Editor’s Column

I am deeply grateful to the readers of Oral Tradition—and even more to the authors of thearticles in these pages—for their patience in awaiting the appearance of this long-overduevolume. Rather than an excuse, I offer an assurance that the journal is taking steps to increase ourefficiency and improve our ability to review and publish work […]

The post Editor’s Column appeared first on Oral Tradition.

“A True Pioneer”

Oral Tradition, 37 (2025):197–220 This article1 looks at the relationship between Matija Murko (1861-1952)2 and the two well known Harvard scholars, Milman Parry (1902-35) and Albert Lord (1912-91). Much connects these researchers: they were interested in South Slavic oral tradition, recorded guslari, used similar fieldwork methods, and all three compared South Slavic epic poetry to […]

The post “A True Pioneer” appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Postscript

Oral Tradition, 37 (2025):19–21 Some years after completing the preceding article, the author came across what is so far the closest parallel to “What Do You Want Money For?” outside northwestern Africa: a Galician Yiddish nursery rhyme (Pipe 1971:200–201), which goes as follows (author’s rough translation, ignoring diminutives): Ele, bele, Yoske,You have a black bride.She […]

The post Postscript appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Bringing Back Bakonja

Oral Tradition, 37 (2025):139-74 This song would be good if it were not so unnecessarily long. Although about 200 verse lines have been excised, this is the longest of all songs known to date. I could forgive him all the repetition and all the stretching out with nice language and diction, but I cannot forgive […]

The post Bringing Back <em>Bakonja</em> appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Vocal Delivery and Ritual Epic Performance in Central Himalayan Pandava Stories

Oral Tradition, 37 (2025):49–74 Paṇḍwāṇī is a term used in some parts of India to refer to the oral rendition of Mahābhārata stories. There are particularly well-known traditions of Paṇḍwāṇī performance in the states of Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand, and scholarship and documentation are well  developed for these regions.1 The term Paṇḍwāṇī is related to the […]

The post Vocal Delivery and Ritual Epic Performance in Central Himalayan Pandava Stories appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Urbanization and Folklorization of the Ashiq Tradition in Contemporary Iran1

Oral Tradition, 37 (2025):71–92 Introduction A hat, a mustache, an archaic costume. In the central square of Zanjān city—a hub where the city’s main streets converge—a group of ashiqs sings, each holding a stringed instrument close to their heart.2 Their aim is to stop passers-by, pull them in, and hold them just a little longer […]

The post Urbanization and Folklorization of the Ashiq Tradition in Contemporary Iran<a id=”noteref1″ href=”#note1″><sup>1</sup></a> appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Fragments of the Utopia of Contestation in South Slavic Oral Lyric Poetry

Oral Tradition, 37 (2025):175–96 Introduction South Slavic oral lyric songs are characterized by subjectivity and emotionality. They follow human life from birth to death—from lullabies to laments. When they sing about love, longing, desire, departing to a distant land for work or to war; when they are sung during work, during rituals (most of all […]

The post Fragments of the Utopia of Contestation in South Slavic Oral Lyric Poetry appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Tandaning

Oral Tradition, 37/1 (2023):23–47 The tandaning is one of the song genres of the Wide Bay Mengen living in East Pomio, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Tandaning is derived from the North Mengen verb tandan, “to cry,” also referred to as singsing krai in Tok Pisin, the lingua franca of PNG. The tandaning songs are composed […]

The post Tandaning appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Orality, Literacy, and the Psychology of Babylonian-Assyrian Orthography1

Oral Tradition, 37 (2025):97–137 1. Introduction What happens at the interface of Orality and Literacy? The societies of Ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and environs) provide abundant evidence for exploring this question. The present paper argues that the system of spelling used for Babylonian and Assyrian (“Akkadian”), in the second and first millennia BCE, reflects the […]

The post Orality, Literacy, and the Psychology of Babylonian-Assyrian Orthography<sup><a id=”noteref1″ href=”#ftn1″>1</a></sup> appeared first on Oral Tradition.

