Abstract:
In this chapter, I describe one of the most popular genres of religious poetry
of verse legend. In the first part of the discussion I make a reconstruction of the
three main types of legends considering their thematic and structural properties,
highlighting in order apocryphal, hagiographic and Marian legends. I also point
at the existence of many syncretic texts which characteristics on one hand are
similar to the fairy tales, on the other hand to the so-called news songs. In the
second part of the chapter I deal with the problem of the functions of poetic
legends and advance the thesis that besides the informative function (transmission
of messages about the lives of saints, revelations of the Virgin Mary) as well as the
moralistic one (consolidation of certain principles of social and religious life),
legends also acted as a myth in the Polish folk culture at the turn of the nineteenth
and twentieth century. These texts justified the cosmic and social order of the
world through the narration of the precedent and holy events which guaranteed
efficiency, accuracy and integrity of this order.
