The great English legendary history and a great source-book of English literary legend is the Historia Britonum of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Besides giving us the original story of Lear and many other things in his record of British rulers down to the Saxon Invasion, this twelfth century author, building on the meager basis of an unknown Nennius and possibly a cleric's version of Welsh traditions, started the magnificent Arthurian cycle on its way. This Latin account joined the great stream of continental legendary romance, added to it and took from it, and came back into English in Layamon's "Brut" in the form of a series of metrical legends for the common people.
Legendary romance
That most original and enchanting of all the medieval legendary romance books, Malory's "Morte Darthur", stands between the old and the new English fiction in that it has the content of the one and the form of the other. In it were gathered up the religious element (that had come in with the tradition of Joseph of Arimathæa), the love element (of the Launcelot-Guinevere stories), and the national element (Arthur, his wonderful Excalibur and his knights), and so emphasized, so incomparably set forth, so shaken together, if you please, that they combined and stayed together ever afterwards. On the form side, this work is prose and it is art—the first English prose fiction, so announced and so taken. It is literary legend. An artist conscious of his art offered the material not as history or religion, but as a thing of beauty. The preface states, "And for to pass the time this book shall be pleasant to read in, but for to give faith and belief that all is true that is contained herein, ye be at your liberty."
When stories such as these, either by an aim at history or at art, emphasize what has been believed, they are classed as legend; when they emphasize magic and combine history in a riotous way for the mere sake of astonishing, they are classed as wonder tales.
While on the one side legend shades off into myth and wonder tales, on the other it shades off into anecdote. A tendency to write legend instead of fact is always present. As soon as a man or a place becomes prominent, fictitious stories begin to spring up, founded not only on what was done, but also on what might have been done. But to persist, a legendary account must be true to the character and traits of the hero or town or tribe or race with which it deals; at least, it must be true to the popular conception of the character. Though innumerable, the versions of the Faust story, for example, are nevertheless essentially consistent. Typical legends shading off into history and anecdote are those about William Tell, Robert the Bruce, Alfred the Great, John Smith and Pocahontas, and many of the popular tales about Columbus, Washington, Lincoln, and Rizal.
Modern literary legends
There are modern literary legends. An exquisite legend of a place is "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving. A terrific French novel is founded on the legendary idea of the Wandering Jew. A wholesome boys' story that is often mistaken for history is "The Man Without a Country." Selma Lagerlöf, who was given the Nobel prize in 1909 for the most original piece of literature, has written among others a saint's legend about a hermit who was won to brotherly love by a pair of birds that built a nest and hatched their young in his outstretched palms as, keeping a vow, he stood day and night praying heaven to take vengeance and destroy the sinful world. Allied to this species is one of Count Tolstoy's most widely read stories. It is built upon an idea current in all races and appearing in many legends; namely, of an angel sent by God to live a while among men. But Tolstoy, with his fervent devotion to the good of the people, has turned his narrative into a parable, and calls it "What Men Live By." Another beautiful religious narrative, an art legend tangent to tradition, is Henry Van Dyke's "The Other Wise Man."
How to select and record a legend of growth
It is easy for one to select a place legend. Every town in the world, I suppose, has stories connected with it that are only typically true. Almost every prominent topographical feature has an explanatory narrative current about it. Take any of these popular tales concerning the cliffs, river, mountain peak, spring, lake, gully, or pictured rocks of your neighborhood and you have a legend, so long as your story confines itself to that particular spot, and does not let its subject be emphatically the result of great natural forces or of the cause of all subsequent similar formations. In other words, one must remember that the basis of legend is particular incident, while that of myth is universal phenomenon; the content of legend is exaggerated history, while the content of myth is fanciful science. All one needs to do to record such a place legend is to arrange the details in a coherent fashion and to write out the sentences in good, clear, simple English, sticking as close to the original oral account as correct syntax will allow. If one cares to write about people instead of places, one follows in general the same directions, being sure not to fall into mere anecdote or incident, but to have a full, complete account.
How to write a legend of art