33
“Legends, then, are seldom formed out of thin air. They grow out of something real. That original something may be extremely different from the final legend, but the kernel of truth is there nevertheless.”
– Catherine M. Andronik
Issue 33
September 24, 2016
The words ‘legend’ and ‘myth’ are often lumped together and considered synonymous meaning not historical, not true, but the words do not mean the same thing at all. Whispers #25 (Myth) considered that myths indeed are not true, not historical, but at a deeper level are very true.
A legend is something else. Ms. Andronik puts it very well. A legend, unlike a myth, starts with some historical event. As the years pass different interests, different interpretations alter the original story, sometimes so much that it bears no resemblance at all to what really happened far away and long ago but an historical seed, nonetheless. There are classic examples.
For instance, the first Paul Bunyan was a very big, very strong French lumberjack. Time and campfire tales changed him into the hero of the North Woods.
There was an historical start to the King Arthur legend. An English leader fought Saxon invaders around 500 AD. He did not live in Camelot. He had no Merlin, no Lancelot, no Guinevere. He pulled no sword from a stone. He does not lie sleeping on Avalon, the Once and Future King, waiting to awaken and save England in final triumph, All that came from later additions to the story. But there was a British leader who won an important battle.
There really was a Troy that really was invaded. That historical event is buried beneath Helen, Achilles, Priam, Paris, Ulysses, a great wooden horse and ships full of heroic warriors, but an important ancient city located in now modern Turkey was destroyed by invaders about 1200 B.C.
There is no Atlantis, but somewhere back around 1500 B.C. A mighty volcano erupted near Crete. One island disappeared leaving only a ring of outer islands, one of which is the modern Santorini. The effects, naturally, were felt all over the Mediterranean Sea basin. Great winds, changing sea levels, smoke and haze obscuring the sun. Climate disruption. The event likely had connections with the destruction of Troy and the Exodus.
Jesus must have had a cup for the wine at the last supper.
These and similar stories are legends, not myths.
