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124-643: Horned serpents appear in the oral history of numerous Native American cultures, especially in the Southeastern Woodlands and Great Lakes . Muscogee Creek traditions include a Horned Serpent and a Tie-Snake, estakwvnayv in the Muscogee Creek language . These are sometimes interpreted as being the same creature and sometimes different—similar, but the Horned Serpent is larger than the Tie-Snake. To

248-570: A caste and perform a range of roles, including as a historian or library, musician, poet, mediator of family and tribal disputes, spokesperson, and served in the king's court, not dissimilar from the European bard . They keep records of all births, death, and marriages through the generations of the village or family. When Sundiata Keita founded the Mali Empire , he was offered Balla Fasséké as his griot to advise him during his reign, giving rise to

372-503: A 1928 limerick from Punch : There was a young lady of Cirencester Whose fiancé went down to virencester By the Great Western line , Which he swore was divine, And he couldn't have been much explirencester. Sometimes the form Cicester ( / ˈ s ɪ s ɪ s t ər / ) was heard instead. These forms are now very rarely used, while many local people abbreviate the name to Ciren ( / ˈ s aɪ r ə n / ). Today it

496-406: A better understanding of Homeric epics. The long oral tradition that has sustained Albanian epic poetry reinforces the idea that pre-Homeric epic poetry was oral. The theory of oral-formulaic composition was developed also through the scholarly study of Albanian epic verse. The Albanian traditional singing of epic verse from memory is one of the last survivors of its kind in modern Europe , and

620-685: A carved youth has a ram-horned snake twined around his legs, with its head at his stomach. In a relief at a museum in Cirencester , Gloucestershire, Cernunnos' legs are depicted as two ram-horned snakes which rear up on each side of his head and are eating fruit or corn. According to Miranda Green, the snakes reflect the peaceful nature of the god, associated with nature and fruitfulness, and perhaps accentuate his association with regeneration. Other deities occasionally accompanied by ram-horned serpents include "Celtic Mars" and "Celtic Mercury". The horned snake, and also conventional snakes, appear together with

744-503: A collective or tribal memory extending beyond personal experience but nevertheless representing a shared reality. Native languages have in some cases up to twenty words to describe physical features like rain or snow and can describe the spectra of human emotion in very precise ways, allowing storytellers to offer their own personalized take on a story based on their own lived experiences. Fluidity in story deliverance allowed stories to be applied to different social circumstances according to

868-536: A heavily rhythmic speech filled with mnemonic devices enhances memory and recall. A few useful mnemonic devices include alliteration , repetition, assonance , and proverbial sayings. In addition, the verse is often metrically composed with an exact number of syllables or morae —such as with Greek and Latin prosody and in Chandas found in Hindu and Buddhist texts. The verses of the epic or text are typically designed wherein

992-405: A means of teaching. Plots often reflect real life situations and may be aimed at particular people known by the story's audience. In this way, social pressure could be exerted without directly causing embarrassment or social exclusion . For example, rather than yelling, Inuit parents might deter their children from wandering too close to the water's edge by telling a story about a sea monster with

1116-483: A phenomenon that is explained by the lack of state formation among Albanians and their ancestors – the Illyrians , being able to preserve their "tribally" organized society . This distinguished them from civilizations such as Ancient Egypt , Minoans and Mycenaeans , who underwent state formation and disrupted their traditional memory practices. Albanian epic poetry has been analysed by Homeric scholars to acquire

1240-615: A physical struggle between a Thunderbird and a Whale. One such story tells of the Thunderbird, which can create thunder by moving just a feather, piercing the Whale's flesh with its talons, causing the Whale to dive to the bottom of the ocean, bringing the Thunderbird with it. Another depicts the Thunderbird lifting the Whale from the Earth then dropping it back down. Regional similarities in themes and characters suggests that these stories mutually describe

1364-540: A position of particular importance, as it was believed to be a more reliable medium for information transmission than prose. This belief stemmed from observations that highly structured language, with its rhythmic and phonetic patterns, tended to undergo fewer alterations during oral transmission. Each genre of rhymed poetry served distinct social and cultural functions. These range from spontaneous compositions at celebrations to carefully crafted historical accounts, political commentaries, and entertainment pieces. Among these,

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1488-664: A pouch for children within its reach. One single story could provide dozens of lessons. Stories were also used as a means to assess whether traditional cultural ideas and practices are effective in tackling contemporary circumstances or if they should be revised. Native American storytelling is a collaborative experience between storyteller and listeners. Native American tribes generally have not had professional tribal storytellers marked by social status. Stories could and can be told by anyone, with each storyteller using their own vocal inflections, word choice, content, or form. Storytellers not only draw upon their own memories, but also upon

1612-811: A reason behind indoctrination . Writing systems are not known to exist among Native North Americans before contact with Europeans except among some Mesoamerican cultures, and possibly the South American quipu and North American wampum , although those two are debatable. Oral storytelling traditions flourished in a context without the use of writing to record and preserve history, scientific knowledge, and social practices. While some stories were told for amusement and leisure, most functioned as practical lessons from tribal experience applied to immediate moral, social, psychological, and environmental issues. Stories fuse fictional, supernatural, or otherwise exaggerated characters and circumstances with real emotions and morals as

1736-710: A serpent with horns. In other depictions, he is shown as human but is accompanied by bashmu , mushussu , and ushumgal (three horned snakes in Akkadian mythology ). Ningishzida shares the epithet, ushumgal , "great serpent", with several other Mesopotamian gods. A horned serpent cave art is known from the La Belle France cave in South Africa , often conflated with the Dingonek . It may be based on dicynodont fossils. Oral tradition Oral tradition , or oral lore ,

1860-427: A society, with the latter much more likely to use oral tradition and oral literature even when a writing system has been developed or when having access to one. The Akan proverbs translated as "Ancient things in the ear" and "Ancient things are today" refer to present-day delivery and the past content, and as such oral traditions are both simultaneously expressions of the past and the present. Vansina says that to ignore

