Folklore vs. Myth vs. Legend: What Actually Separates Them?

Is the story of Paul Bunyan a myth, a legend, or a folktale? What about the Greek story of Persephone, said to explain why winter happens every year? Folklorists, scholars who study oral tradition, sort stories like these into distinct categories, and knowing the difference changes how you read them, and even how anthropologists use them to learn about the values of the people who told them.

- The specific criteria folklorists use to define myth, legend, and folktale - Why Persephone's story is a myth but Paul Bunyan's is a legend - How the same story can shift categories over centuries - Real examples drawn from at least three different cultures

Folklorist William Bascom's classic 1965 framework defines a myth as a story the culture that tells it considers essentially true, set in a remote, sacred past, usually featuring gods or other supernatural beings, and often explaining the origin of the world or of natural events. The Greek story of Persephone being pulled into the Underworld explains the origin of winter. The Norse story of Ymir explains how the entire world was formed from a primeval giant's body. Both fit the myth category: gods, a sacred and remote setting, and an explanation of something cosmic.

A legend is set in a more recent, semi-historical past, centers on human figures, sometimes performing extraordinary deeds, and is often tied to a real place, event, or person. It is told as if it could be true, even when it is exaggerated. King Arthur is likely based, at least partly, on a real 5th or 6th century British war leader, wrapped over centuries in legendary detail. Paul Bunyan, the giant American logger, grew out of real 19th and 20th century logging camps in the upper Midwest, tall tales told by actual lumberjacks around actual campfires.

A folktale, sometimes called a fairy tale, is explicitly understood as fiction. No one in the culture claims it literally happened. It is usually set in a timeless once upon a time, and it often teaches a lesson or moral. Cinderella is a folktale documented in more than 500 variants worldwide, including a 9th century Chinese version called Ye Xian, recorded by the writer Duan Chengshi centuries before the European versions most people know today.