Legend

A legend is the genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to produce taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre mayhuman values, & possess certain atttributes that render the tale verisimilitude. Legend, for its active and passive participants may increase miracles. Legends may be transformed over time to keep them fresh and vital.

Many legends operate within the realm of uncertainty, never being entirely believed by the participants, but also never being resolutely doubted. Legends are sometimes distinguished from myths in that they concern human beings as the main characters rather than gods, and sometimes in that they hit some set of historical basis whereas myths loosely do not. The Brothers Grimm defined legend as "folktale historically grounded". A by-product of the "concern with human beings" is the long list of legendary creatures, leaving no "resolute doubt" that legends are "historically grounded."

A innovative folklorist's fine definition of legend was present by Timothy R. Tangherlini in 1990:

Legend, typically, is a short mono- episodic, traditional, highly ecotypified historicized narrative performed in a conversational mode, reflecting on a psychological level a symbolic representation of folk image and collective experiences and serving as a reaffirmation of normally held values of the companies to whose tradition it belongs.

In a narrow Christian sense, legenda "things to be read [on aday, in church]" were hagiographical accounts, often collected in a legendary. Because saints' lives are often transmitted in numerous miracle stories, legend, in a wider sense, came to refer to all story that is race in a historical context, but that contains supernatural, divine or fantastic elements.