Das, was man such vorstellt, braucht man nie zu verlieren.

That which is imagined need never be lost.  Our world is full of stories and tales, and this has been true since we first began to walk upright upon this earth.   We were spinning tales and  writing songs long before we possessed the gift of written speech.

Somewhere in the dim long ago, our stories were lovingly crafted and given form, then carefully  handed down through the storytelling and bardic traditions of our ancestors, and the first stories to be given form by humanity were probably the creation mythologies which are common to every culture on this island earth. Within our stories and our songs is the complete chronicle of human experience, a singing chain which links us to our human origins in the beginning time, and perhaps takes us back even further that that.

As a species, humanity is both curious and rooted;  at a profound level we need to know where we came from, what we are doing here, and why we are here in the first place.  It is within our songs and our stories that we reveal ourselves and that we express most fully our bonds with our ancestors, our sense of wonder and our fear, our happiness and our grief, our loftiest dreams and our worst nightmares.

The stories below were written by true masters of the craft of storytelling, and within them are  echoes of "the great story".   Such tales are creations which spring from within the innermost recesses of the human spirit and the deep well of archetypal mythology, and they are wonderous indeed.
 
 

The Kith of the Elf-Folk, Lord Dunsany
Where the Tides Ebb and Flow, Lord Dunsany
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Kenneth Graham
The Cailleach and the Bride: A Candlemas Tale, Joanna Powell Colbert