Reviews for History of the Coelacanth Fishes

The average rating for History of the Coelacanth Fishes based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-24 00:00:00 david penalosa Super easy to read! A scholarly book which doesn't go into any theology. Thompson does a great job with this book in staying accademic on the line between being a church 'fraidycat and a new age hippy. This is made even more impressive when you consider that this book is 80 years old! Of course, he still subscribes to race theory, but you can ignore that much more easily. Three quotes: (Amazing! I'm going to find this quote if I have to search through every one of Rhys books... although that could take a while...) ...so Dis may be a contracted form of Dives, But though Cernunnos is the Western equivalent of the Greco- Roman Ades-Pluto, we cannot regard him as a late im- portation. For, as Rhys points out, he is antique both in his dress and in his attitude; and the “ younger gods cluster round him like children by the side of their father." (The author is amazing with his philology, he examines, Herne, Cernunnos, and the Harlequin) Indeed, our own Dorset folk use ‘harlican ’ as an abusive term for a troublesome imp or youngster. … ‘kin’ is used for ‘tribe’ and the prefix ‘hel’ stands for the underworld of ghosts and demons, once ruled by the goddess Hela. The leader and his host become confused. The latter stand out in the Anglo-Saxon ‘helle—cynn ’ and ‘heoloth-cynn ’ used in the Book of Exeter for the ghosts or demons of the underworld. So we pass on to the old English superstition of the Herlething, Herle’s company, or the Heleth—kin, a phantom host described by VValter l\iIapes, who became Archdeacon of Oxford in 1197: (And an interesting theory for any lovers of anchorites who may one day read this!) [we] may dismiss the trials of early saints that fled to the wilderness. Some diabolical forms or the temptations of a St. Anthony can be recognized as familiar dreams: the nemesis of those who seek to free themselves from the temptation of the flesh and so become the slaves of a strong obsession. Yet when the rustic mind still takes such a pleasure in tormenting the stranger or the defenceless man, it is too much to suppose that the wizard and his followers would leave a saint alone. Saint-baiting must have been a favourite sport; and an irascible hermit would be a godscnd to the heathen villagers.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-06-11 00:00:00 Tom Matthews I liked this book. At times I found myself bored but then something would grab my attention and draw me back in.