Legend (film)/Sandbox

""And although we don't know the truth of these stories, we know, however, of occasions when wise old men have reckoned them to be true.""

- Snorri Sturluson, Preface to Heimskringla

Legends are stories that are, in their time and place of origin, passed down as “true”, or at least possibly true. Tellers of a legend and their listeners may not necessarily believe in its factuality, or in all its details, but at least they acknowledge that previous generations thought it was true. Legends mostly describe events that supposedly happened "a long time ago".

Their claim to factuality distinguishes legends from folktales, fairy tales and other types of stories that are obviously and openly made up, and make no claim to be anything else than Fiction. Accordingly, legends are set (or at least, are perceived to be set) in a historical time and place, and before the introduction of scientific methods into history-writing, they were indeed indistinguishable from history. Legends may feature historical personages whose existence can be proven, even though the details of the story are most often clearly unreal.

Of course, “legend” has acquired secondary meanings – more often than not, to call something a “legend” means, depending on context, either “it’s awesome” (like in “living legend”), or “it’s not true” (like in “historical legend”). This doesn’t actually mean that we don’t believe in legends any more – only that we don’t call them “legends” (at least so long as we believe in them). Modern day legends may be referred to as Urban Legends.

Legends are related to (and sometimes overlap with) myths; but, in contrast to myths, they are usually not considered “sacred”, and are mostly concerned with the human sphere, not gods or cosmology. They frequently are concerned with the origins of a particular culture, people, state, community, settlement, family, or any other specific group, institution or practice (this type of story is also called "founding legend").

As a rule of thumb, legends say a lot about the values of a society or group where they are passed down.

Legends can mostly be divided into three categories:


 * Heroic Legend: Stories about ancient heroes and their awe-inspiring deeds. These are mostly warlike in nature and include, but are not limited to, monster-slaying, acts of war, and other feats of strength. Heroic legend typically glorifies warrior virtues like badassery, courage, and fealty -- in other words, they reflect the martial values of an aristocratic warrior elite. It goes with this that heroes of heroic legend are, with very few exceptions, of noble blood. -- Heroic legends may (but don't have to) be tied to a specific mythology. If they do, the distinguishing line to myths (as mentioned above) can be blurry.


 * Religious Legend: This was actually the original sense of the word “legend”. The legendae (which means, not very specific, “things you should read”) were stories about Christian Saints (mostly revolving around miracles), or non-biblical traditions about biblical characters. A book that contained these was a legendarium. Of course, religious legend is not limited to Christianity; the concept of "holy men", and stories surrounding them, exist in virtually all major religions Religious legends extol religious devotion, piety, and whatever behavior is endorsed as exemplary by the religion at hand. -- The genre of Christian Saints’ Legends, with its focus on miracles, was much ridiculed by Protestants after the Reformation, which is when the word “legend” acquired its present-day flavor of “bullshit story”.


 * Folk Legend. All the rest. The name expresses that these are passed down among the “common folks”, not (only) within an aristocratic warrior elite, or in a distinctly religious context. Otherwise, they are quite diverse, and may overlap with the first two groups. Many folk legends are Ghost Stories; others tell of memorable Folk Heroes. The so-called Urban Legends are, more or less, modern-day folk legends.

When a writer makes up artificial legends from scratch, whether to flesh out a fictional setting or the background of a story, or as a purpose in itself, that falls under Mythopoeia.

Christian

 * The Golden Legend -- Jacob de Voragine's definitive legendarium of the Christian Middle Ages.

Buddhist

 * The Life of Milarepa

England

 * The Robin Hood stories

Germany

 * The legend of Faust
 * "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"

Jamaica

 * "The White Witch of Rose Hall"

Switzerland

 * The legend of William Tell

USA

 * While Davy Crockett was real person, the stories around him have many legendary traits.
 * Johnny Appleseed -- a similar case as with Davy Crockett.