Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886 edition. Excerpt: ...call upon the king on earth. While they are so engaged, the evil spirits, --the spirits of disease and misfortune, --not being expected at the entertainment, are left to their own devices, and having nowhere else to go, descend from the sky to annoy and pester mankind-It is to prevent them from entering their abodes that men kindle in front of them the tiny bonfires. The objects of so much excluding care bear the suggestive name of "floating and attaching devils." So numerous and active a host of deities would seem worthy the tribute of some shrine; but they have none, unless a jail may by antithesis be supposed to take its place. You cannot travel far on any Korean road without passing one of these jails. It is in the form of an ancient tree around whose base lies piled a heap of stones. The tree is sacred; superstition has preserved it, where most of its fellows have gone to feed the subterranean ovens. It is not usually very large, nor does it look extremely venerable, so that it is at least open to suspicion that its sanctity is an honor which is passed along from oak to acorn or from pine to seed. However, it is usually a fair specimen of a tree, and where there are few others to vie with it, comes out finely by comparison. Otherwise there is nothing distinctive about the tree, except that it exists, --that it is not cut down and borne off to the city on the 1 Yu Kil Chun, a Korenn, used to have discussions with his hrother as to whether, by climbing a mountain, you got nearer heaven. He held that you did not, not because he believed heaven to be very far off, but because he thought it to surround the earth with a uniform thickness, irrespective of the height from which it started, like some material covering, following the contours....