“What Do You Want Money For?”

Oral Tradition, 37 (2025):3–18 Introduction This article examines an apparently undocumented tale from northwestern Africa: a short, simply phrased dialogue between a man and a cat. The cat finds some money, and repeated questions of “What do you want that for?” lead to progressively longer-term goals, outlining a moderately successful life. These goals are largely […]

The post “What Do You Want Money For?” appeared first on Oral Tradition.

A Pebble Smoothed by Tradition: Lines 607-61 of Beowulf as a Formulaic Set-piece

In this essay Drout and Smith use new “lexomic” methods of computer-assisted statistical analysis to identify a concentration of unusual lexical, metrical, grammatical, and formulaic features in lines 607-61 of Beowulf, a scene in which Queen Wealhtheow passes the cup of friendship to the assembled warriors. Although the passage contains a number of proper names, […]

The post A Pebble Smoothed by Tradition: Lines 607-61 of <em>Beowulf</em> as a Formulaic Set-piece appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Oral Features of the Qur’ān Detected in Public Recitation

This essay examines textual features of the Qur’ān that may emerge more prominently as a result of listening to it, features that might enhance insight gained during slow or silent reading sessions. Comparison with ancient Greek oral works, such as Homer, and an examination of Classical memory methodologies provide support for some of the oral […]

The post Oral Features of the Qur’ān Detected in Public Recitation appeared first on Oral Tradition.

The Fairy-Seers of Eastern Serbia: Seeing Fairies—Speaking through Trance

The fairy-seers of Southeastern Europe are generally women who are able to communicate with the invisible world. They claim to see women-like creatures and transmit messages from them. Sometimes they fell into a trance-like state in order to establish a communication. During this process the fairy-seers can prophesy future events. They bring messages to the […]

The post The Fairy-Seers of Eastern Serbia: Seeing Fairies—Speaking through Trance appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Between the Oral and the Literary: The Case of the Naxi Dongba Texts

This essay considers the orality of ritual texts written in the Naxi dongba script from southwest China. Historically, the inherent orality of these texts has been largely ignored in favor of seeing them as a kind of visual “hieroglyphics.” Here, a case will be made that the Naxi texts represent an intermediary stage between the […]

The post Between the Oral and the Literary: The Case of the Naxi Dongba Texts appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Eall-feala Ealde Sæge: Poetic Performance and “The Scop’s Repertoire” in Old English Verse

This essay identifies “The Scop’s Repertoire” as an Old English traditional theme. The theme associates the making of verse with three motifs: copiousness, orality, and antiquity. With close analogues in Old Saxon, Old and Middle High German, and Old Norse poetry, “The Scop’s Repertoire” originates in an oral Germanic tradition of versification. The theme thus […]

The post <em>Eall-feala Ealde Sæge</em>: Poetic Performance and “The Scop’s Repertoire” in Old English Verse appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Type-Token Ratio and Entropy as Measures to Characterize a Forgery of Oral-Formulaic Epics

Oral Tradition, 36/1 (2023):37-62  The Queen’s Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts (Rukopisy královédvorský a zelenohorský, together abbreviated “RKZ” in Czech) present an unusually successful case of literary forgery. These pseudo-medieval Czech manuscripts, presenting folk lyrics, ballads, and epic songs seemingly recorded in the late-thirteenth and in the ninth to tenth centuries, respectively, were taken by […]

The post Type-Token Ratio and Entropy as Measures to Characterize a Forgery of Oral-Formulaic Epics appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Driva Qele / Stealing Earth: Oral Accounts of the Volcanic Eruption of Nabukelevu (Mt. Washington), Kadavu Island (Fiji), ~2,500 Years Ago

Oral Tradition, 36/1 (2023):63-90  Introduction Over the past two decades, it has become clear that culturally grounded stories, once uncritically dismissed as myth or legend, often contain information suggesting that they are informed by observations of memorable events, such as coastal inundation, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and meteorite falls (Nunn and Reid 2016; Nunn 2014; Masse […]

