Muhtasari Wa Kiswahili Kwa Elimu Ya Sekondari , Kidato Cha V---VI , 2010--Jamhuri Ya Muungano Wa Tanzania.

Form Four Leavers Of Manzese Secondary School, Dar es salaam, Kinondoni, Tanzania --November, 2014.

Mwl.  Japhet  Masatu right  and   Mwl.  Nyabu , left   of   Manzese  Secondary  School , Tanzania  in  a pose  with  Form  Four   Students  who  did  their  National Form   Four  Examinations ,  November , 2014.   God   Bless  All   Students !!!   Wishes   you   Success !!!!

Ordinary Level Literature Form 3 & 4 Theory Of Literature, Novels , Plays And Poetry-- By. Nyambari Nyangwine & Godfrey Rutta Bukagile.

Contemporary Physics For Secondary Schools- Book Four---By. Respicius Kiiza & Josian Edwin.

Contemporary Physics For Secondary Schools--Book Two- By. Respicius Kiiza & Avit Thadei.

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.