21
votes
Accepted
Are there any recorded discrepancies between The Odyssey as oral tradition and The Odyssey as Homer transcribed it?
On the answer
Much of the structure of this answer is based on the very clear history of The Odyssey and The Iliad written by Nicolas Bertrand in a 2009 Article (PDF). The primary sources discussed ...
- 1,959
15
votes
Accepted
Why is the Star of the County Down referred to as Colleen?
Colleen is the Anglicised version of the Irish Gaelic cailín, meaning young woman or maid.
Derivation: caile (“maid”) + -ín (diminutive suffix)
Although girls are sometimes named Colleen, in the ...
- 1,415
10
votes
Accepted
Is the story of "Tales in the Sand" (or its form) faithful to traditional African stories?
Quite conveniently, Neil Gaiman answered this in his interview with Hy Bender for The Sandman Companion. In chapter 4, which is devoted to Doll's House, Hy asks Neil whether he was inspired by ...
- 8,554
7
votes
Accepted
Thomas McElwain as Ali Haydar?
While I appreciate the attention drawn to my academic article and my translations of Alevi hymns, I should like to make some remarks on the question and perhaps provide some answers.
First of all, ...
4
votes
How long did accounts of the Sängerkrieg last as purely oral literature?
From what I can find, they existed in written form from quite early in the 13th century, and it wasn't until the 19th century that the veracity of the event was challenged.
From the wiki on ...
- 275
4
votes
Accepted
What's the first appearance of the rhyme about "He died defending his right of way"?
The poem is ‘An Epitaph’ by Edgar A. Guest, first published in the Detroit Free Press on 1st October 1916 in Guest’s ‘Breakfast Table Chat’ column.
An Epitaph.
Here lies the body
Of William Jay,
...
- 63.9k
4
votes
What's the first appearance of the rhyme about "He died defending his right of way"?
If you look at Google books, it finds several instances of this rhyme labeled 1917, 1918, and 1919, and a few from earlier years. Looking at these more carefully, the earlier hits are all mislabeled, ...
- 14.3k
4
votes
Accepted
"Yum yum pig's bum"
In Dorothy Baker's The Street, a 1951 novel about working-class people in the West Midlands, the rhyme is reproduced as:
Ham, ham, pig's bum,When I have a partyYou shan't come.Bread without butterTea ...
- 56
3
votes
In the song "Whiskey in the Jar", would Captain Farrell have been British or Irish?
"Whiskey in the Jar" (see Wikipedia and LiveAbout) is a traditional Irish folk song about a man who robs an army officer and then is betrayed by his lover. Originally an oral tradition with ...
- 76.7k
3
votes
What is meant by "saints of forties and sevens" in this traditional Turkish hymn?
The hymn would appear to have references to Alevism;
Alevis are the second largest belief community in Turkey. However language, belief and ethnic background is not registered in the national ...
- 19.2k
3
votes
How did the story of Robin Hood pass from oral literature to written?
The oldest surviving Robin Hood tales are A Gest of Robyn Hode, between 1492 and 1534, Robin Hood and the Monk written after 1450, and Robin Hood and the Potter, about 1503. There is no evidence ...
- 6,481
2
votes
How did the story of Robin Hood pass from oral literature to written?
According to "The Real Robin Hood" on History.com, the first literary references to Robin Hood appear in a series of 14th- and 15th-century ballads about a violent yeoman who lived in ...
- 41
2
votes
Accepted
Who is Queen Brijeena, the subject of a famous chavittu nadakam?
It could be St. Brigit who was revered in a Jesuit church in Lisbon around 1587. Dr. Christophe Vielle mentions this in a KCHR lecture.
- 36
2
votes
Why is the Star of the County Down referred to as Colleen?
From the Wikipedia entry for Colleen:
Colleen is a common English language name of Irish-American origin and a generic term for Irish women or girls, from the Irish cailín 'unmarried girl/woman', the ...
- 3,529
1
vote
Which element of an amputated virgin breast healing a snakebite is a "Celtic theme"?
The footnote in the citation goes to the sub-heading Breton within the entry for Ballads and Narrative Songs in Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, ed. John T. Koch (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, ...
- 31.5k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible