Examples Of Oral Tradition / Oral or Folk Literature / Folklore

Examples of Oral Tradition

Oral tradition is information passed down through the generations by word of mouth that is not written down. This includes historical and cultural traditions, literature and law.

Oral Traditions in Customs

• Blowing out candles at birthday celebrations
• Not wearing white to a wedding, unless you are the bride
• Celebrating the bounty of the harvest at a festival
• Babies wearing white at christenings
• Rituals for new members of a fraternity or sorority
• Taking a gift when invited to someone’s house for dinner
• Throwing a baby shower for a mother-to-be
• Having bachelor or bachelorette parties before a wedding
• Having a bridal shower for a new bride
• Tip a waiter or waitress for good service
• Greetings like a nod, bow, smile, handshake or verbal greeting
• Removing shoes before entering a home

Oral Traditions in Beliefs That Are Superstitions

• Find a penny, pick it up and all day long, you'll have good luck
• A black cat crossing your path will bring bad luck
• Friday the 13th 
• Cross your fingers for luck
• Break a wishbone and the person with the bigger portion will have good luck
• Knock on wood for good luck
• Step on a crack, break your mother’s back
• Finding a horseshoe brings good luck
• Blow out all of the candles on your birthday cake with one breath and your wish will come true
• Make a wish upon a falling star and it will come true
• Animals can talk at midnight on Christmas Eve

Oral Traditions in Beliefs About Weddings

• It’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding
• The bride wears white to symbolize chastity
• The bride needs something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue
• Sweden - gold and sliver coins are placed inside a bride’s wedding shoe
• Norway - the bride wears a silver crown with charms to ward off evil spirits
• Czech newlyweds are showered with peas instead of rice
• The groom carries the bride across the threshold
• Hindu tradition states that rain on your wedding day is good luck
• The fourth finger was chosen for engagement and wedding rings because it was once believed that it contained a vein that led to the heart

Oral Traditions in Prose and Literature

• Jokes
• Riddles
• Stories
• Rhymes
• Tall tales
• Ghost stories
• Stories of tragic events
• Stories of local heroes
• Creation stories

Oral Traditions in Proverbs and Adages

• A watched pot never boils
• If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong
• Actions speak louder than words
• Don't bite the hand that feeds you
• Necessity is the mother of invention
• Don’t judge a book by its cover
• Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
• The grass is always greener on the other side of the hill
• A penny saved is a penny earnem
• If it ain't broke, don't fix it
• Good things come to those who wait

Oral Traditions in Legends

• Atlantis
• Big Foot
• Camelot
• Chupacabra
• El Dorado
• Fountain of Youth
• Griffins
• Hercules
• Johnny Appleseed
• The Loch Ness monster
• Medusa
• Pegasus
• Robin Hood
• Shangri-La
• The Bermuda Triangle
• William Tell
• Yeti, or the Abominable Snowman

Oral Traditions in Songs

• Alphabet Song
• Auld Lang Syne
• For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow
• Found a Peanut Happy Birthday 
• Frere Jacques
• Jack and Jill
• London Bridge
• Mary Had A Little Lamb
• Mulberry Bush
• Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall
• On Top of Spaghetti
• Ring Around A Rosy
• Ten Little Indians
• Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Oral Traditions in Dances

• Hawaiian hula
• Polkas
• Square dancing
• Waltz
• Two step
• Western line dancing
• Round dances of Native Americans
• Break dancing
• Flamenco
• Greek circle dances

Oral Literature---- Its Origin and Development

Folk literature, also called folklore or oral tradition,  the lore (traditional knowledge and beliefs) of cultures having no written language. It is transmitted by word of mouth and consists, as does written literature, of both prose and verse narratives, poems and songs, myths, dramas, rituals, proverbs, riddles, and the like. Nearly all known peoples, now or in the past, have produced it.

