A legend is a widely told story about the past handed down in written or spoken form, one that may or may not have a foundation in fact, in other words, it can be defined as an enclosement between generations and families where fiction and reality is mixture in a way one will never know if they are true or not.
But what does the word legend mean? It came from medieval word legenda, which means “something to be read”. At the beginning, they were referred to the story of a saint’s life which was read aloud during divine service or at mealtime. The word gradually came to be applied to collections of such stories; the most famous collection of legends is the Legenda Aurea of the thirteen-century cleric Jacobus de Voragine, something strange about this is that most of the legends are made up so long ago they have no known authors.
In those times legends were mostly about religious facts but step by step they began to twist over so much that today we consider them as a traditional story that deals with a particular person, a hero, a saint, or a national leader.
In fact a legend can be consider as a part of a cultural inheritance, experiences, knowledge and beliefs that the town has been transforming and adapting to its present life. A legend is an essential element of world’s culture as well as of a town’s national memory and identity. It represents throughout history philosophical, religious, social and scientifically changes, that the man has had in his development and evolution. Legends have a high value because they represent the thought and the humanity growth.
As a whole legends’ role is not only for entertainment but for a perception of men’s life, human passions and cultural values. Therefore, they exist now and they will continue existing throughout time.
Because legends mix fantasy with real facts sometimes they can be confused with other types of literary trends such as: myths, fables, fantasy and fiction. So lets establish the differences between them:
• A legend often reflects a peoples’s identity or cultural values, generally with more historical truth and less emphasis on the supernatural than in a myth.
• A fantasy may take place in the “real world” and may have ordinary people and animals doing impossible things but they will never be consider as true.
• Fiction is a story invented by the writer which may be based on real events but with made-up characters and experiences, on the other hand legends can have real characters and experiences.
• Sometimes they can be as fables because they teach a lesson.
As a whole legend characteristics can be summarize by the next:
• It is a popular story that comes from the oral tradition.
• It is born for the necessity to answer noncomprehensible events.
• Sometimes, small communities take fragments from myths which they transform and enrich according to their own traditions.
• The historical legend and their heroes, act as a connection of identity and national pride. They form an important part of the community; for that reason, the historical figures, through generations, become fantastic beings.
• The characters are extraordinary beings and generally they are surrounded by extraordinary places as: great deserts, wonderful mountains, inaccessible forests, majestic rivers, dreams, heaven and hell.
• The legend in many occasions, is the historical base of all nations that’s why sometimes, it is difficult to define in a story what part is legend and what is history. Therefore every country has its own legends with historical or nonhistorical accuracy.
• A same legend, in different towns, changes the atmosphere, circumstances and characters, according to their social conditions because they come from different parts of the world, many characters, plots and ideas in them are similar.
This last point is the one we will try to explain by grouping them by subjects:
1. THE IMPOSSIBLE LOVE
These types of legends can be find in many countries. They emphasize the qualities and the greatness of the love between young people that have to get trough the obstacles along their path which prevent them to be together. For them, the important thing is to love and to be near the loved being, although they probably lose their lives, but at the end these problems are solved by Love.
2. ORIGINS AND CREATION
These “myths-legends” are the best example of the town’s necessity to answer natural events. The principal character is nature and the story is developed in extraordinary places that in a way are geographically related to the town’s culture. The world’s creation is one of the themes most used by societies so there are many types of explanations about the same thing.
3. RELIGIOUS FACTS AND LESSONS
Religion was the first theme of legends so those religious legends can not be discarded so easy. Mainly they are focused on a saint’s life which became important to the town. Very related to these ones we can find the “fable-legends” which have as a main objective to teach a lesson by telling what may happen if they do wrong.
4. REPRESENTATIVE ELEMENTS AND HISTORICAL MONUMENTS
All countries have at least one symbol that represents their culture, amazingly that symbols came from legends. They try to explain what they mean, what they represent and why they are so important to the town culture.
6. MYSTERIES AND URBAN LEGENDS
Legends may sometimes be scary and based on noncomprehensible events. Every culture has their own mysteries unsolved and they try to give a possible answer to them by legends. But in many ocassions there is no answer, instead there’s only an statement of what may have happened. Terrifying, they can only be answered if they are lived by oneself.
Geoffrey´s Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women is a collection of stories about nine famous women of classical antiquity who suffered or diede for love and who are thus regarded as saints or martyras in Cupid’s calendar. Bodies od legends have grown up aroun such figures as King Arthur, Robin Hood, the Flying Dutchman, Hamlet, and, in more recent times, Paul Bunyan and Johnny Applesed.
For al this, legend are and will always be considered part of our life, because they are our history, our culture and our traditions, and therefore our present.
