One of the greatest of the Victorian eccentrics and polymaths. He was a devout clergyman, a far-flung traveler, a collector of folk songs, an architect, an artist, an archaeologist, and a renowned novelist and poet. He is best remembered for his famous hymn \u201cOnward, Christian Soldiers,\u201d but he also wrote more than 100 books, including a 16-volume work entitled Lives of the Saints, 30 novels, several collections of travel writing, and an opera libretto. Baring- Gould was always intrigued by ancient and lost things, ranging from Norse sagas to wilderness preservation. During the 1890s, he led a group of amateur archaeologists in an excavation of local megaliths and proposed that they had been erected during the Bronze Age, 5,000 years before.<\/p>\n
However, Baring-Gould was also a great collector of myths, legends, and fairy tales. Some of his contemporaries believed that he was a practicing magician with an interest in the occult. In one of his works, he reported that he had himself seen fairies when he was only four years old, laughing and climbing all over his parents carriage. Another work, The Book of Were-Wolves, reports legends of lycanthropy that he discovered during his frequent trips to the continent. His writings, especially his autobiographies Early Reminiscences and Further Reminiscences contain much digressive information on local folklore and magic, including uses for the mandrake root and herbal medicine.<\/p>\n
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One of the greatest of the Victorian eccentrics and polymaths. He was a devout clergyman, a far-flung traveler, a collector of folk songs, an architect, an artist, an archaeologist, and a renowned novelist and poet. He is best remembered for his famous hymn \u201cOnward, Christian Soldiers,\u201d but he also wrote more than 100 books, including […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-s"],"yoast_head":"\n