You know, the greatest value of legend is in their teaching value and ability to bring societies together, and as such they're best left alone as they are.

Until the invention of the printing press, information was largely passed as "wisdom" in the form of apprenticeships. After that, people learned that they could learn from the printed word, and MISTAKENLY came to assume that whatever was printed was fact.

The big issue here is to separate truth from fact. It is not necessary for something to be fact for it to be true.

To stick with the Arthurian legend, is it necessarily fact that Lancelot (and in some versions Galahad) was given quasi-divine/ quasi-magical military abilities because he was without sin, or is it better that it teaches that the more purely we live our lives the more able we will be to do that which is beyond the norm?

The former may or may not be fact. As such it can be attacked by historians who assail those with a literal interpretation. The latter, on the other hand, can be assailed by no-one. Whether or not it is fact, it remains as a great truth in the broader and invulnerable sense of wisdom.

Sometimes, we're better off not to know the facts.