IN HIS STUDY OF MYTHS, Schöpflin says that the myths of a community may overlap, feed on one another or contradict each other. Schöpflin explains that myths may need to be relatively coherent internally, but a culture with a repertoire of many myths can live comfortably with a considerable diversity of mythopoeias. With regard to the Norman Conquest, newspaper data have revealed what appear to be two incompatible ideas: the Normans of the Conquest are French, and the Normans of the Conquest are British. How can they be French and British at the same time? This is a question I will investigate in this chapter. I have called these ideas myths (some might rather call them assumptions), because they embody the mythical characteristics of durable, challengeable, stereotypical, imaginative, larger than life conceptions. In our earlier discussion of myth in Chapter 6, it was said that myth can be conceived as having a factual core to which mythical elements are bound. It seemed to be very difficult to pinpoint a definite factual core for the founding myth of Edward's promise and Harold's oath, but regarding the myth of the Norman Yoke and its metamorphoses, there was no doubt about a factual core. With regard to the myths of the French Normans and the British Normans, I will trace more precisely the relation between factual core and mythical elaboration. The myths of the French Normans and the British Normans are intimately related to different attitude categories, negative and neutral/positive respectively, so our starting point will be to take up again the examination of attitudes presented in Chapter 5.