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Legend is a loanword from Old French that entered English usage c. 1340. The Old French noun legende derives from the Medieval Latin legenda. [7] In its early English-language usage, the word indicated a narrative of an event. The word legendary was originally a noun (introduced in the 1510s) meaning a collection or corpus of legends.
The concept is generally used in the sense that the person really existed in the past, as opposed to being legendary. However, the legends that can grow up around historical figures may be hard to distinguish from fact. Sources are often incomplete and may be inaccurate, particularly those from early periods of history.
Legends presuppose an historical fact as basis or pretext. This historical fact may be modified by popular imagination. "Both elements maybe combined in very unequal proportions, and according as the preponderance is to be found on the side of fact or on that of fiction, the narrative may be classed as history or as legend."
A culture hero is a mythological hero specific to some group (cultural, ethnic, religious, etc.) who changes the world through invention or discovery.A typical culture hero might be credited as the discoverer of fire, or agriculture, songs, tradition, law or religion, and is usually the most important legendary figure of a people, sometimes as the founder of its ruling dynasty.
This is a list of folk heroes, a type of hero – real, fictional or mythological – with their name, personality and deeds embedded in the popular consciousness of a people, mentioned frequently in folk songs, folk tales and other folklore; and with modern trope status in literature, art and films.
Sir Francis Drake's Drum is a legend about the drum of an English admiral who raided Spanish treasure fleets and Spanish ports. He was believed to have white magic which enabled him to turn into a dragon (as hinted by his name, Drake meaning dragon in Latin). When he died, the drum which he brought on his voyage around the world was sung about ...
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