At some crisis point or points all humanity, like Cuchulain (hero of the great Irish
saga, known as the Ulster Cycle, collected between about 100 BC and AD 100) will be
confronted by a dark and brooding shadow whose menace chills the soul. It is the same
shadow, the black side of his nature that Ged is forced to face in Ursula Le Guin’s
mythic novel, A Wizard of Earthsea. Cuchulain leaps his salmon leap at the monster
shadow and disperses it with his sword. Ged stares down his shadow through the power
of the mind. Both stories carry an urgent message for today’s readers.
The border between myth and legend is ill-defined. Traditionally legend is story passed
down by word of mouth from former times and popularly accepted as historical.
However, in the passage of time detail is added, the protagonist glorified and raised in
heroic status. The superheroes, often of semi-divine origin, create their own legend
within the myth of their race: Theseus, Perseus, Jason, Heracles, Odysseus and their
company from Greece; Gilgamesh from Sumeria; Sigurd and Vainamoinen from old
Scandinavia; Moses and Samson of the Old Testament; Beowulf, Arthur and Cuchulain
from ancient Britain; Roland of France; El Cid of Spain and Maui of the Pacific are but a
few. All have elements of the supernatural woven into their mythic life stories.
So, too, have many of the saints, prophets, seers and holy ones. Miracles of healing
are attributed to saints such as Catherine of Siena, and Guanyin, the Chinese Goddess
of Mercy. Siddharta, a prince from north India and the future Buddha, is conceived after
musical instruments play celestial music without the aid of human hands, trees have
burst spontaneously into flower, and rivers have ceased to flow in order to witness the
miracle that is taking place. The death of the wise and charitable Countess Cathleen of
Ireland drives away the pestilence that has scourged her country, and she joins the
hosts of heaven, sanctified by love. Joan of Arc of France is elevated to sainthood
because she obeys implicitly her heavenly voices. The German saint, Hildegard of Bingen
(1098–1179), was a visionary whose music is still played today and whose poems are
now believed to be prophetic warnings against the pollution and contamination of a
selfish world:
There issues forth an unreality An overpowering, dark cloud of menace, That
withers the earth’s green shoots, And shrivels fruit upon the bough Fruit that was
meant to give the people food.
Saxby 1990:118Both Catherine and Hildegard are examples of practical, strong-minded women who
challenged evil and corruption as they saw it, even in the Church, to the Pope himself.
Stories of the saints, martyrs, wise and holy men and women have long been passed
down by word of mouth and then enshrined in written literature because of their
inspirational quality: holiness backed up by steadfastness of purpose, resolute action
and nobility of spirit. They still have a much-needed place in the literature for the
children of a cynical and materialistic age. They are the prototypes for the plethora of
tales of the supernatural, the fighting fantasies and those spurious stories of apocalyptic
battles between the powers of light and the demons of doom that currently pervade
children’s literature. From these archetypes have evolved the swaggering celluloid
supermen of Hollywood, the witches, wizards and warlocks of pulp fiction. Only rarely
164 MYTH AND LEGEND