We are concerned here with the oral traditions of Hispanic or Iberian peoples: speakers of Spanish (Castilian), Portuguese, Catalan, and JudeoSpanish, and also various Spanish and Portuguese creoles in South America, Africa, and Asia. Basque, as an indigenous language of the Iberian Peninsula, should also definitely be counted as part of the Hispanic world. Oral tradition involves any manifestation of folk culture that includes the use of language. Creativity, ongoing evolution, and chronological depth are also essential factors. The Hispanic oral tradition comprises not only the “classic” genres of folk literature: narrative poetry (ballads, corridos), lyric poetry, orally improvised poetry (decimas, puntos, bertsoak), children’s rhymes, riddles, proverbs, folktales, and folk theater, but also local legends, memorates, jokes, folk prayers and incantations (ensalmos), cumulative songs, counting-out rhymes, curses and blessings, folk comparisons, calls to animals, tongue-twisters, formulaic phrases, baby talk, thieves’ jargon, microtoponymy, folk beliefs, and, indeed, language itself, in all its diversity, as a constantly changing and consistently creative manifestation of folk culture. Traditional music must, of course, also count as an essential part of the oral tradition. In the modern Hispanic oral tradition, specific traditional forms, individual text-types, and expressions can still be directly and genetically related to medieval antecedents and even to preliterate congeners. Some local legends, now being recorded and studied for the first time, exhibit astounding connections with classical and pre-Christian traditions. Hispanic toponymy and microtoponymy include various pre-Roman elements: note the Spanish hydronym Deva, which echoes the Celtic belief that each river had its own particular goddess. Some calls to animals clearly date from a time when Arabic co-existed with Hispano-Romance: the Algarvean shepherds’ call ad-ji! “come!”; compare Moroccan Arabic aji. In Iberian communities and their overseas extensions, oral and written traditions have constantly and intricately interacted, from the very first vernacular use of writing down to the present day: medieval epics, ballads,