1984-547: A station at Watermoor in 1883. Cirencester thus was served by two railway lines until the 1960s. The loss of the canal and the direct rail link encouraged dependency on road transport. An inner ring road system was completed in 1975 in an attempt to reduce congestion in the town centre, which has since been augmented by an outer bypass with the expansion of the A417 road. Coaches depart from London Road for Victoria Bus Station in central London and Heathrow Airport , taking advantage of

2108-589: A study published in February 2020, new evidence showed that both Budj Bim and Tower Hill volcanoes erupted between 34,000 and 40,000 years ago. Significantly, this is a "minimum age constraint for human presence in Victoria ", and also could be interpreted as evidence for the oral histories of the Gunditjmara people, an Aboriginal Australian people of south-western Victoria, which tell of volcanic eruptions being some of

2232-399: A viable source of evidence for establishing the affiliation between cultural objects and Native Nations. Oral traditions face the challenge of accurate transmission and verifiability of the accurate version, particularly when the culture lacks written language or has limited access to writing tools. Oral cultures have employed various strategies that achieve this without writing. For example,

2356-447: A winning card. In return for a fine of £300, he obtained a new royal charter confirming his privileges and a writ of supersedeas . Yet the townspeople continued in their fight: in return for their aid to the Crown against the earls of Kent and Salisbury, Henry IV in 1403 gave the townsmen a Merchant 's Guild , although two inquisitions reiterated the abbot's rights. The struggle between

2480-576: A written intermediate, and they can also be applied to oral governance. Rudyard Kipling 's The Jungle Book provides an excellent demonstration of oral governance in the Law of the Jungle . Not only does grounding rules in oral proverbs allow for simple transmission and understanding, but it also legitimizes new rulings by allowing extrapolation. These stories, traditions, and proverbs are not static, but are often altered upon each transmission, barring any change to

2604-692: Is a medium of communication for a society to transmit oral history , oral literature , oral law and other knowledge across generations without a writing system , or in parallel to a writing system. It is the most widespread medium of human communication. They often remain in use in the modern era throughout for cultural preservation . Religions such as Buddhism , Hinduism , Catholicism , and Jainism have used oral tradition, in parallel to writing, to transmit their canonical scriptures , rituals , hymns and mythologies. African societies have broadly been labelled oral civilisations , contrasted with literate civilisations , due to their reverence for

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2728-420: Is a commuter town for larger centres such as Cheltenham , Gloucester, Swindon and Stroud . Cirencester's name is first attested by Ptolemy around 150 CE, though the earliest surviving manuscripts are from the thirteenth century. These give various slightly different spellings, of which the original seems to have been Κορίνιον ( Corinium ). The etymology of this name is, however, unknown. The same name

2852-429: Is a form of human communication in which knowledge, art, ideas and culture are received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. The transmission is through speech or song and may include folktales , ballads , chants , prose or poetry . The information is mentally recorded by oral repositories , sometimes termed "walking libraries", who are usually also performers. Oral tradition

2976-457: Is also a key socio-cultural component in the practice of their traditional spiritualities , as well as mainstream Abrahamic religions . The prioritisation of the spoken word is evidenced by African societies having chosen to record history orally whilst some had developed or had access to a writing script . Jan Vansina differentiates between oral and literate civilisations, stating: "The attitude of members of an oral society toward speech

3100-493: Is distinct from oral history , which is the recording of personal testimony of those who experienced historical eras or events. Oral tradition is also distinct from the study of orality , defined as thought and its verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy (writing and print) are unfamiliar. Folklore is one albeit not the only type of oral tradition. According to John Foley, oral tradition has been an ancient human tradition found in "all corners of

3224-607: Is found in River Churn , which passes through the town (and which, with the addition of the Old English word ēa ('river') in turn gave its name to North Cerney , South Cerney , and Cerney Wick ). As the Celtic languages changed, this name became Proto-Welsh Cerin . This proto-Welsh name was adopted into English in the course of Celtic language-death in England with the addition of

3348-477: Is nearby at Kemble. The town and the surrounding area have several primary schools and two secondary schools , Cirencester Deer Park School on Stroud Road and Cirencester Kingshill School on Kingshill Lane. It also has an independent school, Rendcomb College , catering for 3 to 18-year-olds. The town used to have a 500-year-old grammar school , which in 1966 joined with the secondary modern to form Cirencester Deer Park School . In 1991, Cirencester College

3472-513: Is performed. Furthermore, the climate in which traditions are told influences its content. In Burundi , traditions were short because most of them were told at informal gatherings and everyone had to have his say during the evening; in neighbouring Rwanda , many narratives were spun-out because a one-man professional had to entertain his patron for a whole evening, with every production checked by fellow specialists and errors punishable. Frequently, glosses or commentaries were presented parallel to

3596-449: Is reminiscent of the basilisk . The cerastes is a creature described in Greek mythology as a snake with either two large ram -like horns or four pairs of smaller horns. Isidore of Seville described it as hunting by burying itself in sand while leaving its horns visible, and attacking creatures that came to investigate them. In Mesopotamian mythology, Ningishzida is sometimes depicted as

3720-549: Is similar to the original Brythonic name for the river, and perhaps the settlement. An early Welsh language ecclesiastical list from St David's gives another form of the name Caerceri where Caer is the Welsh for fortress and Ceri is cognate with the other forms of the name. In ninth-century Old Welsh the city was known as Cair Ceri (literally "Fort Ceri"), translated Cirrenceaster , Cirneceaster , or Cyrneceaster ( dative Cirrenceastre , Cirneceastre , Cyrneceastre ) in

