Differences Between Myths, Legends, Folktales, & Fairytales

Demystifying the meanings of mythology, legend, folklore, and fairytale, especially as they pertain to Irish storytelling traditions

Intro 00:00

A Different Way of Thinking About Myths, Legends, Folktales, and Fairytales 01:57

What Is a Myth? A Modern Definition 03:18

What Is a Legend? A Modern Definition 04:46

What Is a Folktale? A Modern Definition 06:58

What Is a Fairytale? A Modern Definition 08:41

An Example of a Myth, Legend, Folktale, and Fairytale All Rolled into One: 12:27

Books/websites referenced (note: when you buy through the links below, I may earn a small affiliate commission):

Books by me (I. E. Kneverday):

[nikosagantz]

During the middle part of the video I was asking myself "Why so much focus in Irish culture, if
Then I saw the name of the channel and I tought "So that why... fair enough"

[christineshotton]

It's interesting how the gods and goddesses of an old religion take new forms when a new religion takes over. If the old gods are still seen as a threat by the new religion, they become devils and demons (Baal, Cernunnos). If the old gods are seen as useful in the conversion of the populace, they become saints, or at least their distinguishing characteristics and their natures become attributed to saints (Francis of Assisi, The Virgin Mary). If the old gods are neither seen as useful or a threat, but are popular with the people and are not worth the trouble of eradicating, they become fairies (elves, leprechauns, pixies, etc).

[Taipei_]

Thanks. I took a class on myths and legends in high school but I don't think the difference was ever explained.

[randomliamsquares]

Great vid, can’t wait to look through some of ur other stuff much love from Ireland 🙌

[goodnighteliot]

Wow well done dude! Your video answered all my questions

[pauldavey]

Thank you for your personal take on defining these four names for story forms. I am really curious about these four terms and about how different people see them and explain them. Given that there seem to be many, many different definitions and explanations going around for these four terms, this, to me, seems to say something inherent about them that is vital to their medicine and ongoing survival. This being that there is something wonderfully mysterious about them that transcends the modern mind's attempts at definition.

You say much that I agree with a quite a bit that I find that I don't. Not that for one moment I am claiming any sense of rightness or wrongness for either of us with this. So simply for a point of discussion about it, I would say that Folk Tales and Fairy Stories have not at all lost their origin or symbolism and were not told only for entertainment. I would say that our clever ancestors found ways of deeply encoding the wisdom of their ancestors throughout periods of cultural cleansing by weaving new stories, wrapped in new, apparently secular, common-folk clothing. The story of a wolf in disguise may be itself a wolf in disguise. I am saying that the symbolism is still there for one with ears to behold it, which the culturally marauding and more literal, less poetic minded English had not.

And I would say that what Tolkein was pointing to in his essay is that Fairy Stories re-enchant the world - not the imaginary one in the story, but the one the listener lives in. And, for me, this points to their intact connection with the Sacred.

Curious to know your thoughts.

[Pjvenom]

This was a fun listen, fair play to you.🌱🌅☘️

[cramerfloro]

Ah, that eternal conondrum! It especially gets tricky when a story from one culture get translated or adapted into another. For example, the german word "Märchen" makes no distinctions between a fairy or a folktale, though sometimes the first is called "Feenmärchen". Same goes for the italian "Fiaba", though to make matters more complicated, it is often equated with the fable, a moral story that's almost always filled with talking animals, or the novella, a secular short story that usually (but certainly not always) doesn't involve the fantastical. Though these two terms would also deserve a video just as long as this one to explain well.
This also reminds me of the peculiar case of "Cupid and Psyche". While most works on classical literature classify this story as a greek myth, the sole text it appears in, Apuleius's "Metamorphoses" (aka "The golden ass", cause there are too many books called "Metamorphoses"), specifically call it a "bella fabella", a "nice fairy tale". And though the characters in that story are all gods from greco-roman mythology, and the heroine Psyche performs acta with religious meaning, it's impossible to find any depiction of this story in any votive or secular art of the roman-hellenistic world, although the characters Cupid and Psyche were extremely popular among artists.
Modern scholarship is trying to figure this out, and one proposed theory is that the story was originally an orally transmitted fairy or folk tale from North Africa, which the berber author Apuleius adapted with greco-roman details to make it more pallatable to his international audience. This is corroborated by the fact that to this day you can find similar tales in the Maghreb, which are much closer to Apuleius than other "animal bridegroom" stories

[LateNightPC]

I've never quite understood why those titles "need" to be mutually exclusive. For me personally, I've always seen them like this. A myth is "worldbuilding lore" connected to a community, meant to reveal information about those people, their background, their beliefs about the world. So Goldilocks and the three bears for example wouldn't be a myth at all, since the characters aren't meant to be seen as actual real individuals who lived in the world at some point, but something like the Slavic stories of Baba Yaga would, as she is "a person in the world" according to the slavic cultures.

