Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/203

 A MEDIAEVAL LEGEND OF THE TERRESTRIAL PARADISE.

BY M. ESPOSITO.

(Read before the Society, 15th May, 1918.)

I.

" Paradise I cannot speak properly, for I was not there; and I repent not going there, but I was not worthy." Such is the admission of that most notorious liar usually spoken of as "Sir John Mandeville," and we may rest assured that for once in a way he had so far forgotten himself as to lapse into the truth.

What was denied even to "Mandeville" had, however, been granted to another and (if possible) more illustrious personage. "Paludanus," writes Mr. S. Baring-Gould, "in his Thesaurus Novus relates, of course on incontrovertible authority, that Alexander the Great was full of desire to see the terrestrial Paradise, and that he undertook his wars in the East for the express purpose of reaching it, and obtaining admission into it. He states that on his nearing Eden an old man was captured in a ravine by some of Alexander's soldiers, and they were about to conduct him to their monarch, when the venerable man said, 'Go and announce to Alexander that it is in vain