Cliff Simak: Folklore has fact as a starting point

“Then there was Smith, who had traveled the barren world for years jotting down the windblown stories whispered by the little degenerating things about an ancient greatness and a golden past. Myths, most of them, of course, but some place, somewhere lay the answer to the origin of the myths. Folklore does not leap full-blown from the mind; it starts with a fact and that fact is added to and the two facts are distorted and you have a myth. But at the bottom, back of all of it, is the starting point of fact.”
— Cliff Simak, “Mirage” (1950; first published in Amazing Stories as “Seven Came Back”)

Flower field image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 from Pixabay