Myths of origin enable people to locate themselves in time and space. They offer an explanation of the unknown and hallow traditions by linking them to heroic events and personages of the distant past. In addition, they form the ground for belief systems or ideologies which, providing a moral validation for attitudes and activities, bind men together in a society writes the author, who in his interesting and solidly based short study synthesizes several generations of English and continental scholarship in a way that enables a broad readership to obtain a clearer recognition of those elements in accepted mythologies which both unite and divide men.