We Walk in Legends

Aragorn son of Arathorn's defense of old songs and children's tales

What is a legend?

The Oxford Reference defines it as “a traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but not authenticated.”

But that’s just the definition. I can define what sunset means, but the black-and-white letters I use will never be equal to the awe-inspiring majesty of the sun’s last breath.

What is a legend, then? I would suggest that one way of looking at it is the flower grown from a seed of truth. Long ago, people thrust a seed into the dark earth and covered it up.

Bit by bit, it grew. Bees pollinated it. Wind caressed it. It may have shifted from what it originally looked like, but it still sprouted from that same seed.

With that in mind, let’s step into the second chapter of The Two Towers.

We’re standing alongside Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, who have spent the last three days hunting—on foot—the Orcs who took Merry and Pippin. They’re equally exhausted and determined.

Now horsemen pass them by, two by two, until one hundred and five men have ridden past.

Aragorn recognizes them as Riders of Rohan and calls out.

The riders wheel around and return, surrounding the party of friends. After a tense few moments, Aragorn explains their quest, and they describe the halflings that they’re looking for.

“Halfling!” laughed the Rider that stood beside Éomer. “Halflings! But they are only a little people in old songs and children’s tales out of the North. Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?”

“A man may do both,” said Aragorn. “For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!”¹

This Rider claims that legends and reality (“the green earth”) are at odds. Halflings, in his mind, are figures out of fairytales. Why would these travelers, sweating in the sun, want to find them?

But Aragorn’s response is where I want to focus.

A man may do both. Legends and reality are not enemies. One is a seed, one is a flower, but both come from the same place.

You and I are surrounded by the seeds of stories and legends that—should our Lord tarry—will fill the earth for centuries to come. Even the strangest account from ancient times still deals with the grass, the water, the people that live around us still.

There will be stories told about the world you live in.

There are ancient wonders that you see every day and do not notice.

Just stop. Look at them. Notice them. Try describing it to someone else—yes, yes, there’s drought and sun and everything’s died, but there’s life beneath that parched ground. One single rain—yes, just one—and everything will break into green again. Every year, the world is remade.

Forty long years in the desert—three long days in the tomb—silence beyond silence beyond silence—and then life victorious, life triumphant, life everlasting.

A lion. He’s not safe—he roars, he claws—but he is good. He is so good, and we trust him as much as we fear him.

Our world is threaded with legends. All around us, these things pop out at us as soon as we pay attention. They feel like the stuff of stories, but they’re real.

Maybe that’s why they’re real.

After all, where could the stories have come from?

As Aragorn says, we live before and after countless legends. The green earth that we walk so carelessly upon is a matter of great legend—spoken into being, given to cultivate, embracing generation after generation.

Just as we reap the legends laid by the people of old, so we lay seeds for those who will come. The things we do, the things we make, the things we love—they will be stories one day.

I pray they will be good ones.

1. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers