Myths and legends were transmitted orally before they were written down. In oral tradition, stories are constantly re-organized and changed. In what way and to what extent depends not only on the person telling the story but the person they are telling the story to. This is because some details of an event may be more important or more interesting to one group of people than another.

For example, in one version of the song 'John Henry' the 'fact' that he's buried by a white house is emphasized. For a variety of reasons better explored in an article about John Henry, (and one is coming up), this seems to describe the jail in Richmond, where many workers at Big Bend Tunnel came from. (Big Bend is believed by many to have been the location of his famous contest with the steam drill.) Probably because we are reading the version sung by convicts doing a similar job and that is where they are buried, (the mortality rate for these workers was very high).

In another version, this description is absent and instead the 'fact' that he's buried near the tunnel he dug is emphasized. This is probably because it was sung by people about a man who, again, died working on the tunnel and was buried there at the time of the song. Perhaps one had a contest with a steam drill, perhaps they didn't. Someone did I imagine, and others related to him so combined their stories with their own. So we're seeing not one man's story but the story of many men. There are both subtler and clearer instances of this in myths and legends.

These variations generally don't turn into new stories because they are variations on an already clearly expressed and known theme. Oral accounts of myths and legends were, in many instances, a sort of news story before newspapers. Because they had to be transmitted orally, emphasis was placed on forms that made the stories easy to remember. Relating new events to a known event is one way to facilitate this. This contributes to emergence of many forms of a seemingly single story.

The more ancient the myth or legend, the fewer forms survive, as a general rule. As far as we can tell, that is. Archaeological discovery and translation have something to do with the variety of forms we are aware of. This makes the original story and therefore the possible truth of the matter harder to find the older the myth is. (This is part of the reason we're starting with the more recent genre of American Mythology here.) The absorbtion of the myths of a conquered culture into the myths of the conquering people also complicates finding historical threads and core stories.

So, that's how oral tradition works, basically. When people began to record things, either as songs or as stories,the information recorded was frozen in that moment. What is recorded is not necessarily the original story, indeed is almost always not. Rather, it has the original story filtered through many lenses.

These lenses take the color of what was important to each group of people who utilized the myth or legend in their own times and places. So, to discover what was first important, the core truth or event that led to the survival of the myth or legend for thousands of years, we must look not just at one record but at as many records as possible. It's the difference between listening to a song on a concept album and the entire album.

On this site, we've already been re-constructing ancient legends with the story of the 'Wind and Rain'. Now we're going to start looking at them even more closely, and the process of re-constructing is going to be explained in more detail.

So, you will find in the articles here not just the myth you're looking for, but where it came from and what the original might have been. This is not necessarily explained in the 'Wind and Rain' articles, but is evident in the new version of the ballad that puts the narrative back together from 21 of the known versions. In future articles, now that this introduction has been written, the process will be explained in more detail.

Finding the truth will not always be possible. Or, rather, it will be possible to varying degrees. Sometimes history and oral traditions were both recorded in ways that clarify one another. Sometimes they were recorded in ways that deliberately cloud one another. In some instances, as with the 'Wind and Rain', there's no history to go on at all and the best we can do is re-construct a clear narrative.

So you probably won't ever find the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth behind myths and legends here. But we're going to try to get as close to it as we can. I have a feeling it's going to be a lot of fun trying.