet, and wept over them, and rubbed them with an expensive ointment, and dried them with her hair. When someone rebuked her for wasting money on such a luxury Jesus defended her, ‘And he said unto her, thy sins are forgiven.’
On the Friday of the crucifixion Mary Magdalen was among the women gathered at the foot of the cross.
Before sunrise on the following Sunday she went to the place where Jesus was laid. Looking into the tomb, she saw that his body was no longer there. Someone approached her. Initially she thought he was a gardener. Then she recognised him as the risen Christ.
She reached out. He said, ‘Noli me tangere’ – Touch me not.
John, in his gospel, repeatedly describes himself as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’.
Tristan
When King Mark of Cornwall was to marry the Irish princess Isolde he sent his nephew, Tristan, to escort her over the sea to his home. In the course of the journey Isolde’s attendant, Brangwyn, gave her a love-potion. Isolde shared it with Tristan and the two fell deeply, ecstatically, helplessly in love. Isolde married Mark, but she and Tristan were driven to seek each other out.
In some tellings of the story King Mark surprises them embracing, and he, or one of his knights, kills Tristan with a poisoned weapon. Isolde dies with him, of a broken heart, or more poison. In other versions Tristan wanders off, joins King Arthur’s court, and falls in love with another lady, Isolde of the White Hands.
Piper
When the Saxon town of Hamelin was infested with rats a stranger in particoloured clothing appeared and offered, for a fee, to rid the town of the creatures. The price was shockingly high but the mayor agreed. The stranger brought out a pipe and began to play. The rats, fascinated by the music, followed him out of town. He led them to a river, where they all drowned. The piper returned to Hamelin for his payment. The mayor began to quibble, offering a much smaller sum. The piper left in a rage.
One Sunday, when the adults of the town were all in church, the piper returned and began to play his pipe again. All the children of the town followed him, as the rats had done. He led them away, perhaps to drown in the river, perhaps to disappear into a cave in the side of a mountain. Only one boy, who was too lame to follow the others, or too deaf to hear the bewitching music, was left behind in Hamelin.