Oral-Formulaic Theory: Annotated Bibliography

Kenneth A. Thigpen, Jr. "A Reconsideration of the Commonplace Phrase and Commonplace Theme in the Child Ballads." Southern Folklore Quarterly, 37:385-408.

After a brief review of scholarship on recurrent phrases and themes, he analyzes the repertoires of four women from the Scottish community of Kilbarchan to test the applicability of Parry-Lord theory to the oral ballad. Finds that the idea of the commonplace must be radically changed, since some loci communes are specific to one singer, or one song, or more rarely one region. Sees the ballads as oral-formulaic only in a limited sense, since a given singer's text tends to stabilize over time: "the technique of the early singers of the English and Scottish popular ballads was mainly memorization, infused sporadically with creative variation which resulted from both conscious improvisation and from the need to fill in blanks due to faulty memorization" (408).
Area: FB, BR