Legends That Every Child Should Know | Page 2

at church services led to the collection, orderly
arrangement and reshaping of a great mass of material which grew
rapidly because so many people were interested in these semi-religious
tales. In the beginning the stories had, as a rule, some basis in fact,
though it was often very slight. As time went on the element of fact

grew smaller and the element of fiction larger; stories which were
originally very short were expanded into long tales and became highly
imaginative. In the Thirteenth Century the _Legenda Aurea_, or Golden
Legend, which became one of the most popular books of the Middle
Ages, appeared. In time, as the taste for this kind of writing grew, the
word legend came to include any story which, under a historical form,
gave an account of an historical or imaginary person.
During the Middle Ages verse-making was very popular and very
widely practised; for versification is very easy when people are in the
habit of using it freely, and a verse is much more easily remembered
than a line of prose. For many generations legends were versified. It
must be remembered that verse and poetry are often very far apart; and
poetry is as difficult to compose as verse is easy. The versified legends
were very rarely poetic; they were simply narratives in verse.
Occasionally men of poetic genius took hold of these old stories and
gave them beautiful forms as did the German poet Hartmann von Aue
in "Der Arme Heinrich." With the tremendous agitation which found
expression in the Reformation, interest in legends died out, and was not
renewed until the Eighteenth Century, when men and women, grown
weary of artificial and mechanical forms of literature, turned again to
the old stories and songs which were the creation of less self-conscious
ages. With the revival of interest in ballads, folk-stories, fairy stories
and myths came a revival of interest in legends.
The myths were highly imaginative and poetic explanations of the
world and of the life of man in it at a time when scientific knowledge
and habits of thought had not come into existence. The fairy story was
"a free poetic dealing with realities in accordance with the law of
mental growth, ... a poetic wording of the facts of life, ... an endeavour
to shape the facts of the world to meet the needs of the imagination, the
cravings of the heart." The legend, dealing originally with incidents in
the lives of the saints and with places made sacred by association with
holy men, has, as a rule, some slight historical basis; is cast in narrative
form and told as a record of fact; and, in cases where it is entirely
imaginative, deals with some popular type of character like Robin
Hood or Rip Van Winkle; or with some mysterious or tragic event, as
Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" are poetic renderings of part of a great
mass of legends which grew up about a little group of imaginary or

semi-historical characters; Longfellow's "Golden Legend" is a modern
rendering of a very old mediaeval tale; Irving's "Legend of Sleepy
Hollow" is an example of purely imaginative prose, and Heine's
"Lorelei" of a purely imaginative poetic legend.
The legend is not so sharply defined as the myth and the fairy story,
and it is not always possible to separate it from these old forms of
stories; but it always concerns itself with one or more characters; it
assumes to be historical; it is almost always old and haunts some
locality like a ghost; and it has a large admixture of fiction, even where
it is not wholly fictitious. Like the myth and fairy story it throws light
on the mind and character of the age that produced it; it is part of the
history of the unfolding of the human mind in the world; and, above all,
it is interesting.
HAMILTON W. MABIE.

CHAPTER PAGE
I. HIAWATHA From "Indian Myths." By Ellen Emerson.
II. BEOWULF From "A Book of Famous Myths and Legends."
III. CHILDE HORN From "A Book of Famous Myths and Legends."
IV. SIR GALAHAD Alfred Tennyson.
V. RUSTEM AND SOHRAB From "The Epic of Kings. Stories Retold
from Firdusi." By Helen Zimmern.
VI. THE SEVEN SLEEPERS OF EPHESUS From "Curious Myths of
the Middle Ages." By Sabine Baring-Gould.
VII. GUY OF WARWICK From "Popular Romances of the Middle
Ages." By George W. Cox, M. A. and Eustace Hinten Jones.
VIII. CHEVY CHASE From "The English and Scottish Popular
Ballads." Edited by Francis James Child.
IX. THE FATE OF THE CHILDREN OF LIR From "Gods and

Fighting Men: The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of
Ireland." Arranged and put into English by Lady Gregory.
X. THE BELEAGUERED CITY From "Voices of the Night." By
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.