We would like to point out that oral production was created by common, often illiterate people for the people, unlettered authors for illiterate audiences, and were handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth.

Legends, tales, ballads, old lyrics belong to this literary genre.

We prefer to identify them as INTANGIBLE RESOURCES because they were written down only in a later time, generally in the Middle Ages, when monks and clerks started to collect oral compositions from different sources. Later on, lay people of letters did the same and finally a great amount of genuine, ancient achievements had been saved from oblivion.

Therefore, let's act as the English Romantic poet, William Blake, expressed in his 'Songs of Innocence' (1789). Let's all become 'shepherds', 'prophets' who receive inspirationf from a child in a cloud to pipe his songs to mankind and spread the good news: preserve our origins - build our future.

SONGS OF INNOCENCE - INTRODUCTION

Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On a cloud I saw a child.
And he laughing said to me.

Pipe a song about a Lamb:
So I piped with merry chear,
Piper, pipe that song again--
So I piped, he wept to hear.

Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear,
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear

Piper sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read--
So he vanished from my sight
And I pluck'd a hollow reed.

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear.

 

In the link below you will be able to read and listen to some ballads/songs and old lyrics written  or recited/sung in the vehicular language (English), but also in our own languages: Finnish and Italian.

 

http://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1COpRSe7wrWAthbaEfB8-4q2jZxjPK7Z9gygn_4iGKeg/edit#slide=id.g38e0cb4066_0_15