“That’s what Granny told me!”: Oral Media Preserving Culture, History, And Perspective During Times of Illiteracy and Oppression

Molly Powers, '26

Issue: 111

Whole-society literacy has not long been a common thing. In European history, many populations – almost always at the lower socioeconomic level in a society – have been unable to read or write, and thus were unable to record their version of history. This is the reason why we so rarely get first person accounts from peasants, slaves, or serfs. Public education did not rise in Europe until the 19th century, so, naturally, the classes that couldn’t afford private education wound up illiterate.[1] The problem with this mass illiteracy is that historians today only have access to half of history: that of the educated and wealthy who are so often prejudiced against the other, illiterate half. The 1524-1525 German Peasants’ War, for example, was recorded almost entirely by those against whom the peasants were revolting: the nobles and select clergy.[2] As expected, there are barely any written accounts from a peasant or someone else suffering with the peasants. Illiterate or otherwise oppressed populations throughout history have managed to preserve their beliefs, accounts, and opinions of events through stories, songs, legends, and folklore. Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel”[3] and Perrault’s “Little Thumb”[4] are examples of such preservations, as they were both derived from local folklore dating back to the 14th century. Even in the twenty-first century, these stories give impressively cohesive accounts of events that happened near millennia ago.[5]

In addition to preserving a population’s story over generations, oral histories can survive through periods of oppression and cultural subjugation, where written history might be destroyed and lost. The burning of books in Nazi Germany, which erased written Jewish ideas across Europe, attempted to stifle Jewish importance and experience in history.[6] The Holocaust attempted to further oppress and kill Jewry in Europe. Despite these erasures, the Jews still managed to pass down their experiences and history from before and during the Holocaust, simply by remembering these accounts and telling them to the later generations, some of whom wrote it down. Oral media can carry history through periods of erasure or preserve it until it can be written down. While written history is definitely a safer choice, creating written accounts is sometimes not possible for people, such as illiterate peasants or subjugated prisoners, who have a history to tell. Oral history, on the other hand, can carry a population’s story and culture through periods of oppression, cultural erasure, or simple illiteracy. For these reasons, oral tradition should not be dismissed as immediately unreliable; in reality, it is an important tool to maintain cultural and regional identity.[7]

Folklore, or other stories mothers tell their children for generations, is an important tool for preserving the experience of a group centuries prior. These stories also contribute to a region’s cultural identity, cementing in place a distinct culture lasting for centuries. The Grimm brothers, as one example, collected these folktales from all around modern day Germany – collecting oral stories that had been passed down for generations – and compiled them into one written collection of stories: Children’s and Household Tales.[8] Many of these stories still exist and are loved today – “Snow White,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” and “Hansel and Gretel,” to name a few – but many people do not realize that each story is a window into a real event that happened centuries ago.[9]

The original Grimm version of “Hansel and Gretel” is a story of two children whose parents did not have enough money or food to feed the entire family. While the father is more sympathetic to the children, the mother believes they should lead the children deep into the forest and then leave them there to die – all so the household would have fewer mouths to feed. The father leaves them deep in the forest, and the children eventually end up at an old witch’s cottage, where the witch lures them in and tries to fatten them up for her to eat. The children escape – having killed the witch – and bring back her fortune to their parents so they’ll never go hungry again.[10] While stories like this sometimes have happy endings, it's typically because they were first told to children, who usually do not appreciate hearing real world events with their usually gruesome endings. The historical part of the story can usually be found in the initial context – that same context which the original storytellers would have been experiencing in the first place. The fiction comes from the outcome of the story, the parts dreamt up by the original storytellers, who no doubt wish they had stumbled across a whole house of bread and a witch’s fortune.[11]

“Hansel and Gretel” was a common German story for centuries, and while it may seem complete fiction, the story has its origins in the Great Famine of 1315 – a famine so bad (and often overshadowed by the Black Death, which followed soon after) that there were accounts of cannibalism and parents killing their children.[12][13] Of course, this famine was no doubt also experienced by the nobles, of whom the few literate ones recorded their accounts of it,[14] but the undoubtedly more far-reaching accounts of the event are found in stories like “Hansel and Gretel.”

Oftentimes, the events that cause folklore to spring up are so wide-reaching that multiple stories are preserved, resulting in a collection of stories that all have similar contexts, themes, and morals. This collection of stories only preserves the account further and makes it more far-reaching. “Hansel and Gretel,” for example, is not unique. The Grimm brothers and other compilers like them recorded several other folktales with similar starting contexts, many of which have origins in the Great Famine of 1315 alongside “Hansel and Gretel.”[15] Perrault’s “Little Thumb” is one such tale.[16][17][18] The mother in this story, who advocates for the children, objects to the father’s decision to leave them in the woods the next day. Little Thumb overhears this argument, and early the next morning, he grabs a pocket full of white stones with which to line their path, much like Hansel.[19] The father leaves them, and a few days after they find their way back home, they are led into the forest once more. This time, Little Thumb lines their path with breadcrumbs, and they are not able to find their way back home. Instead, they stumble upon the cottage of a “cruel ogre who eats up little children.”[20] The ogre’s wife lets them stay, and the ogre decides to eat them in the morning, but they escape and Little Thumb steals a pair of boots that allow him to run very fast, bringing him and his family a great fortune (and food) by the end of the story.[21]