A legend is a specific story about something. Many legends are a part of mythology, but for example in Irish mythology, "Irish Mythology" is the collective total of all the stories believed/told by the Irish cultures, whereas "Irish Legends" would be specific single tales about a specific event or person that is not seen as entirely allegorical. Like, Cú Chulainn and his stories are a legend within Irish mythology, and the stories of Scáthach training Cú Chulainn are a legend within the mythos of Cú Chulainn. Legends can often be a part of myths, but they aren't exclusively tied to them, and while they can be allegorical or exaggerated to varying degrees, there is still an element of "this actually did really happen" in them too.

I'd use the example of religion to explain it actually. Using Christianity, the Mythos of Christianity is the concept of the world as it is seen by a Christian, with God, the Angels, heaven, hell, Satan and all those "lore" aspects. The Legends of Christianity then are the things we see in the bible, the stories of Adam and Eve, of Moses and the burning bush, and Jesus and his disciples. Jesus himself is a part of the Christian mythos, while the actions he took are the legends of that mythos.

Folktales are less "grand", for lack of a better term, being far more "low to the ground" than legends. Legends tend to exist on a country-wide level, where many people all talk about the same legend, even if minor differences appear between versions of the story, but Folktales are a lot smaller in scope. They might also be spread across an entire country and people, but they don't involve that whole country as it's backdrop, they are stories about "a forest", or "a town", or "a mountain", a specific area that a local community can insert into their own area and beliefs about the world. Like no matter who speaks about him, Heracles is always "The hero Heracles", but there isn't "A dragon" that everyone knows and understands as "that one dragon from that one specific story", different cultures all have their own personal Dragon, who's specific traits and details will be suited to them and their community uniquely. A big way to tell if something is a legend or a folktale is the names, if the characters don't have a name, or their names could be taken away entirely without changing much about the story, then it's likely a folktale.

And Fairytales, at least for me, are distinctly meant for entertainment. They are "stories", and somewhat like an inside joke, people act and talk about them actually being real, but if you were to really really push someone, they'd admit they don't actually think it's real, and you kinda killed the mood by making them admit it. They are more specifically designed to be allegories or deliver a message of some sort, easily seen in things like Aesop' fables or Hans Christain Anderson's stories. They can be formed out of folktales, such as the 1001 Arabian Nights, but whereas those stories are generally more intended to be taken seriously, fairy tales are "stories to share and tell" rather than "information to be shared".

So I'd display it as overlapping bubbles in a diagram. Myths are one large bubble containing the "world as seen by X community", and inside are both folktales, and legends. Legends are the large and grand epic stories, whereas folktales are "smaller" and more involving the everyday people or small community heroes rather than epic and grand heroes. Fairy tales are "stories created to deliver a specific message or entertain the listener rather than inform them about the world", being a smaller bubble contained inside folktales, but that pokes outside of the myth bubble so that some fairy tales aren't myths, but some are.

People try to keep them all distinct and seperate from each other, but that just isn't how human society and culture works. Stuff is always bleeding over into other stuff just because culture is messy and mingled, not just within a country, but between different countries too. But this is just how I see it at least.

[br]

I've always thought that Folktale was the umbrella term or genre while the others were sub-genres within the larger one.

[christineshotton]

It's not just Irish culture that blows away those definitional differences, a lot of cultures do. The dictionary definition differences between myth, fairy tales, folklore, and legend is an artificial construct that is not really applicable at all to non Greco-Roman culture, and only of limited applicability there.
Germanic, Scandinavian, Native American, Baltic, Slavic, etc all have bodies of cultural stories that ignore those distinctions.

[everseekingwisdom]

All ancient myths are allegories. They weren't "primitive attempts " to explain the world. They knew more about this place than we ever did

[shiekahfan]

I did my thesis on part of this, the problem with current day Irish mythos is that about 75% of it was wiped out by Christian monks wanting to convert Irish pagans to at the time Catholicism. The last remaining 25% we have of what remains has been corrupted and purposefully flawed to show connections to Catholicism that it takes away from the original myths etc. The Kelts went all the way from the British Isles all the way to current day Turkey, it was the largest kingdom/grouping of like minded people on the planet. Caesar hated the Kelts, the Nordic tribes were ok with them, but after the fall of Rome it was open season and unfortunately several hundreds of years of history became lost to time

[JackassJunior]

There really are grey areas on some of these categories. From what I see, Fairy Tales are fictional stories, whereas folklore, myths and legends are based on things that may or may not have happened and can potentially have some truth to it, such as the origin of a mythical creature, or the debate between religion and science.

[jayxx_slayer]

It’s al the same thing the only differences are origin purpose for creation and society perception

[vedantanand]

Why Bible stories are not considered as mythology?