Oral Tradition: Primary Source Only for the Collector?

Abstract

The golden rule of all scientific publication is that the reader must be in a position to be able to check the author's statements.The scientific level of existing publications of oral traditions is, as a rule, not very high.The ideal treatment of oral traditional materials by the historian may be considered as occurring in four main stages:1. the collection of the traditions in the field2. the creation of a primary souce with the pubhcation of the raw materials3. the analysis of this raw material4. the creation of a secondary source with the publication of the results of this analysis and interpretationThese various stages cannot easily be demarcated very clearly. Preliminary analyses influence the field work and often pass into the pubhcation of the raw material (that is, the nature of the published material is anticipated in the very recording of the data). In turn, the publication of the interpretative analysis frequently contains quotations from the raw field data and should yield insights into the analytical process.The accumulated (and rather extensive) literature on this subject has heretofore been devoted mainly to the analysis of traditions, and quite rightly so: if anything, it has tended to discuss the methodological problems associated with the analysis, sometimes drawing attention to these problems for the first time. After Jan Vansina, it was Philip Curtin who particularly concerned himself with the first stage (the collecting and recording of traditions in the field), outlining the standard to be sought and offering a series of important practical suggestions. In my opinion, Curtin is the only author so far who has dealt in a systematic manner with the preliminary processing and publication of the raw material (stage 2) and established guidelines for it.