"A curious legend still haunts me," wrote Heinrlch Heine of The Lorelei. It is a lament that might be echoed by anyone who wants to really understand what is going on around him in December 1960. Legend not only inspires artists and composers; it also on occasion illumines the news. Some legends at work last week:

IT was during the reign of King Uther that Gorlois, the Duke of Tintadel. came to a great festival in the palace, bringing with him his wife, the seductive, creamy-skinned Igerne. Uther at once fell in love with Igerne. and declared his passion; she coldly tattled to Gorlois. and they hurried home. Uther pressed his courtship by besieging the great castle at Tintadel--and by being transformed (a simple job for Merlin) into the likeness of Gorlois, which let him dally with the hoodwinked lady. At length Gorlois was killed and Uther married Igerne. From this union sprang King Arthur, and from the Arthurian legend sprang Camelot, the hottest ticket on Broadway. See THEATER.

THIGHS like the stems of banana trees, hands like opening lotus flowers--such, in Buddhist legend, is the formula for sculpting a statue of Buddha. See ART, Inspired Copyists. pHILOCTETES was an illustrious Greek warrior who received his in vincible weapons of war -- bow and ar rows -- from his dying friend Hercules.

Years later, on the way to Troy, the archer accidentally scratched his foot with one of the poisoned arrows and was cast into exile by his companions, who found the smell of the wound un bearable. When the Greeks learned that only Hercules' arrow could win the war. they persuaded Philoctetes to rejoin the battle, and he promptly slew Trojan Enemy Paris. See SCIENCE, Philoctetes Was Here.

ADMETUS, King of Pherae, was com-- peting with other royal suitors for the hand of Pelias' daughter Alcestis. Pelias promised his daughter to the man who could yoke a wild boar and a lion to his chariot and drive them around a race course. Admetus ap pealed for help to Apollo, who tamed a wild team that Admetus drove to victory to win Alcestis. See Music, Mommy at the Met.

ANGERED by Prometheus' theft of -- fire from Mount Olympus. Jupiter sent the first woman. Pandora, to earth. Then he sent Pandora a mysterious box, calculating (rightly) that Pandora's feminine curiosity would force her to peep inside. She did. and released all the sorrows that afflict humanity. See HEMISPHERE, Legacy of Woes.

THE dugong is a ludicrous-looking aquatic mammal that nurses its young at its breast. Sighting these strange creatures centuries ago. sailors plowing Asian seas came home claiming that they had seen women with tails like fish--and thereby started the mermaid legend. Modern scientists paid deference to the legend of the sea sirens by assigning the dugong to the order Sirenia. See SCIENCE, The Useful Manatee.

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