Oral Tradition

Once, before Film, before printing, before even writing, all stories were spread by word of mouth alone. All the oldest stories have their roots in this ancient tradition.

Oral storytelling has distinctive features, shaping the tropes it uses. Speech is not nearly as fast as reading, so a evening's worth of story is shorter, it is not possible to page back through the story, and the story itself needs the kind of repetitive features that aid memorization. Even with memorization, stories often became distorted over long periods as the details of the original telling fell victim to the ravages of time.

Much of the oral tradition falls somewhere on the myth-legend-fairytale spectrum. Myths deal with gods, demigods, and the shaping of the world. Legends are on a slightly smaller scale, dealing with great heroes, the founding of nations, and other history shaking events. Fairy tales, for all their princes, are on a smaller scale still.

The oral tradition also includes such things as nursery rhymes and folk songs.

There are various tropes stemming from classical myths and European fairytales used to mark written stories as belonging in these genres. For obvious reasons, every trope here is one of The Oldest Ones in The Book, if they haven't been forgotten.

Associated tropes:
 * Oral Tropes - those linked to the oral medium
 * Mythic Tropes - which mark a story as mythic
 * Fairy Tale Tropes - mark a story as fairytale.

Each culture has its own oral tradition, many of which have inspired later stories.

Countries/Cultures


 * American/United States Folklore
 * Afterlife Express
 * Paul Bunyan
 * Davy Crockett
 * Johnny Appleseed
 * John Henry
 * Famous Gunslingers
 * Pecos Bill
 * Febold Feboldson
 * Brer Rabbit
 * Mountain Folklore
 * Armenian Folklore
 * Ara the Handsome
 * The Liar Folktale
 * Australian Folklore
 * Aboriginal Australian Myths
 * The Speewah
 * Crooked Mick
 * Celtic Mythology
 * Mabinogion
 * Lusitanian Mythology
 * Tain Bo Cuailnge
 * Chinese Mythology
 * Classical Mythology - Greek and Roman
 * Homer
 * The Trojan Cycle
 * Theogony'
 * Egyptian Mythology
 * European folklore
 * King Arthur
 * Merlin - Originally a Welsh folktale figure before joining the Arthurian Mythos.
 * Robin Hood
 * William Tell
 * European Fairy Tales
 * "Sleeping Beauty"
 * "Goldilocks"
 * "Cinderella"
 * Finnish Mythology
 * The Kalevala - not a pure example as it was collected and put together by a modern poet, and he also added his own stuff here and there.
 * Hindu Mythology
 * Panchatantra
 * Ramayana
 * Mahabharata
 * Upanishads
 * Bhagavad Gita
 * Twenty Five Tales of the Vetala
 * Japanese Mythology
 * Japanese Fairy Tales often feature....
 * Youkai
 * Multiple-Tailed Beast such as the Kitsune
 * Shapeshifters like the Tanuki
 * Mesopotamian Mythology
 * Enuma Elish
 * The Epic of Gilgamesh
 * Inannas Descent to The Netherworld
 * Native American Mythology
 * Aztec Mythology
 * Inca Mythology
 * Popol Vuh (Mythological narrative of a Mesoamerican group in what is now Guatemala)
 * Norse Mythology


 * Baldur, Loki, and the mistletoe
 * The Poetic Edda- Including the Ragnarök


 * The Icelandic Sagas: More mundane stories from Scandinavian tradition.
 * Persian Mythology
 * The Shahnameh - Contains some of the first tales of Knighthood, Underestimated Albinos and talking Giant Birds such as the Simurgh.
 * Slavic Mythology
 * Russian Mythology and Tales
 * Baba Yaga
 * West Indian Folklore
 * "The White Witch of Rose Hall" - a famous ghost story from the island of Jamaica

General


 * Folk Songs
 * Child Ballad - traditional ballads from the British isles
 * Tam Lin
 * Murder Ballad
 * Urban Legends - modern day folk stories.
 * Conspiracy Theories
 * Nautical Folklore
 * Nursery Rhyme
 * The Great Flood - Falls under all of the above, and below, and possibly future additions to this list.
 * The Quran - Oral in origin given that the texts were recited and memorized before being written down by Muhammad's companions.
 * The Bible - Partially oral in origin, e.g. the oral accompaniment of the Torah (later written down, with extensive commentary, as the Talmud) and gospels of the New Testament. The Torah itself, most of the Prophets, and some of the Writings are also attributed to the Hebrew oral tradition, compiled and redacted under Ezra and Nehemiah in the fifth century BCE.
 * Arabian Nights - Middle Eastern fairy-tales. Big-ass Framing Device.
 * Arabian Hero Cycles