What are the 二四十孝?

[alidarbac]

I recently visited a park in the town of Chongwu, Fujian province that had a set of stone statues depicting the 二四十孝, or the 24 Loyalties. The statues and the classical Chinese inscriptions beneath them were pretty grotesque ( http://www.pbase.com/image/41919226 is of a poor woman resorting to breastfeeding her mother-in-law in order to feed her, http://www.pbase.com/image/41919227 is of a poor man burying his newbown son alive because he doesn't have enough money to feed both his son and his parents.)

What exactly are the 24 Loyalties? Some preliminary Googling found the actual text (for instance, here: http://www.epochtimes.com/b5/cf357_1.htm), but I couldn't find much about the context of these stories/parables. Is it formally part of some sort of Confucian ideology or is it just a set of folk tales? Are there any English translations of these stories available?

[skylee]

More information -> http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/scriptorium/xiao/xiaointro.html

BTW, it is 二十四孝, not 二四十孝.

Nowadays, 二十四孝 can be used as an adjective to describe indulgent parents or husbands/wives, e.g. 二十四孝爸爸, 二十四孝老公.

[alidarbac]

Oops, sorry about the momentary dyslexia. But thanks for the link. That was exactly what I was looking for.