Oral Tradition 29.1
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_____________________________________________________________ Volume 29 March 2014 Number 1 _____________________________________________________________ Founding Editor John Miles Foley () Editor Managing Editor John Zemke Justin Arft Editorial Assistants Rebecca Benson Elise Broaddus Katy Chenoweth Christopher Dobbs Ruth Knezevich IT Manager Associate Editor for ISSOT Mark Jarvis Darcy Holtgrave Please direct inquiries to: Center for Studies in Oral Tradition University of Missouri 21 Parker Hall Columbia, MO 65211 USA +573.882.9720 (ph) +573.884.0291 (fax) [email protected] E-ISSN: 1542-4308 Each contribution copyright © 2014 by its author. All rights reserved. The editors and the publisher assume no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by the authors. Oral Tradition (http://journal.oraltradition.org) seeks to provide a comparative and interdisciplinary focus for studies in oral tradition and related fields by publishing research and scholarship on the creation, transmission, and interpretation of all forms of oral traditional expression. In addition to essays treating certifiably oral traditions, OT presents investigations of the relationships between oral and written traditions, as well as brief accounts of important fieldwork, and occasional transcriptions and translations of oral texts. In addition, issues will include the annual Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lecture on Oral Tradition. Submissions should follow the list-of-reference format (http:// journal.oraltradition.org/files/misc/oral_tradition_formatting_guide.pdf) and may be sent via e-mail ([email protected]); all quotations of primary materials must be made in the original language(s) with following English translations. If appropriate, please describe any supporting materials that could be used to illustrate the article, such as photographs, audio recordings, or video recordings. Oral Tradition publishes such materials online in an eCompanion designed to supplement the texts of articles. Most contributions will be reviewed by at least one specialist reader and one generalist reader before a final decision is reached. Oral Tradition appears twice per year, in March and October. The current issue and all back issues from 1986 onward are available open-access and free-of-charge at http:// journal.oraltradition.org. EDITORIAL BOARD Mark C. Amodio Robert Culley () Vassar College McGill University Old and Middle English Biblical Studies Patricia Arant Thomas DuBois Brown University University of Wisconsin Russian Scandinavian Samuel Armistead () Casey Dué University of California/Davis University of Houston Hispanic, Comparative Ancient Greek Richard Bauman Joseph J. Duggan Indiana University Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Folklore, Theory French, Spanish, Comparative Dan Ben-Amos Alan Dundes () University of Pennsylvania Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Folklore Folklore Mark Bender Mark W. Edwards Ohio State University Stanford University Chinese Ancient Greek Mary Ellen Brown David Elmer Indiana University Harvard University Folklore, Balladry South Slavic, Ancient Greek Jonathan Burgess Larry Evers University of Toronto University of Arizona Ancient Greek American Indian Literature Chogjin Ruth Finnegan Chinese Academy Open University of Social Sciences African, South Pacific Mongolian, Chinese Joxerra Garzía Bridget Connelly University of the Basque Country University of Cal./Berkeley Basque Arabic Andrew Gerstle Robert P. Creed University of London Univ. of Mass./Amherst Japanese Theater, Old English, Comparative Performance Literature Terry Gunnell Françoise Létoublon University of Iceland Université Stendahl Old Norse, Drama Ancient Greek Thomas Hale Victor Mair Penn. State University University of Pennsylvania African Chinese Lee Haring Peter Middleton Brooklyn College, CUNY University of Southampton African Contemporary Poetry Performance Joseph Harris Harvard University Nada Milošević-Djordjević Old Norse University of Belgrade South Slavic Lauri Harvilahti Finnish Literature Society Stephen Mitchell Russian, Finnish, Altai Harvard University Scandinavian Holly Hearon Christian Theological Seminary Gregory Nagy New Testament Harvard University Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Lauri Honko () Comparative Turku University Comparative Epic Joseph Falaky Nagy Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles Dell Hymes () Old Irish University of Virginia Native American, Linguistics Susan Niditch Amherst College Bonnie Irwin Hebrew Bible Eastern Illinois University Comparative Medieval Arabic Walter J. Ong () St. Louis University Martin Jaffee Hermeneutics of orality and Hebrew Bible literacy Univ. of Washington Tom Pettitt Minna Skafte Jensen University of Southern