Myths and Legends
St. Oran was a druid living on the Island of Iona in Scotland's Inner Hebrides. He became a follower of St. Columba, who brought Christianity to Iona (and mainland Europe) from Ireland in 563 AD. When St. Columba had repeated problems building the original Iona Abbey, citing interferences from the Devil, St. Oran offered himself as a human sacrifice and was buried alive. He was later dug up and found to be still alive, but he uttered such words describing what of the afterlife he had seen and how it involved no heaven or hell, that he was ordered to be covered up again. The building of the abbey went ahead, untroubled, and St. Oran's chapel marks the spot where the saint was buried.
In the fourteenth through nineteenth centuries, a popular tale about premature burial in European folklore was the "Lady with the Ring". In the story, a woman who was prematurely buried awakens to frighten a grave robber who is attempting to cut a ring off her finger.
The TV show MythBusters tested the myth to see if someone could survive being buried alive for two hours before being rescued. Host Jamie Hyneman attempted the feat, but when his steel coffin began to bend under the weight of the earth used to cover it, the experiment was aborted. The MythBusters also tested whether someone could batter their way out of a buried coffin (as in Kill Bill Volume 2), and decided it was not remotely possible.
Read more about this topic: Premature Burial
Famous quotes containing the words myths and, myths and/or legends:
“In New York—whose subway trains in particular have been “tattooed” with a brio and an energy to put our own rude practitioners to shame—not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements.... Even the most chronically dispossessed appear prepared to endorse the legitimacy of the “haves.””
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. “Cleaning and Cleansing,” Myths and Memories (1986)
“Our basic ideas about how to parent are encrusted with deeply felt emotions and many myths. One of the myths of parenting is that it is always fun and games, joy and delight. Everyone who has been a parent will testify that it is also anxiety, strife, frustration, and even hostility. Thus most major parenting- education formats deal with parental emotions and attitudes and, to a greater or lesser extent, advocate that the emotional component is more important than the knowledge.”
—Bettye M. Caldwell (20th century)
“Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)