What are myths and legends?

A myth is a traditional, ancient story that is fictional. Myths were often written to explain natural phenomena and quite often involved gods and fantasy creatures.

A legend is a story which takes place within human history. Legends are widely believed to be rooted in the truth, but will have evolved over time and taken on fictional elements.

Persephone and the Pomegranate Seeds

This myth involves Persephone and her mother Demeter, the goddess of harvest. Persephone is snatched by the god of the Underworld, Hades. She must not eat anything in the Underworld otherwise she will have to stay there forever. While there, she eats six seeds of a pomegranate. As a result, she has to spend six months of every year in the Underworld and six months on earth. This myth was a way of explaining why we have a change in seasons over the year – autumn and winter are when Persephone is in the Underworld and spring and summer are when she is re-united with her mother on earth.
 

Theseus and the Minotaur

A king keeps a Minotaur (half bull, half man) at the centre of a maze. He has to feed the Minotaur humans in order to keep it happy. Theseus bravely agrees to go and kill the Minotaur. He manages this, but then he betrays the woman who helped him, Ariadne. As he arrives home, he forgets to put a white sail up to show his father he is still alive. His father assumes the worst and kills himself.
 

Arachne the Spinner

A woman named Arachne is an accomplished spinner. She boasts that she is better than the gods at spinning. The goddess Athena, challenges her to a spinning competition. Arachne spins a tapestry depicting the gods getting drunk and looking silly. As a punishment, Athena turns Arachne into a spider. This myth is supposed to explain where spiders come from.

Romulus and Remus

This legend explains the story of Rhea, who gave birth to two twins, Romulus and Remus. The gods intended to harm her sons, so she set them adrift in the river. A she-wolf found them and brought them up. As adults, they decided they wanted to become kings. They built a city but quarrelled about how it should be run. Romulus picked up a rock and killed his brother so that he could get to rule the city himself. He called the city Rome.

Isis and Osiris

Osiris was believed to be the king of Egypt and had a wife called Isis and a son called Horus. He is usurped by his brother Seth, who kills him by tricking him to get into a casket, which he seals and then throws into the river Nile. Isis recovers her husband's body, at which point Seth flies into a rage and chops it into pieces, so that Osiris cannot travel to the Afterlife. Finally, Horus overcomes Seth and manages to rule Egypt. This myth was sometimes used to explain why the banks of the Nile would flood – this was believed to be caused by the tears Isis cried on learning about her husband's death.

When children are taught a myth or legend, they will usually be read an illustrated version of the story that is written for their age-group and therefore is likely to engage them. They will carry out a number of activities to deepen their understanding of the text, for example:
 

• Drawing a story mountain to get an idea of the structure of the story
• Making notes on a spider diagram about a particular character
• Writing a letter from one character to another
• In pairs, improvising a conversation between two characters in the story
• Writing a diary entry as one character in the story

Once teachers feel that the text has been thoroughly explored, they will guide the children in writing their own version of the myth. This involves planning the story, brainstorming characters and setting and then writing a draft of the story. If the story they have studied involves a hero and a mythical beast (like 'Theseus and the Minotaur') teachers will usually encourage children to follow this formula for their story, but change it according to their imagination, for example: their hero may be a girl and their mythical beast may be half-fish, half-man and live in the sea.

All the time, teachers will encourage children to use as much description in their stories as possible. They may be shown sections from the original myth they read and asked to think about how the writing is effective (for example: use of similes, use of adverbs) and then consider how they can write their story in a similar way.