Until about 4000 bce all literature was oral, but, beginning in the years between 4000 and 3000 bce, writing developed both in Egypt and in the Mesopotamian civilization at Sumer. From that time on there are records not only of practical matters such as law and business but increasingly of written literature. As the area in which the habitual use of writing extended over Asia, North Africa, and the Mediterranean lands and eventually over much of the whole world, a rapid growth in the composition of written literature occurred, so that in certain parts of the world, literature in writing has to a large extent become the normal form of expression for storytellers and poets.

Nevertheless, during all the centuries in which the world has learned to use writing, there has existed, side by side with the growing written record, a large and important activity carried on by those actually unlettered, and those not much accustomed to reading and writing.

Origins and development

Of the origins of folk literature, as of the origins of human language, there is no way of knowing. None of the literature available today is primitive in any sense, and only the present-day results can be observed of practices extending over many thousands of years. Speculations therefore can only concern such human needs as may give rise to oral literature, not to its ultimate origin.

The nature of oral traditions

Nor can any evolution in folk literature or any overall developments be spoken of explicitly. Each group of people, no matter how small or large, has handled its folk literature in its own way. Depending as it does upon the transmission from person to person and being subject to the skill or the lack of skill of those who pass it on and to the many influences, physical or social, that consciously or unconsciously affect a tradition, what may be observed is a history of continual change. An item of folk literature sometimes shows relative stability and sometimes undergoes drastic transformations. If these changes are looked at from a modern Western point of view, ethnocentric judgments can be made as to whether they are on the whole favourable or unfavourable. But it must be remembered that the folk listening to or participating in its oral literature have completely different standards from those of their interpreters.

Nevertheless, two directions in this continually changing human movement may be observed. Occasionally a talented singer or tale-teller, or perhaps a group of them, may develop techniques that result in an improvement over the course of time from any point of view and in the actual development of a new literary form. On the other hand, many items of folk literature, because of historic movements or overwhelming foreign influences or the mere lack of skillful practitioners of the tradition, become less and less important, and occasionally die out from the oral repertory. The details of such changes have been of great interest to all students of folk literature.

The beginnings of written literature in Sumer and Egypt 5,000 or 6,000 years ago took place in a world that knew only folk literature. During the millennia since then written literature has been surrounded and sometimes all but overwhelmed by the humbler activity of the unlettered. The emergence of the author and his carefully preserved manuscript came about slowly and uncertainly, and only in a few places initially—the literary authorship that flourished in the Athens of Pericles or the Jerusalem of the Old Testament represented only a very small part of the world of their time. Nearly everywhere else the oral storyteller or epic singer was dominant, and all of what is called literary expression was carried in the memory of the folk, and especially of gifted narrators.

All societies have produced some men and women of great natural endowments—shamans, priests, rulers, and warriors—and from these has come the greatest stimulus everywhere toward producing and listening to myths, tales, and songs. To these the common man has listened to such effect that sometimes he himself has become a bard. And kings and councillors, still without benefit of writing, have sat enthralled as he entertained them at their banquets.

Cultural exchange in written and oral traditions

This folk literature has affected the later written word profoundly. The Homeric hymns, undoubtedly oral in origin and retaining many of the usual characteristics of folk literature, such as long repetitions and formulaic expressions, have come so far in their development that they move with ease within a uniform and difficult poetic form, have constructed elaborate and fairly consistent plots and successfully carried them through, and have preserved in definitive form a conception of the Olympic pantheon with its gods and heroes, which became a part of ancient Greek thinking.

Characteristics Of Oral Literature / Folk Literature

The most obvious characteristic of folk literature is its orality. In spite of certain borderline cases, it normally stands in direct contrast to written literature. The latter exists in manuscripts and books and may be preserved exactly as the author or authors left it, even though this may have happened centuries or even millennia ago. Through these manuscripts and books the thoughts and emotions and observations and even the fine nuances of style can be experienced without regard to time or distance. With oral literature this is not possible. It is concerned only with speaking and singing and with listening, thus depending upon the existence of a living culture to carry on a tradition. If any item of folk literature ceases to exist within human memory it is completely lost.

