Oral Tradition in Lithuania

Here in Lithuania, it would be difficult to separate the idea of what is oral tradition, which is most commonly understood as folklore (in the sense of German Volkskunde), from its studies and research. Throughout history the role of orally transmitted folklore in our country has been especially prominent. Folklore was regarded as a unique expression of the “national soul,” and allotted special importance during the national liberation movements that were taking place in Lithuania not only in the wake of German Romanticism at the end of the nineteenth century, but also in the second half of the twentieth century. The folk singing tradition was considered especially essential for (and by) the Lithuanians; for example, the national liberation movement “Sajudis” promoted the so-called “singing revolution,” which dovetailed with Gorbatchov’s Perestroika. That is why, probably, the scholarly ideas of what is (or should be considered) oral tradition stayed petrified along the lines inherited from Romanticism—much longer than they should have, anyway. The criteria of authenticity, archaism, and ethical and aesthetic values were crucial in determining whether a particular fragment of folklore was to receive scholarly attention, that is, whether it would be recorded, archived, studied, and published. Striving to search out and rescue the folk treasures, which were conceived as disappearing or dying out, was imperative for the major part of the fieldwork conducted up to the very end of the twentieth century—perhaps understandable for a people accustomed to being on the verge of extinction for centuries, but that’s another question. Moreover, this quest for archaism defined to a considerable extent the folk’s ideas about their own traditions, and the content of those traditions as well. Yet from the 1990’s onward the situation has been visibly altering. First, the elderly people from the countryside are no longer considered the prime sources of oral folk tradition. Other social and age groups, different folklore “genres,” the role of folklore in everyday situations, and transformations and paraphrases of the tradition have also become the focus