Denmark Odense University Folklore, early Literature Ancient Greek, Latin Shelly Fenno Quinn Werner Kelber Ohio State University Rice University Japanese Biblical Studies Burton Raffel Dennis Tedlock Univ. of Southwestern SUNY/Buffalo Louisiana Native American Translation J. Barre Toelken Karl Reichl Utah State University Universität Bonn Folklore, Native American Turkic, Old and Middle English Ronald J. Turner John Roberts Univ. of Missouri/Columbia Ohio State University Storytelling African-American Andrew Wiget Joel Sherzer University of New Mexico University of Texas/Austin Native American Native American, Anthropology Paulu Zedda Joseph Sobol Università di Cagliari East Tennessee State University Sardinian Storytelling Timothy Tangherlini University of California-Los Angeles Scandinavian Studies This page is intentionally left blank. Contents Editor’s Column ..............................................................................................1 Michael Marmur Why Jews Quote ..............................................................................................5 Flemming G. Andersen Voices from Kilbarchan: Two versions of “The Cruel Mother” from South-West Scotland, 1825 .................................47 Caitlin Flynn and Christy Mitchell “It may be verifyit that thy wit is thin”: Interpreting Older Scots Flyting through Hip Hop Aesthetics ..........................................................................69 Melissa Borgia Seneca Storytelling: Effect of the Kinzua Dam on Interpretations of Supernatural Stories.................................................... 87 Lilah Grace Canevaro Hesiod and Hávamál: Transitions and the Transmission of Wisdom ..........................................................................99 William Duffy The Oral Poetics of Professional Wrestling, or Laying the Smackdown on Homer ..........................................................127 Ryan Platte Hades’ Famous Foals and the Prehistory of Homeric Horse Formulas .......................................................................149 About the Authors ........................................................................................163 This page is intentionally left blank. Editor’s Column With this issue Oral Tradition presents seven vistas onto the communicative spaces that the traditional verbal arts command and scholarly approaches to them; a septet of reports about the seemingly inexhaustible wealth and variety of humanity’s traditional verbal arts. These essays reflect the high standards of scholarship that John Miles Foley established for the journal and represent part of the diversity and scope of the phenomena that are the bailiwick of Oral Tradition. Michael Marmur opens the conversation with a study of quotation—a universal human behavior and powerful metonymic device—as it is manifested in the longue duré of Jewish voices negotiating the present, with its demands and requirements. From this sometimes precarious perch, individuals and institutions quote—Janus-like—with one eye (or ear, in this case) to the past and the other toward the future continuing a three-way conversation about tradition that necessarily regards its own continuity. Thus triangulated by its temporal coordinates, quotation reveals itself to be rhapsodic, constitutive, and conservative—containing dissension within the confines of a traditional discourse. The warp and woof woven into quotation is reprised by Fleming Andersen’s study of two distinct versions of a ballad collected on the same day from two women singers in a weavers village in South West Scotland. Marshaling a structural-formulaic approach to the analysis of the ballads, the essay dramatically illustrates the extent of an individual singer’s creative control over the tradition’s compositional dynamics: each singer weaves a version that makes the ballad her own. Continuing in the Scots’ realm, with one eye on the old flyting poems and the other on North American Hip Hop battle rap, Caitlin Flynn and Christy Mitchell compare common themes and techniques manifest in these contest poetries. Shared rhetorical techniques, characteristic circumstances, and prominent personalities in contemporary Hip Hop poetic polemics, offer footing for insights into the motives and objectives of the Scots’ invective contests. Hip Hop emcees and flyting poets verbally destroy an opponent’s pretension to possessing superior poetic skill and acumen with a primary purpose in mind: to acquire more elite social standing. This fruitful comparison invites extension to additional comparanda such as the Old Provenzal partimen, the Old Portuguese cantiga d’escarnho, or the scabrous 15th- century Spanish invective poems collected in the Cancionero de Baena. Shifting to another facet of the rich vein of traditional poetics, Melissa Borgia offers an essay studying generational changes