3844-532: Is similar to the reverence members of a literate society attach to the written word . If it is hallowed by authority or antiquity, the word will be treasured." For centuries in Europe, all data felt to be important were written down, with the most important texts prioritised, such as Bible , and only trivia, such as song, legend, anecdote, and proverbs remained unrecorded. In Africa, all the principal political, legal, social, and religious texts were transmitted orally. When

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3968-489: Is testified to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the Ṛgveda ( c.  1500 BCE ). Research by Milman Parry and Albert Lord indicates that the verse of the Greek poet Homer has been passed down not by rote memorization but by " oral-formulaic composition ". In this process, extempore composition is aided by use of stock phrases or "formulas" (expressions that are used regularly "under

4092-610: Is the oldest such hall in the West of England. The Salvation Army first met in Cirencester in 1881. To the west of the town is Cirencester Park , the seat of Earl Bathurst and the site of one of the finest landscape gardens in England, laid out by Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl Bathurst after 1714. He inherited the estate from his father, Sir Benjamin Bathurst , a Tory Member of Parliament and statesman who made his wealth from his involvement in

4216-485: Is usually / ˈ s aɪ r ə n s ɛ s t ər / (as it is spelt) or / ˈ s aɪ r ə n s t ər / , although occasionally it is / ˈ s ɪ s ɪ s t ər / , / ˈ s ɪ s ɪ t ər / or / ˈ s ɪ s t ər / . The Church of St. John the Baptist is renowned for its Perpendicular Gothic porch, fan vaults and merchants' tombs. The town also has a Roman Catholic church dedicated to St Peter ;

4340-519: The Bamums in Cameroon invented a script , the first to be written down was the royal chronicle and the code of customary law . Most African courts had archivists who learnt by heart the royal genealogy and history of the state, and served as its unwritten constitution . The performance of a tradition is accentuated and rendered alive by various gesture, social conventions and the unique occasion in which it

4464-742: The Kouyate line of griots . Griots often accompany their telling of oral tradition with a musical instrument, as the Epic of Sundiata is accompanied by the balafon , or as the kora accompanies other traditions. In modern times, some griots and descendants of griots have dropped their historian role and focus on music, with many finding success, however many still maintain their traditional roles. Albanian traditions have been handed down orally across generations. They have been preserved through traditional memory systems that have survived intact into modern times in Albania ,

4588-656: The Lord of the manor . As part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, Henry VIII ordered the total demolition of the Abbey buildings. Today only the Norman Arch and parts of the precinct wall remain above ground, forming the perimeter of a public park in the middle of town. Despite this, the freedom of a borough continued to elude the townspeople, and they only saw the old lord of

4712-667: The M4 Motorway . Kemble Station to the west of the town, distinguished by a sheltered garden, is served by fast trains from Paddington station via Swindon . The passing of the Local Government Act 1894 at last brought into existence the town's first independent elected body, the Cirencester Urban District Council. A reorganisation of local government in 1974 replaced the Urban District Council with

4836-563: The M5 motorway at junction 11A and to the M4 motorway at junctions 15, 17 and 18. Bus operators serving Cirencester include Stagecoach West and Cotswold Green. The latter operates the hourly route 58 circular bus service within Cirencester, connecting the town centre and Stratton . Since Cirencester Watermoor station was closed in 1961 and the Kemble to Cirencester branch line to Cirencester Town station

4960-654: The Mercian king Penda and the West Saxon kings Cynegils and Cwichelm in 628. The minster church of Cirencester, founded in the 9th or 10th century, was probably a royal foundation. It was made over to Augustinian canons in the 12th century and replaced by the great abbey church . At the Norman Conquest the royal manor of Cirencester was granted to the Earl of Hereford , William Fitz-Osbern , but by 1075 it had reverted to

5084-458: The Muscogee people , the Horned Serpent is a type of underwater serpent covered with iridescent, crystalline scales and a single, large crystal in its forehead. Both the scales and crystals are prized for their powers of divination. The horns, called chitto gab-by , were used in medicine. Jackson Lewis, a Muscogee Creek informant to John R. Swanton , said, "This snake lives in the water has horns like

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5208-530: The Old English of the Anglo-Saxons , where ceaster means "fort" or "fortress". The Old English c was pronounced /tʃ/ . The Normans mispronounced the /tʃ/ sound as [ts] , resulting in the modern name Cirencester ( / ˈ s aɪ r ə n s ɛ s t ər / ). The form / ˈ s ɪ s ɪ t ər / , spelled Cirencester or Ciceter , was once used locally. This pronunciation is humorously highlighted in

5332-849: The River Churn , a tributary of the River Thames . It is the eighth largest settlement in Gloucestershire and the largest town within the Cotswolds . It is the home of the Royal Agricultural University , the oldest agricultural college in the English-speaking world , founded in 1840. The town had a population of 20,229 in 2021. The town is 18 miles (29 km) northwest of Swindon , 18 miles (29 km) southeast of Gloucester , 37 miles (60 km) west of Oxford and 39 miles (63 km) northeast of Bristol . The Roman name for

5456-502: The attributes of Allah —all-mighty, all-wise, all-knowing, all-high, etc.—often found as doublets at the end of a verse. Among the other repeated phrases are "Allah created the heavens and the earth" (found 19 times in the Quran). As much as one third of the Quran is made up of "oral formulas", according to Dundes' estimates. Bannister, using a computer database of (the original Arabic) words of

5580-643: The oral word and widespread use of oral tradition. Oral tradition is memories, knowledge, and expression held in common by a group over many generations: it is the long preservation of immediate or contemporaneous testimony . It may be defined as the recall and transmission of specific, preserved textual and cultural knowledge through vocal utterance. Oral tradition is usually popular, and can be exoteric or esoteric . It speaks to people according to their understanding, unveiling itself in accordance with their aptitudes. As an academic discipline , oral tradition refers both to objects and methods of study. It

5704-606: The Bronze Age, Iron Age , and Roman period . The name stem Corin is cognate with Churn (the modern name of the river on which the town is built) and with the stem Cerne in the nearby villages of North Cerney, South Cerney , and Cerney Wick; also on the River Churn. The modern name Cirencester is derived from the cognate root Ciren and the standard -cester ending indicating a Roman fortress or encampment. It seems certain that this name root goes back to pre-Roman times and

5828-415: The Crown. The manor was granted to Cirencester Abbey , founded by Henry I in 1117, and following half a century of building work during which the minster church was demolished, the great abbey church was finally dedicated in 1176. The manor was granted to the Abbey in 1189, although a royal charter dated 1133 speaks of burgesses in the town. The abbots obtained charters in 1215 and 1253 for fairs during

5952-409: The Horned Serpent as recently as 1905. An effigy was fashioned from stuffed deerhide, painted blue, with the antlers painted yellow. The Yuchi Big Turtle Dance honors the Horned Serpent's spirit, which was related to storms, thunder, lightning, disease, and rainbows. Among Cherokee people, a Horned Serpent is called an uktena . Anthropologist James Mooney , describes the creature: Those who know say

6076-518: The Old English word ceaster ('Roman fortification'), and is first attested in this form as Cirenceaster in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (a text which took its present form in the later ninth century). The name also persisted in Welsh, also first being attested in the ninth century, in writings of Asser , in the form Cair Ceri . Cirencester is known to have been an important early Roman area, along with St. Albans and Colchester , and

6200-566: The Qur'anic text was generated." Dundes argues oral-formulaic composition is consistent with "the cultural context of Arabic oral tradition", quoting researchers who have found poetry reciters in the Najd (the region next to where the Quran was revealed) using "a common store of themes, motives, stock images, phraseology and prosodical options", and "a discursive and loosely structured" style "with no fixed beginning or end" and "no established sequence in which

6324-490: The Quran and of their "grammatical role, root, number, person, gender and so forth", estimates that depending on the length of the phrase searched, somewhere between 52% (three word phrases) and 23% (five word phrases) are oral formulas. Dundes reckons his estimates confirm "that the Quran was orally transmitted from its very beginnings". Bannister believes his estimates "provide strong corroborative evidence that oral composition should be seriously considered as we reflect upon how

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6448-569: The Quran from memory, not reading, the predominant mode of teaching it to others. To this day the Quran is memorized by millions and its recitation can be heard throughout the Muslim world from recordings and mosque loudspeakers (during Ramadan ). Muslims state that some who teach memorization/recitation of the Quran constitute the end of an "un-broken chain" whose original teacher was Muhammad himself. It has been argued that "the Qur'an's rhythmic style and eloquent expression make it easy to memorize," and

6572-728: The Uktena asleep is death, not to the hunter himself, but to his family. According to Sioux belief, the Unhcegila ( Ųȟcéǧila ) are dangerous reptilian water monsters which lived in ancient times. They were of various shapes. In the end the Thunderbirds destroyed them, except for small species like snakes and lizards. This belief may have been inspired by finds of dinosaur fossils in Sioux tribal territory. The Thunderbird may have been inspired partly by finds of pterosaur skeletons. The ram-horned serpent

6696-455: The Uktena is a great snake, as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, and a bright blazing crest like a diamond on its forehead, and scales glowing like sparks of fire. It has rings or spots of color along its whole length, and can not be wounded except by shooting in the seventh spot from the head, because under this spot are its heart and its life. The blazing diamond is called Ulun'suti—"Transparent"—and he who can win it may become

6820-508: The Vedangas. Each text was recited in a number of ways, to ensure that the different methods of recitation acted as a cross check on the other. Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat summarizes this as: These extraordinary retention techniques guaranteed an accurate Śruti, fixed across the generations, not just in terms of unaltered word order but also in terms of sound. That these methods have been effective,

6944-406: The abbot and the townspeople continued, with the abbot's privileges confirmed in 1408‑1409 and 1413, and in 1418 the abbot finally removed this thorn in his side when the guild merchant was annulled, and in 1477 parliament declared that Cirencester was not corporate. After several unsuccessful attempts to re-establish the guild merchant, in 1592 the government of the town was vested in the bailiff of

7068-452: The abbot's claims, yet the townspeople remained unwavering in their quest for borough status: in 1342, they lodged a Bill of complaint in Chancery . Twenty townspeople were ordered to Westminster , where they declared under oath that successive abbots had bought up many burgage tenements, and made the borough into an appendage of the manor, depriving it of its separate court. They claimed that

7192-466: The agricultural estate. By 1897 the house was let, and it remained in the occupation of tenants until shortly after the Second World War . It was demolished in 1964. On Cotswold Avenue is the site of a Roman amphitheatre which, while buried, retains its shape in the earthen topography of the small park setting. Cirencester was one of the most substantial cities of Roman-era Britain. The Corn Hall

7316-473: The ancient Greek and Roman civilizations were an exclusive product of an oral tradition. An Irish seanchaí (plural: seanchaithe ), meaning bearer of "old lore" , was a traditional Irish language storyteller (the Scottish Gaelic equivalent being the seanchaidh, anglicised as shanachie). The job of a seanchaí was to serve the head of a lineage by passing information orally from one generation to

7440-518: The capital of Britannia Prima . Some historians would date to this period the pillar erected by the governor Lucius Septimus to the god Jupiter , a local sign of the pagan reaction against Christianity during the principate of Julian the Apostate . The Roman amphitheatre still exists in an area known as the Querns to the south-west of the town, but has only been partially excavated . Investigations in

7564-494: The conquest of Wales , this fort was closed and its fortifications levelled around the year 70, but the town persisted and flourished under the name Corinium. Even in Roman times, there was a thriving wool trade and industry, which contributed to the growth of Corinium. A large forum and basilica were built over the site of the fort, and archaeological evidence shows signs of further civic growth. There are many Roman remains in

