What's the difference between a myth and a legend?

Answer 1

The differences between myths and legends:

Though these two terms are often used interchangably, they have separate and specific meanings to folklorists. Both myths and legends are stories with casts of characters and plotlines followed to their conclusions, yet their core elements are different. Myths are tales about the acts of godlike or supernatural beings and/or magical animals which serve to explain the creation of the world or how certain elements of our world came to be (e.g., how the raccoon got its mask) and take place in the far reaches of time (often expressed as "In the days when the world was new"). By contrast, legends are accounts of purported incidents involving ordinary people in more recent times. Although both types of stories are told as true, they are not necessarily believed to be literal truth by either the tellers or their audiences.


In common parlance the stories of the Greek and Roman deities and heroes are indiscriminately referred to as myths and legends. If we wish to be more careful, however, we can differentiate between the two types of story, and between them and folktales and fairy tales, although a story may shift between these different categories, or may contain elements from each of them.
Briefly, we can say that a myth gives a religious explanation for something: how the world or a particular custom began. There is usually no attempt to fix the myth into a coherent chronology related to the present day, though myths or a cycle of myths may have their own internal chronology. The story is timeless in that the events are symbolic rather than just the way it happened.

In calling a story a myth we are expressing no opinion about whether it is true or not. In the days, when, at least publicly, Christianity was assumed to be true and other religions false by those writing about religion (say, the 19th and early 20th centuries), the specialists' use of the word myth was closer to the popular use to mean an untrue religious story, and it was only used for other people's religion. As anthropologists and students of religion came to take a more impartial view of the world, it was recognised that certain Christian stories shared many of the features of myth, and could be called myths if the idea that a myth was necessarily false was shed.

A legend, on the other hand, is a story which is told as if it were a historical event, rather than as an explanation for something or a symbolic narrative. The legend may or may not be an elaborated version of a historical event. Thus, examples of legends are the stories about Robin Hood, which are set in a definite period, the reign of Richard I of England (1189-99), or about King Arthur, which were perhaps originally based on the exploits of a Romano-Celtic prince who attempted to resist the expansion of the Anglo-Saxons in what was to become England. The stories about Robin Hood and King Arthur have been elaborated and expanded on down the years.

While myths and legends may be transmitted orally or in writing, folk tales tend to be transmitted orally, and although they are transmitted from generation to generation and so their origin or author is unknown, they are more definitely felt to be stories, i.e., fiction. Many European folktales were written down in the 19th century, and some at least were transformed into fairy tales, which tend to be more consciously literary productions with a definite author, such as Hans Christian Andersen. Typically, folk and fairy tales involve magic and magical creatures and people such as witches, dragons and dwarves rather than religion. Examples are Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk.

Answer 2

According to the Lord of the Rings narrator:

History became legend. Legend became Myth.

Basically a myth is something that is widely believed to be false, whereas legend is something considered possible, but most are unsure.. like the legend of king arthur....

Answer 3

People use both words as though they're the same word,but I
use Myth when referring to made-up stories & Legend when
talking about something that actually happened but has been
embelished with the re-telling.

Answer 4

myth and legend are both fictional... myth mostly talks about simple stories while legends usually tells stories about the whos why and hows of stuffs.

Answer 5

Myth: Tends to be a story made up to explain something. Usually false.

Legend: Tends to be a story made up about a real event. It gets changed over time, so you don't know how much of the story is true.

Answer 6

well the easiest way to explain is to say i slept with you would be a myth but one night with me and Id be a legend

Answer 7

a myth is an unproven story. a legend is a meaningful story that really took place or teaches a lesson

Answer 8

myth is what you put before a unmarried girls name & a legend is what you have at the corner of a table

Answer 9

a myth is fantasy a legend is your foot (leg-end) lol

Answer 10

myth is nothing but false belief,and legend ,a story
which may or maynot be true