I am reading a book in which the author tries to make the case—not very convincingly, I might add—that Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, was a real person. Which of these famous figures, if any, do you think were actual people, and which were based on legends or a combination of real people?
• Sweeney Todd
• Robin Hood
• King Arthur
Any others you can think of? Note that I am NOT including Jesus, as we’ve already had several threads on THAT subject.
There is some relatively good support for the existence of a Welsh Cheiftan (king) named Arthur who fought against the Saxons in the fifth century. Almost no fact about His life, or reign are undisputed. It seems likely that he was a real person, and unlikely that he was the great ruler we imagine in our stories.
First off, the “nobility” of that period, in Wales and Cornwall were hardly the “Knights” we see riding in armor on clysdales in movies. Welsh ponies, and mostly leather armor, and a lot of peasant footmen with spears.
Arthur was successful in repelling the expansion of the Saxons into western Britain. That didn’t continue until fifty years later.
“There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.” ~ Bertrand Russell ~
Was there really a Robin Hood? by Cecil Adams
Or is it possible the legends were based on real people? We have a Welsh king who may or may not have been Arthur, but it seems likely that at the very least the Arthurian legends started with and/or were based off of that king. I always understood Sweeney Todd to have been a series of penny newspaper articles, but weren’t they based off of an actual London incident? Same for Robin Hood.
I’m also thinking of modern legends, like Hannibal Lecter - based off a turn of the century cannibal, Albert Fish (at least in part).
Legend and fact are intertwined - you as a historian must realize that. 
Esprix
Freaky. Albert Fish, eh? On a similar note, wasn’t the character of Norman Bates in Psycho loosely based on serial killer and all around strange recluse guy, Ed Gein?
Zoggie, Norman Bates and Leatherface.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_253.html
What about William Wallace?
Concerning Ed Gein, Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho had once been a reporter for a Milwaukee newspaper. When he read news accounts about Ed Gein he became interested in writing a fictional story about him. How a very sick person living in a small town could do those horrible things for years and years and still pass as a normal person. Great book. rande…
Y’know, actually when I was starting out studying literature waaaay back in middle school, my teacher drilled into me a taxonomy of narratives from nonfiction to fiction; and in this taxonomy I recall that “legend” DID mean an oral-tradition tale built around real persons or events (Briton Chieftain Arthur; or land-deprived people becoming outlaws in Northern England and having the sympathies of the peasantry).
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Merlin the Magician
Sherlock Holmes
Blackbeard the Pirate
Juan Valdez and his mule
Merlin and Holmes are from books and IMHO never ever lived. They were thought up, right? WHAT ABOUT WILLIAM WALLACE?
William Wallace was real. Look him up; he’s in any good history of the British Isles, even ones that focus solely on England.
I’ve seen Little John’s grave, which really stymied me.
Did Johnny Appleseed ever really exist or was he just a tall tale?
Paul Harvey said Johnney Appleseed was real. Good enuff for me.
William Wallace was a real person, though much of BRAVEHEART was wacky fiction. (E.g. the Queen of England was not Wallace’s mistress.)
It’s sometimes suggested that Doyle based certain aspects of Sherlock Holmes on a real person, Dr. Bell. See http://www.calibercomics.com/SHERLOCK/sherlock_holmes_men_who_holmes.htm
According to Michael Pollan, the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World (he’s got a great name for someone who writes about plants, huh?), Johnny Appleseed was also based on a real person. The story of the real person was much more interesting than the sickly-sweet fairy tale taught to youngsters… but unfortunately I do not remember the details :(.
This is one of many links you can find about John Chapman who was a real person. The legend, as all such legends is only partly true. Apples were carried westward by many people, during the first hundred years of western expansion. Most of the successful plantings of edible apples came from grafted shoots. Seed grown trees are generally less desirable varieties, including many known as crabapples. These were spread by birds, as often as humans.
“I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.” ~ George Santayana ~
Hey, Coldfire, tell us about the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.
" It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure." ~ Horace ~
I believe that one’s entirely fictional. From the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo.
Edward Teach
Hmmm–dare I mention…Cecil Adams?
I have in my hand a book called The Discovery of King Arthur by Geoffrey Ashe (“in association with Debrett’s Peerage”, if that counts for anything). He says Arthur was based on a King Riothamus who lived in the fifth century, and resisted the Saxon invasion of Britain. Most of the legend was written down by Geoffery of Monmouth in the twelfth.
Also, I recall reading in one of James Burke’s Connections books that most of Robin Hood’s band may really have existed, though most or all of them came from different places.