ABSTRACT
LEGENDS Legends-traditional prose narratives set in the recent past with humans as the main characters and often regarded as grounded in fact by the people who pass them along, although frequently elaborated in their telling-are among the most popular forms of American folk narratives. Their significance in American folklife owes not only to their pervasiveness in oral tradition but also to their function of relating a group’s version of local events and surroundings that affect its everyday experience. Explanations for strange occurrences or places, celebrations of special characters
and heroes, and invocations of others’ experiences as cautionary lessons are often found in legends. Folklorists give attention to the content of legends as well as to the contexts for their telling to find expression of the group’s core beliefs and values.