The speaker or singer is carrying on a tradition learned from other speakers and delivered to a living audience. It may well be that the listeners have heard this material many times before and that it has a vigorous life in the community, and they will see to it that the performer does not depart too far from the tradition as they know it. If acceptable to the listeners, the story or song or proverb or riddle will be repeated over and over again as long as it appeals to men and women, even through the ages and over long geographic distances.

In some cultures nearly everyone can carry on these traditions, but some men and women are much more skillful than others and are listened to with greater pleasure. Whatever the nature of these tradition bearers, the continued existence of an item of oral literature depends upon memory. As it is passed on from one person to another, it suffers changes from forgetting or from conscious additions or substitutions; in any case, the item changes continually.

The more skillful tradition bearers take pride in the exactness with which they transmit a tale or song just as they have heard it many years before, but they only deceive themselves, for every performance differs from every other one. The whole material is fluid and refuses to be stabilized in a definite form. The teller is likely to find room for improvement and may well begin a new tradition that will live as long as it appeals to other tellers. It thus happens that in nearly all cultures certain people specialize in remembering and repeating what they have heard. There are semiprofessional storytellers around whom large groups of people assemble in bazaars or before cottage fires or in leisure hours after labour. Some of these storytellers have prodigious memories and may with only slight variations carry on to a new generation hundreds of tales and traditions heard long ago.

Certain bards and minstrels and song makers develop special techniques of singing or of telling epic or heroic tales to the accompaniment of a harp or other musical instrument. In the course of time in various places special poetic forms have been perfected and passed on from bard to bard. Such must have been the way in which the remarkably skillful heroic meters of the Greek epics were developed.

A different kind of oral tradition is preserved by the ritual specialists: priests, shamans, and others who perform religious ceremonies and healing rites. Frequently these rituals must be remembered word for word and are not believed to be effective unless they are correctly performed. The ideal of such priestly transmitters of oral tradition is complete faithfulness to that which has been passed down to them.

Not least important of the many reasons for the existence and perpetuation of folk literature is the need for release from the boredom that comes on long sea voyages or in army camps or on long winter evenings. Some folk literature is primarily didactic and tries to convey the information people need to carry on their lives properly. Among some peoples the relation of man and the higher powers is of special concern and gives rise to myths that try to clarify this relationship. Cooperative labour or marching is helped by rhythmic songs, and many aspects of social life give rise to various kinds of dance.

A great many of the special forms of literature now in manuscripts and books are paralleled in traditional oral literature, where history, drama, law, sermons, and exhortations of all kinds are found, as well as analogues of novels, stories, and lyric poems.

Folk literature is but a part of what is generally known as folklore: customs and beliefs, ritualistic behaviour, dances, folk music, and other nonliterary manifestations. These are often considered a part of the larger study of ethnology, but they are also the business of the folklorist.

Of special importance is the relation of all kinds of folk literature to mythology. The stories of Maui and his confreres in the Pacific and of gods and heroes of African or American Indian groups have behind them a long and perhaps complicated history. This is especially true of the highly developed mythologies of India, and the Greek, Irish, and Germanic pantheons. All are the results of an indefinitely long past, of growth and outside influences, of religious cults and practices, and of the glorification of heroes. But whatever the historical, psychological, or religious motivations, the mythologies are a part of folk literature and, though traditional, have been subject to continual changes at the hands of the tale-tellers, singers of stories, or priestly conductors of cults. Eventually singers or storytellers of philosophical tendencies have systematized their mythologies and have created with fine imagination the figures of Zeus and his Olympic family and his semidivine heroic descendants. Though the details of these changes are beyond the scope of this article, stories of the gods and heroes and of supernatural origins and changes on the earth have played an important role in all folk literature.

Literature In English

What is oral literature?

