Legend help

[Ron Crummett]

Okay, I feel really silly for asking this, but I cannot get the legend 
command to work in Octave 2.9.6 - I try typing something like

legend('string1');

and get the error messages

error: split: both s and t must be strings
error: evaluating if command near line 53, column 5
error: evaluating if command near line 48, column 3
error: called from `split' in file 
`/usr/share/octave/2.9.6/m/strings/split.m'
error: called from `legend' in file 
`/usr/share/octave/2.9.6/site/m/octave-forge//plot/legend.m'

I have no idea why I would be getting these messages.  Anyone have some 
ideas?  Thanks in advance.

-Ron