Legends! Beasts and Monsters by Anthony Horowitz

 

     

    Introduction
    The Riddle of the Sphinx
    Greek
    The Incredible Spotted Egg
    Cheyenne Indian
    The Dragon and Saint George
    English
    The Washer at the Ford
    Celtic
    The Gorgon’s Head
    Greek
    Ten Brilliant Beasts and Marvellous Monsters you might not have heard of
     

    This is not a new book. In fact, I wrote most of these myths and legends a very long time ago. I was twenty-eight at the time and in bed with glandular fever. Over a period of
three months, I wrote (or rather, retold) thirty-five stories, and these were published in a book called THE KINGFISHER BOOK OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS. It’s rather frightening to think that they
have been in print now for almost thirty years.
    The good news is that they’re back in a completely new shape. The stories have been reinvented, with brand new illustrations, and they’re published in six smaller editions.
    A quick note on the thinking behind these retellings.
    I’ve always loved myths and legends but some of the versions that I read when I was in my teens tended to be a bit dry. That is to say, they didn’t have many jokes. There
wasn’t enough blood. The authors always made me feel that I was reading something serious and important just because the stories were so famous and so ancient – and the language they
used was almost deliberately old-fashioned. It was a bit like walking around a museum, looking at dusty relics behind glass cases with ‘Do Not Touch’ signs all over the place.
    Lying in bed with my grapes and Beano comics, I made two decisions. First of all, I would have fun. I would try to write the stories as if they were being told for the first time. Just
because I was dealing with heroes and gods, I wouldn’t be too reverential. And I also wanted to cast my net wide. I wouldn’t just tell the stories that everyone knew – the Trojan
Horse, the Minotaur, and so on. Nearly all the most famous stories come from the Ancient Greeks. But every culture has its own myths and legends. So I would also look at the tales of the Chinese,
the Egyptians, the Cheyenne Indians, the Celts, the Incas and so on, all around the world.
    Anyway, this is the result of my work all those years ago. I must confess that I have taken this opportunity to rewrite some of the stories a bit. Reading them again, I took out some of the more
feeble jokes. I shortened some of the descriptions and cut bits that I thought were boring. And just for the hell of it, I’ve added a couple of new myths and legends. In this book, for
example, you’ll find the story of THE WASHER AT THE FORD, which I’ve always wanted to tell.
    It’s amazing to think how much has happened since I started work on this collection. When I first wrote these stories (on a typewriter – there were no computers then), I wasn’t
married. My two sons hadn’t been born. I was renting a room in a flat in West London. And a certain Alex Rider didn’t exist, not even as a flicker in my mind.
    It was all a long time ago. But the stories existed a very long time before that. In fact they’ve existed for centuries and provided we keep on telling them, they will surely survive for
centuries more.
    Anthony Horowitz
     

     
    ‘What creature has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening?’
    This was almost certainly the first riddle ever invented. It was told by a ghastly creature that had arrived one day outside the city of Thebes in Ancient Greece. The creature was called the
Sphinx and it had the head of a woman, the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle and the tail of a snake. There was only one road to Thebes and you could not get into the city without passing the
creature. And you could not pass the creature (which was also very large and very fast) without being asked the riddle.
    One of the first people who came across the Sphinx was a young man called Haemon. He had been on his way to see his uncle, who happened to be the King of Thebes, when he found his