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7688-464: The corrupt and uncorrupted hadith, this other source of revelation is not nearly so free of corruption because of the hadith's great political and theological influence.) At least two non-Muslim scholars ( Alan Dundes and Andrew G. Bannister) have examined the possibility that the Quran was not just "recited orally, but actually composed orally". Bannister postulates that some parts of the Quran—such as

7812-529: The country. Harris was also elected to the county council in the 2013 elections, winning the Cirencester Park Division. Cirencester is the hub of a road network with routes to Gloucester ( A417 ), Cheltenham ( A417/A435 ), Warwick ( A429 ), Oxford ( A40 via the B4425 road ), Wantage (A417), Swindon ( A419 ), Chippenham (A429), Bath ( A433 ) and Stroud (A419). Cirencester is connected to

7936-471: The duality either way would be reductionistic. Vansina states: Cirencester Cirencester ( / ˈ s aɪ r ə n s ɛ s t ə r / SY -rən-sest-ər , occasionally / ˈ s ɪ s t ə r / SIST -ər ; see below for more variations) is a market town and civil parish in the Cotswold District of Gloucestershire , England. Cirencester lies on

8060-441: The episodes must follow".{{ref|group=Note|Scholar Saad Sowayan referring to the genre of "Saudi Arabian historical oral narrative genre called suwalif ". The Catholic Church upholds that its teaching contained in its deposit of faith is transmitted not only through scripture , but as well as through sacred tradition . The Second Vatican Council affirmed in Dei verbum that

8184-768: The first by comparing inconsistencies in the transmitted versions of literature from various oral societies such as the Greek, Serbia and other cultures, then noting that the Vedic literature is too consistent and vast to have been composed and transmitted orally across generations, without being written down. In the Middle East, Arabic oral tradition has significantly influenced literary and cultural practices. Arabic oral tradition encompassed various forms of expression, including metrical poetry , unrhymed prose , rhymed prose ( saj' ), and prosimetrum —a combination of prose and poetry often employed in historical narratives. Poetry held

8308-622: The folk epics known as siyar (singular: sīra) were considered the most intricate. These prosimetric narratives, combining prose and verse, emerged in the early Middle Ages. While many such epics circulated historically, only one has survived as a sung oral poetic tradition: Sīrat Banī Hilāl . This epic recounts the westward migration and conquests of the Banu Hilal Bedouin tribe from the 10th to 12th centuries, culminating in their rule over parts of North Africa before their eventual defeat. The historical roots of Sīrat Banī Hilāl are evident in

8432-658: The foundation stone was laid on 20 June 1895. Coxwell Street to the north of Market Square was the original home of the Baptist Church that was founded in 1651, making it one of the oldest Baptist churches in England; the church moved in January 2017 to a new building on Chesterton Lane. The town's Salvation Army hall in Thomas Street occupies the former Temperance Hall built by the Quaker Christopher Bowly in 1846, and

8556-566: The generations. Many forms of recitation or pathas were designed to aid accuracy in recitation and the transmission of the Vedas and other knowledge texts from one generation to the next. All hymns in each Veda were recited in this way; for example, all 1,028 hymns with 10,600 verses of the Rigveda was preserved in this way; as were all other Vedas including the Principal Upanishads , as well as

8680-405: The greatest wonder worker of the tribe. But it is worth a man's life to attempt it, for whoever is seen by the Uktena is so dazed by the bright light that he runs toward the snake instead of trying to escape. As if this were not enough, the breath of the Uktena is so pestilential, that no living creature can survive should they inhale the tiniest bit of the foul air expelled by the Uktena. Even to see

8804-764: The help of elaborate mnemonic techniques : According to Goody, the Vedic texts likely involved both a written and oral tradition, calling it a "parallel products of a literate society". Mostly recently, research shows that oral performance of (written) texts could be a philosophical activity in early China . It is a common knowledge in India that the primary Hindu books called Vedas are great example of Oral tradition. Pundits who memorized three Vedas were called Trivedis. Pundits who memorized four vedas were called Chaturvedis. By transferring knowledge from generation to generation Hindus protected their ancient Mantras in Vedas, which are basically Prose. The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of oral tradition, with

8928-526: The human intellect, and the memory to retain information and sharpen imagination. Perhaps the most famous repository of oral tradition is the west African griot (named differently in different languages). The griot is a hereditary position and exists in Dyula , Soninke , Fula , Hausa , Songhai , Wolof , Serer , and Mossi societies among many others, although more famously in Mandinka society . They constitute

9052-459: The importance of storytelling in preserving Roman history . Valerius Maximus also references oral tradition in Memorable Doings and Sayings (2.1.10). Wiseman argues that celebratory performances served as a vital medium for transmitting Roman history and that such traditions evolved into written forms by the third century CE. He asserts that the history of figures like the house of Tarquin

9176-479: The introduction of text , oral tradition remained the only means of communication in order to establish societies as well as its institutions. Despite widespread comprehension of literacy in the recent century, oral tradition remains the dominant communicative means within the world. All indigenous African societies use oral tradition to learn their origin and history , civic and religious duties, crafts and skills, as well as traditional myths and legends . It

9300-451: The last survivor of the Balkan traditions. "All ancient Greek literature", states Steve Reece, "was to some degree oral in nature, and the earliest literature was completely so". Homer 's epic poetry, states Michael Gagarin, "was largely composed, performed and transmitted orally". As folklores and legends were performed in front of distant audiences, the singers would substitute the names in

9424-664: The lived experience of earthquakes and floods within tribal memory. According to one story from the Suquamish Tribe , Agate Pass was created when an earthquake expanded the channel as a result of an underwater battle between a serpent and bird. Other stories in the region depict the formation of glacial valleys and moraines and the occurrence of landslides, with stories being used in at least one case to identify and date earthquakes that occurred in 900 CE and 1700. Further examples include Arikara origin stories of emergence from an "underworld" of persistent darkness, which may represent

