From the earliest period of the world’s history abnormal creatures or monstrosities, both human and animal, have existed from time to time and excited the wonder of mankind. They play a part in traditions and legends of great antiquity that have survived among people of all types of culture, and the stories that clustered round them, are common to civilized and uncivilized races throughout the globe. They are introduced and described in many of the early mythologies and sometimes represented in artistic forms in primitive sculpture. The births of such creatures were regarded by some nations as presaging disasters and calamities or interpreted as divinations, while by others they were considered as indicative of Di\dne wrath, a belief that survived in Europe until the end of the sixteenth century. - [Author]

Language: English