Category: English

“A True Pioneer”

Noel Spencer Published: Categories: English

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 […]

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

Noel Spencer Published: Categories: English

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 […]

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Bringing Back Bakonja

Noel Spencer Published: Categories: English

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 […]

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Postscript

Noel Spencer Published: Categories: English

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 […]

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

Noel Spencer Published: Categories: English

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 […]

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Urbanization and Folklorization of the Ashiq Tradition in Contemporary Iran1

Noel Spencer Published: Categories: English

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 […]

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Vocal Delivery and Ritual Epic Performance in Central Himalayan Pandava Stories

Noel Spencer Published: Categories: English

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 […]

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Tandaning

Noel Spencer Published: Categories: English

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 […]

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