Listen carefully. You are going to hear a story that people around Cork told long ago. Someone wrote it down in the 1820s so it would not be lost. After you hear it, we will ask two questions. What can a story passed on by telling show us about the people who told it? What can it never prove?
What do you notice as you listen? What do you wonder?
A story told again and again about a place or a person is a legend. The stories and sayings of a place are sometimes called its folklore.
A legend can be good evidence of what people cared about, feared or wanted to explain. It is poor evidence that every event in the story really happened just as it is told.
Today we hold on to two key words: legend and evidence. We will ask what happens in the story, what it suggests about the people who told it, and what it cannot prove.
We work the Cork legend with two questions historians ask.
In your copy, finish this sentence in your own words: "I think the people who told this legend cared about … because the story says …"
Agree the class answer to our question. What can this legend tell us, and what can a story passed on by telling never prove?
Then start our class collection. When it is your turn at the board, add the Cork legend as a Story. Write a short line of what happens, who told it (the collector, T. Crofton Croker), and where he had it from (people around Cork, written down by the 1820s). You must write who told it, or the story cannot go into the collection.
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