Folktales of these heroic figures have endured for centuries. In times of danger and turbulence, some people look for heroes to save them from peril. Not all such heroes have been superhuman. Every society, from the earliest civilizations, developed its own unwritten literature. The two main types of folk stories, whether told in poetry or prose, are legends and fictional tales.
Legends are attempts to explain reality, and their contents usually become objects of belief.
Ancient legends tried to account for the origin of the world and the human race, explain the nature of God or the gods, and predict how the world would come to an end. Legends are the foundation of mythology, and they contain many colorful tales of gods and heroes, natural disasters, great wars, and vivid recreations of a golden age long past. Apart from legends, the bulk of folklore is made up of fictional tales. The brothers Grimm, in addition to collecting and publishing German folktales, also distinguished among the kinds of stories they heard. Tales of some creatures and persons have been confined to a specific region, while other stories have been told in many countries and have become popular themes in books and film The Lorelei Along the Rhine River near Sankt Goarshausen, Germany, is a rock associated with the legend of a young maiden named Lorelei.