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Legends That Every Child Should Know; a Selection of the Great Legends of All Times for Young People by Hamilton Wright Mabie
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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
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