9548-487: The long and short syllables are repeated by certain rules, so that if an error or inadvertent change is made, an internal examination of the verse reveals the problem. Oral traditions can be passed on through plays and acting, as shown in modern-day Cameroon by the Graffis or Grasslanders who perform and deliver speeches to teach their history through oral tradition. Such strategies facilitate transmission of information without

9672-525: The lower dip slopes of the Cotswold Hills , an outcrop of oolitic limestone . Natural drainage is into the River Churn, which flows roughly north to south through the eastern side of the town and joins the River Thames near Cricklade , a little to the south. The Thames itself rises just a few miles west of Cirencester. The town is split into five main areas: the town centre, the village of Stratton ,

9796-527: The manor replaced by a new lord of the manor as the king acquired the abbey's title. Cirencester became a parliamentary borough in 1572, returning two members, although this was deprived of representation in 1885. Sheep rearing, wool sales, weaving and woollen broadcloth and cloth-making were the main strengths of England's trade in the Middle Ages , and not only the abbey but many of Cirencester's merchants and clothiers gained wealth and prosperity from

9920-418: The millennium have taught us anything, it must be that oral tradition never was the other we accused it of being; it never was the primitive, preliminary technology of communication we thought it to be. Rather, if the whole truth is told, oral tradition stands out as the single most dominant communicative technology of our species as both a historical fact and, in many areas still, a contemporary reality. Before

10044-494: The narrative, sometimes answering questions from the audience to ensure understanding, although often someone would learn a tradition without asking their master questions and not really understand the meaning of its content, leading them to speculate in the commentary. Oral traditions only exist when they are told, except for in people's minds, and so the frequency of telling a tradition aids its preservation. These African ethnic groups also utilize oral tradition to develop and train

10168-635: The national and international trade. The tombs of these merchants can be seen in the parish church , while their fine houses of Cotswold stone still stand in and around Coxwell Street and Dollar Street. Their wealth funded the rebuilding of the nave of the parish church in 1515–30, to create the large parish church, often referred to as the "Cathedral of the Cotswolds". Other wool churches can be seen in neighbouring Northleach and Chipping Campden . The English Civil War came to Cirencester in February 1643 when Royalists and Parliamentarians came to blows in

10292-416: The next about Irish folklore and history, particularly in medieval times. The potential for oral transmission of history in ancient Rome is evidenced primarily by Cicero , who discusses the significance of oral tradition in works such as Brutus , Tusculan Disputations , and On The Orator . While Cicero ’s reliance on Cato’s Origines may limit the breadth of his argument, he nonetheless highlights

10416-489: The night of 11 September 1651 in Cirencester, during his escape after the Battle of Worcester on his way to France. At the end of the 18th century, Cirencester was a thriving market town , at the centre of a network of turnpike roads with easy access to markets for its produce of grain and wool. From 1461, Cirencester Grammar School provided a grammar school education for those who could afford it, and businesses thrived in

10540-449: The octaves of All Saints and St Thomas the Martyr, and the significant wool trade gave these great importance. The struggle of the townsmen to gain the rights and privileges of a borough for Cirencester probably began with the grant of 1189, when they were amerced for a false presentment, meaning that they had presented false information. Four inquisitions during the 13th century supported

10664-468: The oldest oral traditions in existence. A basalt stone axe found underneath volcanic ash in 1947 had already proven that humans inhabited the region before the eruption of Tower Hill. Native American society was always reliant upon oral tradition, if not storytelling , in order to convey knowledge, morals and traditions amongst others, a trait Western settlers deemed as representing an inferior race without neither culture nor history, often cited as

10788-405: The oral passing of what had been revealed through Christ through their preaching as teachers. Jan Vansina , who specialised in the history of Central Africa , pioneered the study of oral tradition in his book Oral tradition as history (1985). Vansina differentiates between oral and literate civilisations, depending on whether emphasis is placed on the sanctity of the written or oral word in

10912-530: The overall meaning. In this way, the rules that govern the people are modified by the whole and not authored by a single entity. Ancient texts of Hinduism , Buddhism and Jainism were preserved and transmitted by an oral tradition. For example, the śrutis of Hinduism called the Vedas , the oldest of which trace back to the second millennium BCE. Michael Witzel explains this oral tradition as follows: The Vedic texts were orally composed and transmitted, without

11036-510: The present two-tiers of Cotswold District Council and Cirencester Town Council , sitting below Gloucestershire County Council . Under the patronage of the Bathurst family, the Cirencester area, notably Sapperton , became a major centre for the Arts and Crafts movement in the Cotswolds, when the furniture designer and architect-craftsman Ernest Gimson opened workshops in the early 20th century, and Norman Jewson , his foremost student, practised in

11160-419: The present-day distribution of groups claiming descent from the tribe across North Africa and parts of the Middle East. The epic's development into a cohesive narrative was first documented by the historian Ibn Khaldūn in the 14th century. In his writings, Ibn Khaldūn describes collecting stories and poems from nomadic Arabs, using these oral sources to discuss the merits of colloquial versus classical poetry and

11284-649: The remembrance of life in the Arctic Circle during the last ice age, and stories involving a "deep crevice", which may refer to the Grand Canyon. Despite such examples of agreement between geological and archeological records on one hand and Native oral records on the other, some scholars have cautioned against the historical validity of oral traditions because of their susceptibility to detail alteration over time and lack of precise dates. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act considers oral traditions as

11408-533: The royal charter that conferred on the men of Cirencester the liberties of Winchester had been destroyed 50 years earlier, when the abbot had bribed the burgess who held the charter to give it to him, whereupon the abbot had had it burned. In reply, the abbot refuted these claims, and the case passed on to the King's Bench . When ordered to produce the foundation charter of his abbey the abbot refused, apparently because that document would be fatal to his case, and instead played

11532-586: The same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea"). In the case of the work of Homer, formulas included eos rhododaktylos ("rosy fingered dawn") and oinops pontos ("winedark sea") which fit in a modular fashion into the poetic form (in this case six-colon Greek hexameter). Since the development of this theory, of oral-formulaic composition has been "found in many different time periods and many different cultures", and according to another source (John Miles Foley) "touch[ed] on" over 100 "ancient, medieval and modern traditions." The most recent of

11656-661: The school are now occupied by housing. The Royal Agricultural University campus is between the Stroud and Tetbury Roads. The Sundial Theatre at Cirencester College , the Bingham Hall and the Barn Theatre host drama and musical events by community groups and professional companies. TinkCo (formerly Cirencester Operatic Society and Theatre Ink), Cirencester Philharmonia Orchestra, Cirencester Band, Cirencester Male Voice Choir and Cirencester Creative Dance Academy are also based in

11780-504: The seven re-tellings of the story of the Iblis and Adam , and the repeated phrases "which of the favours of your Lord will you deny?" in sura 55—make more sense addressed to listeners than readers. Banister, Dundes and other scholars (Shabbir Akhtar, Angelika Neuwirth, Islam Dayeh) have also noted the large amount of "formulaic" phraseology in the Quran consistent with " oral-formulaic composition " mentioned above. The most common formulas are

11904-631: The slave trade through the Royal Africa Company and the East India Company . Abbey House was a country house built on the site of the former Cirencester Abbey following its dissolution and demolition at the Reformation in the 1530s. The site was granted in 1564 to Richard Master, physician to Elizabeth I . The house was rebuilt and altered at several dates by the Master family, who still own

12028-677: The solar wheel, apparently as attributes of the sun or sky god. Variations on the horned serpent appear throughout the folklores of Northern and Central Europe. For example, there are the many incarnations of the Lindworm . There are tales of a serpent in Icelandic folklore known as the Lagarfljót Worm . While in Southern Sweden, there are claims of a huge water snake, the sight of which was deadly, called Storsjöodjuret . This latter characteristic

12152-411: The stag. It is not a bad snake. ... It does not harm human beings but seems to have a magnetic power over game." In stories, the Horned Serpent enjoyed eating sumac, Rhus glabra . Alabama people call the Horned Serpent tcinto såktco or "crawfish snake", which they divide into four classifications based on its horns' colors, which can be blue, red, white, or yellow. Yuchi people made effigies of

12276-408: The stories with local characters or rulers to give the stories a local flavor and thus connect with the audience, but making the historicity embedded in the oral tradition unreliable. The lack of surviving texts about the Greek and Roman religious traditions have led scholars to presume that these were ritualistic and transmitted as oral traditions, but some scholars disagree that the complex rituals in

12400-419: The storyteller's objective at the time. One's rendition of a story was often considered a response to another's rendition, with plot alterations suggesting alternative ways of applying traditional ideas to present conditions. Listeners might have heard the story told many times, or even may have told the same story themselves. This does not take away from a story's meaning, as curiosity about what happens next

12524-563: The streets. Over 300 were killed, and 1,200 prisoners were held captive in the church. The townsfolk supported the Parliamentarians but gentry and clergy were for the old order, so that when Charles I of England was executed in 1649 the minister, Alexander Gregory, wrote on behalf of the gentry in the parish register, "O England what did'st thou do, the 30th of this month". At the end of the English Civil War, King Charles II spent

12648-454: The suburb of Chesterton (originally a village outside the town), Watermoor and The Beeches . The village of Siddington to the south of the town is now almost contiguous with Watermoor. Other suburbs include Bowling Green and New Mills. The area and population of these five electoral wards are identical to that quoted above. The town serves as a centre for surrounding villages, providing employment, amenities, shops, commerce and education; it

12772-536: The surrounding area, including several Roman villas near the villages of Chedworth and Withington . When a wall was built around the Roman city in the late 2nd century, it enclosed 240 acres (1 km²), making Corinium the second-largest city by area in Britain . The details of the provinces of Britain following the Diocletian Reforms around 296 remain unclear, but Corinium is now generally thought to have been

12896-476: The teachings of Jesus Christ were initially passed on to early Christians by "the Apostles who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by observance handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with Him, and from what He did". The Catholic Church asserts that this mode of transmission of the faith persists through current-day bishops , who by right of apostolic succession , have continued

13020-502: The town includes evidence of significant area roadworks. The Romans built a fort where the Fosse Way crossed the Churn, to hold two quingenary alae tasked with helping to defend the provincial frontier around AD 49, and native Dobunni were drawn from Bagendon , a settlement 3 miles (5 km) to the north, to create a civil settlement near the fort. When the frontier moved to the north after

13144-525: The town show that it was fortified in the 5th or 6th centuries. Andrew Breeze argued that Gildas received his later education in Cirencester in the early 6th century, showing that it was still able to provide an education in Latin rhetoric and law at that time. Possibly this was the palace of one of the British kings defeated by Ceawlin in 577. It was later the scene of the Battle of Cirencester , this time between

13268-558: The town was Corinium , which is thought to have been associated with the ancient British tribe of the Dobunni , having the same root word as the River Churn. The earliest known reference to the town was by Ptolemy in AD 150. The town's Corinium Museum has an extensive Roman collection. Cirencester is twinned with the town of Itzehoe , in the Steinburg region of Germany. Cirencester lies on

13392-576: The town, which was the market town for the surrounding area. In 1789, the opening of the Cirencester Branch of the Thames and Severn Canal provided access to markets further afield, by way of a link through the River Thames. In 1841, a branch railway line was opened to Kemble to provide a link to the Great Western Railway at Swindon . The Midland and South Western Junction Railway opened

13516-419: The town. In the 21st century, a concerted effort to reduce overhead wiring and roadside clutter has given the town some picturesque street scenes. Many shops cater to tourists and many house family businesses. A 3,500 year old Bronze Age spear was found in 2022 during landscaping at a Thames Water sewage works. Archaeologists also uncovered prehistoric pottery fragments, flint tools, and animal bones from

13640-650: The use of script, in an unbroken line of transmission from teacher to student that was formalized early on. This ensured an impeccable textual transmission superior to the classical texts of other cultures; it is, in fact, something like a tape-recording ... Not just the actual words, but even the long-lost musical (tonal) accent (as in old Greek or in Japanese) has been preserved up to the present. Ancient Indians developed techniques for listening, memorization and recitation of their knowledge, in schools called Gurukul , while maintaining exceptional accuracy of their knowledge across

13764-661: The value of oral histories in written historical works. The Torah and other ancient Jewish literature, the Judeo-Christian Bible and texts of early centuries of Christianity are rooted in an oral tradition, and the term "People of the Book" is a medieval construct. This is evidenced, for example, by the multiple scriptural statements by Paul admitting "previously remembered tradition which he received" orally. Australian Aboriginal culture has thrived on oral traditions and oral histories passed down through thousands of years. In

13888-440: The world". Modern archaeology has been unveiling evidence of the human efforts to preserve and transmit arts and knowledge that depended completely or partially on an oral tradition, across various cultures: The Judeo-Christian Bible reveals its oral traditional roots; medieval European manuscripts are penned by performing scribes; geometric vases from archaic Greece mirror Homer's oral style. (...) Indeed, if these final decades of

14012-453: The world's major religions, Islam claims two major sources of divine revelation—the Quran and hadith —compiled in written form relatively shortly after being revealed: The oral milieu in which the sources were revealed, and their oral form in general are important. The Arab poetry that preceded the Quran and the hadith were orally transmitted. Few Arabs were literate at the time and paper

14136-534: Was carved on the rocks in Val Camonica . A bronze statuette called the God of Étang-sur-Arroux and a stone sculpture from Sommerécourt depict Cernunnos' body encircled by two horned snakes which feed from bowls of fruit and corn-mash balanced in the god's lap. Also at Sommerécourt is a sculpture of a goddess holding a cornucopia and a pomegranate, with a horned serpent eating from a bowl of food. At Yzeures-sur-Creuse

14260-570: Was a cult image found in north-west Europe before and during the Roman period. It appears three times on the Gundestrup cauldron , and in Romano-Celtic Gaul was closely associated with the horned or antlered god Cernunnos , in whose company it is regularly depicted. This pairing is found as early as the fourth century BC in Northern Italy, where a huge antlered figure with torcs and a serpent

14384-425: Was closed to passengers in 1964, the town has been without its own station. The nearest station is now at Kemble , 3.7 miles (6 km) away. It is served by regular Great Western Railway trains between London Paddington and Gloucester . There is an active campaign to restore the line from Kemble to Cirencester. The nearest international airport is Bristol . A general aviation airport, Cotswold Airport ,

14508-474: Was created, taking over the joint sixth form of Cirencester Deer Park and Cirencester Kingshill schools and the Cirencester site of Stroud College ; it is adjacent to Deer Park School on Stroud Road. Until 1994 the town had a private preparatory school, Oakley Hall. Run in its later years by the Letts family, it closed in 1994 shortly after the retirement of R F B Letts who had led the school since 1962. The grounds of

14632-588: Was designed by Medland, Maberly and Medland and completed in 1863. Before 1974 the town was administered by Cirencester Urban District Council, which was initially based in the upper floors of the south porch of the Church of St. John the Baptist. The council moved to offices in Castle Street in 1897 and to offices in Gosditch Street in 1932. In the 1974 reorganisation of local government, the urban district council

14756-472: Was known for his justification of the oral tradition and criticism of the written word. Stories are used to preserve and transmit both tribal history and environmental history, which are often closely linked. Native oral traditions in the Pacific Northwest, for example, describe natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis. Various cultures from Vancouver Island and Washington have stories describing

14880-434: Was less of a priority than hearing fresh perspectives on well-known themes and plots. Elder storytellers generally were not concerned with discrepancies between their version of historical events and neighboring tribes' version of similar events, such as in origin stories. Tribal stories are considered valid within the tribe's own frame of reference and tribal experience. The 19th century Oglala Lakota tribal member Four Guns

15004-451: Was likely passed down through oral storytelling for centuries before being recorded in literature. Although Flower critiques the lack of ancient evidence supporting Wiseman's broader claims, Wiseman maintains that dramatic narratives fundamentally shaped historiography. In Asia, the transmission of folklore, mythologies as well as scriptures in ancient India, in different Indian religions, was by oral tradition, preserved with precision with

15128-475: Was made so to facilitate the "preservation and remembrance" of the work. Islamic doctrine holds that from the time it was revealed to the present day, the Quran has not been altered, its continuity from divine revelation to its current written form insured by the large numbers of Muhammad's supporters who had reverently memorized the work, a careful compiling process and divine intervention. (Muslim scholars agree that although scholars have worked hard to separate

15252-483: Was not available in the Middle East. The written Quran is said to have been created in part through memorization by Muhammad's companions , and the decision to create a standard written work is said to have come after the death in battle ( Yamama ) of a large number of Muslims who had memorized the work. For centuries, copies of the Qurans were transcribed by hand, not printed, and their scarcity and expense made reciting

15376-461: Was replaced by the new Cotswold District Council and Cirencester Town Council was created as the first tier of local government. The Liberal Democrats won all of the eight available Cirencester seats on Cotswold District Council in May 2013. Liberal Democrat candidate Joe Harris, aged 18, was elected to the district council for Cirencester Park Ward in May 2011, and became the youngest councillor in

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