Dialectics of a Folklore Genre

LEGEND AND BELIEF

Linda Degh

The legend is a vigorous and proliferating genre in contemporary society, far from declining in the face of modern rationality. Unlike other folklore genres, the legend is defined by its dialectical nature, functioning as a product of conflicting opinions expressed in conversation through implemental Implementations, corrections, and approvals. This “dialectics of a folklore genre” is metaphorically similar to a legal process, where advocates of belief and non-belief face each other like a plaintiff and a defendant in a court of law. However, whereas a court of law tackles individual affairs, the legend addresses universal concerns, attacking crucial questions about the order of the world and the existence of hidden dimensions that might divert the causal, rational flow of things.

The essence of the legend lies in its disputability; it demands answers to the least-answerable questions of life, appealing to listeners for reflection and deliberation. In distinguishing the legend from the marchen (folktale), the sources clarify that while a tale represents invention and invites a “temporary suspension of disbelief”, the legend represents knowledge and reality, with its teller claiming to recount actual experience. This distinction remains vital because, while children eventually distinguish tale-fantasy from reality, the fantastic world of the legend is completely absorbed into everyday earthly existence.

Modern society is currently experiencing an “irrationality explosion,” where reality and unreality intermingle through a network of “peddlers” and consumers, much like a drug cartel. The mass media—including television, tabloids, and the Internet—plays a leading role in disseminating and sustaining a “culture of fear” by empowering legends beyond imagination. Historically, folklorists viewed their subjects as “inferiors” in archaic rural pockets, but the modern fieldworker must adopt new attitudes, recognizing that legend-tellers represent all social ranks and that the folklorist is also a member of the “folk”.

The technical classification of legends often utilizes terms from Nordic scholars, such as memorate and fabulate. A memorate is defined as a narrative of purely personal experience, while a fabulate is a short, single-episodic story transformed by the inventive fantasy of the people. The sources argue that these categories are fluid; most fabulates are based on an assumed or real personal experience termed a “proto-memorate”. Furthermore, the distinction between rumor and legend is often blurred in an industrial society where information travels so fast that rumors lack the time to develop into full-fledged epic narratives.

Contemporary legends (or urban legends) are operational terms for stories that reflect the problems and ideologies of modern living. These legends often involve modern equipment—like microwave ovens, computers, and automobiles—and take place in familiar urban settings like parking lots or shopping centers. A classic example is “The Stolen Grandmother,” a widespread story involving the theft of a car with a deceased relative inside, which participants often recount as a “true” event happening to a “friend of a friend”.

Adolescents and young adults form a primary group for legend-telling, often using horror stories as a rite of passage into maturity. The “Hookman” complex, including legends like “The Hook”, “The Boyfriend’s Death,” and “The Roommate’s Death,” illustrates gender-related fears and the consequences of deviating from behavioral rules sanctioned by adult society. These stories are often told during “legend-tripping,” a ritualized visit to a perceived “dangerous” or “haunted” site, such as a bridge or cemetery, to test one's courage.

The sources provide extensive data on haunted houses, noting that all houses where men have lived and died are potentially haunted. These hauntings are categorized into family visitors (deceased relatives returning for unfinished business) and strangers (victims of past violent deaths). A detailed case study involves Janet Callahan, a “percipient” whose life was plagued by the spirit of a former teacher, Alice Houston, and a malevolent “Monk’s Head” candle holder. These accounts emphasize that for the experiencer, the presence is an objective, terrifying reality that often requires spiritual intervention or exorcism to resolve.

Institutionalized irrationality is further evidenced by cults like Heaven’s Gate, which merged traditional Christian theology with science fiction and UFOlogy. The thirty-nine members who committed mass suicide in 1997 believed they were shedding their “containers” to board a UFO trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. This event highlights how the Internet has become a “dangerous web” where leaders can articulate doctrines forged from traditional legend elements to attract vulnerable searchers.

The concept of ostension is a critical contribution of the sources, defining it as the act of “telling” a legend by actually performing or acting it out. This can range from harmless seasonal rituals to dangerous criminal ostension, such as product tampering or “copycat” serial killings. For instance, the Pepsi tampering scare of 1993 saw dozens of people across multiple states claiming to find syringes in soda cans, many of which were proven to be hoaxes or “jokes” intended to gain attention or monetary reward. Such acts demonstrate that the legend is not merely a spoken text but a model for action in the real world.

The multi-conduit theory explains how these messages travel through society: individuals select and perceive information based on their personal frames of reference, forming communicative sequences. In this system, freedom of choice is the most general characteristic of folklore, as both the sender and the receiver must choose to accept and forward a message for it to stay alive in tradition. The sources conclude that the legend is the most “human-friendly” folklore genre because it addresses the eternal human concern regarding the fear of death. By recounting encounters with the dead, legends provide mortals with the hope of immortality, suggesting that death is not a final end but the opening of a new era where the soul continues to exist.