Oral literature is a term generally applied to spoken literary traditions such as folk tales, musical theater, proverbs, riddles, life histories, plays, proverbs, epic poems and historical recitations. Unlike written literary genres, oral literature is conveyed or passed down to future generations by word of mouth, typically through memorization and recitation. It is considered a verbal art form.

Legends and myths are prime examples of oral literature, crossing the line between fact and fiction, yet strengthened by constant re-telling. They become part of a heritage that identifies a culture or group of people. Chants and rituals are also forms of oral literature because of the provocative powers of the spoken word, especially when coupled with historical facts.

Written literature and oral literature share similar characteristics, including the need to use heightened language and literary techniques such as alliteration, flashbacks, foreshadowing, narrative hooks and plot twists. The two styles differ, however, in that oral literature requires one or more performers who hold responsibility for conveying the emotion, intent, action, storyline and conclusion of the entire piece. Epiphanies, plot twists and motives are all revealed by the storyteller. Examples of prominent oral literature include African American tales, Australian aboriginal mythology and Homeric poems.

CHARACTERISTICS  OF  ORAL  LITEATURE

Oral literature or folk literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken (oral) word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do. The Ugandan scholar Pio Zirimu introduced the term orature in an attempt to avoid an oxymoron, but oral literature remains more common both in academic and popular writing.

Pre-literate societies, by definition, have no written literature, but may possess rich and varied oral traditions—such as folk epics, folklore, proverbs and folksong—that effectively constitute an oral literature. Even when these are collected and published by scholars such as folklorists and paremiographers, the result is still often referred to as "oral literature".

Literate societies may continue an oral tradition - particularly within the family (for example bedtime stories) or informal social structures. The telling of urban legends may be considered an example of oral literature, as can jokes and also oral poetry including slam poetry which has been a televised feature on Russell Simmons' Def Poetry; performance poetry is a genre of poetry that consciously shuns the written form

History of the oral literature concept

Lore is seen in societies with vigorous oral conveyance practices to be a general term inclusive of both oral literature and any written literature, including sophisticated writings, as well, potentially, as visual and performance arts which may interact with these forms, extend their expression, or offer additional expressive media. Thus even where no phrase in local language which exactly translates "oral literature" is used, what constitutes "oral literature" as understood today is already understood to be part or all of the lore media with which a society conducts profound and common cultural affairs among its members, orally. In this sense, oral lore is an ancient practice and concept natural to the earliest storied communications and transmissions of bodies of knowledge and culture in verbal form near the dawn of language-based human societies, and 'oral literature' thus understood was putatively recognized in times prior to recordings of history in non-oral media including painting and writing.

Oral literature as a concept, after CE 19th century antecedents, was more widely circulated by Hector Munro Chadwick and Nora Kershaw Chadwick in their comparative work on the "growth of literature" (1932–40). In 1960, Albert B. Lord published The Singer of Tales (1960), which influentially exmamined fluidity in both ancient and later texts and "oral-formulaic" principles being used during composition-in-performance, particularly by contemporary Eastern European bards relating long traditional narratives.

From the 1970s, the term "Oral literature" appears in the work of both literary scholars and anthropologists: Finnegan (1970, 1977), Görög-Karady (1982), Bauman (1986) and in the articles of the journal Cahiers de Littérature Orale.

AFRICAN  ORAL  LITERATURE

African literature refers to literature of and from Africa. While the European perception of literature generally refers to written letters, the African concept includes oral literature (or "orature", in the term coined by Ugandan scholar Pio Zirimu⁾

As George Joseph notes in his chapter on African literature in Understanding Contemporary Africa, whereas European views of literature often stressed a separation of art and content, African awareness is inclusive:

"Literature" can also imply an artistic use of words for the sake of art alone. ...traditionally, Africans do not radically separate art from teaching. Rather than write or sing for beauty in itself, African writers, taking their cue from oral literature, use beauty to help communicate important truths and information to society. Indeed, an object is considered beautiful because of the truths it reveals and the communities it helps to build.