The post Driva Qele / Stealing Earth: Oral Accounts of the Volcanic Eruption of Nabukelevu (Mt. Washington), Kadavu Island (Fiji), ~2,500 Years Ago appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Temporal Patterning and “Degrees of Orality” in Occitan and French Oral Narrative

Oral Tradition, 36/1 (2023):91-122 Introduction This article explores tense usage and tense-switching in the temporal structuring of Occitan and French oral narratives, drawing on theoretical frameworks in linguistics and sociolinguistics, as well as perspectives from anthropology and folklore studies.1 It forms part of a larger project, ExpressioNarration, financed by a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowship, incorporating […]

The post Temporal Patterning and “Degrees of Orality” in Occitan and French Oral Narrative appeared first on Oral Tradition.

“It Has Not Yet Become Pacified”

Oral Tradition, 36/1 (2023):3-36 The Mahābhārata and Ramāyaṇa present us with eight primary and embedded narratives in which an archer (usually a royal member of the kṣatriya, or warrior, class) causes the unintended death of a person in animal form while hunting, and for which the killer generally pays an offspring-related penalty with profound and […]

The post “It Has Not Yet Become Pacified” appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Editor’s Column

This latest issue of Oral Tradition arrives somewhat later than the editors had hoped. It took us some time to regroup after producing our last volume, a monumental special issue on the oral traditions of religious communities in the Iranian-speaking world. We hope, however, that the wait will prove to have been worth it, since […]

The post Editor’s Column appeared first on Oral Tradition.

About the Authors

Oral Tradition Volume 36, Number 1 Taniela Bolea Born and bred in Ravitaki Village on the main island of Kadavu, Taniela Bolea graduated in management studies and rose to become the founding publisher of Fiji’s Daily Post newspaper. He was later appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Fiji Audio Visual Commission and today remains interested in […]

The post About the Authors appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Ethnopoetic Transcription and Multimodal Archives

Oral Tradition, 36/1 (2023):123-48 Slam is a relatively young genre of poetry, created in 1985 by a Chicago construction worker named Marc Smith, who sought to challenge ivory tower ideas about creating and evaluating poetry (Woods 2008:18). Extant slam poetry scholarship is neither as prolific nor as comprehensive as that on some of its performance […]

The post Ethnopoetic Transcription and Multimodal Archives appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Singing the Pain: Yezidi Oral Tradition and Sinjari Laments after ISIS1

Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):77-102  Our girls fell into the hands of the kafirThey sold our girls to strange countriesThis girl ran to the mountain to flee the kafir and she fellHadiya escaped the kafir, but she fell, she threw herselfIt is a Great Holiday,2 but those in the hands of the kafir have no oneThe […]

The post Singing the Pain: Yezidi Oral Tradition and Sinjari Laments after ISIS<a name=”_ftnref1″ href=”#_ftn1″><small>1</small></a> appeared first on Oral Tradition.

Editors’ Column

Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):1-2  The contribution that various branches of “Oral Studies” could make to the study of non Western scriptural religions is as yet largely unexplored. In the Iranian cultural sphere—where languages are spoken that belong to the Iranian branch of Indo-European, such as Persian and Kurdish—we find a number of religious traditions that […]

The post Editors’ Column appeared first on Oral Tradition.

The Village Chronotope in the Genre of Iraqi Yezidi Wedding Songs

Oral Tradition, 35/2 (2022):103-18 Introduction Among the world’s roughly one million Yezidis, adherents of a monotheistic faith that does not accept converts or allow marriage with outsiders, as many as half are living in exile, with the highest concentration of refugees outside the homeland living in Germany. Yezidis, originally from parts of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, […]

The post The Village Chronotope in the Genre of Iraqi Yezidi Wedding Songs appeared first on Oral Tradition.