There are clear parallels between the story of “Little Thumb” and “Hansel and Gretel”: both stories include parents who cannot afford to feed their children and thus decide to leave them in the woods to die, both sets of children end up imprisoned in the home of some sort of monster (either a witch or an ogre) who wants to eat them, and both stories end with the children bringing back great fortune and saving their family from the famine. Both stories emphasize the desperation of the families (even the witch and the ogre) for food and the measures people will take simply because the famine is so bad – eating little children or leaving their own to die. The Grimm brothers (who were German and collected their folktales from around the German states) published “Hansel and Gretel” in their first edition of fairy tales in 1812.[22] “Little Thumb,” on the other hand, was published in Charles Perrault’s (a French folklorist, collecting his stories from around France) collection of stories in 1697.[23] The fact that two culturally separate regions each have their own version of the same tale suggests that both stories stem from a common historical event, such as the Great Famine of 1315, which affected both areas.[24]

From this duality, it is clear that the peasant populations of both Germany and France preserved the history of the Great Famine in a way that the world was sure to never forget – through folklore and oral history.[25] Through folktales like “Little Thumb” and “Hansel and Gretel,” oral history does not just contribute to the culture and identity of a region, but it also provides a region with access to the accounts of the ‘little people’ who lived centuries before. The literacy rate for the German region is estimated at about 5% in the early 16th century, so there is no doubt that the oral preservation and circulation of “Hansel and Gretel” is what allows people worldwide to still learn about the experiences that those original storytellers went through, despite them being illiterate.[26] Additionally, the preservation of the peasants’ history of the Great Famine – via folk tales like “Hansel and Gretel” and “Little Thumb” – contributes to the culture of that region, which can be preserved for centuries by storytelling over generations. The original written accounts of the Famine, on the other hand, do not contribute to the culture of the region: they are stowed in a library and only referenced when historians deign to look at them. The oral preservation of these events is what allows them to still be recognized and understood by society today. This understanding would not have happened if the only surviving accounts of the events came from someone who didn’t actually experience them.

The oral preservation of history and culture via folklore is not limited to just Germany. In Finland, a country that, by 1880, had only a 12% literacy rate, the oral accounts of their history played an incredibly important role in preserving their tradition, mythology, and culture during centuries of subjugation (under Swedish or Russian control) and illiteracy.[27] Despite these obstacles, and thanks to their oral history, the Finns understood their past, with some preserved oral histories dating as far back as before the year 1000, in Pagan times. These oral accounts were preserved for centuries through poems, songs, stories, and folklore, and then compiled by Charles Lönnrot (though they had been recorded before, he is the most celebrated example) in the early 1800s.[28] In his preface to the Kalevala, Lönnrot states that, “In the year 1828, [Lönnrot] travelled as far as Kajan, collecting poems and songs of the Finnish people, sitting by the fireside of the aged, rowing on the lakes with the fishermen, and following the flocks with the shepherds.”[29] Lönnrot’s gathering of these Finnish folktales is much like the Grimm brothers’ – he gathered the poems and songs from ordinary Finns who grew up around them (and likely were not able to write them down themselves), and then he wrote the stories down and organized them into one complete work.[30] One slight difference between Lönnrot and the Grimms is that Lönnrot used all of the collected folk tales as parts of one continuous story: the Kalevala. The Kalevala is the Finnish story of creation and all life afterwards, but it has roots deep in ancient Finnish mythology and Paganism, with many of its accounts dating from before the Christianization of Finland.[31] It tells the story of a group of mythological Finns who go on various adventures and are fighting against Pohjola, a region in the north, typically representing Sweden or Russia, ruled by a witch. The Sampo, a mill that can generate unlimited wealth, is one of the main objectives in the story, and the characters all wish to get it back from Pohjola. The Kalevala ends with a transition from Paganism to Christianity, symbolized by Marjetta’s (the Finnish name for Mary) virgin birth and the rejection of the main character Väinämöinen (who represents Paganism from the beginning of the book, as he is a Pagan himself).[32] 

Because the story was written down and strung together by Lönnrot, Finns today have access to their own account of their history, culture, and tradition, preserved orally by their ancestors. The Kalevala wouldn’t have come together without oral history having preserved ancient Finnish mythology, and, without the Kalevala, Finland would be lacking an important symbol of its cultural identity and individuality apart from Sweden and Russia. Published first in 1835, the Kalevala still remains the most prominent symbol of Finnish cultural identity.[33] The day it was published is still celebrated annually on February 28th as the ‘Day of the Finnish Culture.’ Each year on February 28th, there are festivities to celebrate traditional Finnish art, music, poetry, and culture.[34] The Kalevala also brought in the Finnish nationalist era by being the first example of a prominent written work in Finnish, bringing in a sense of national identity and pride.[35] By reminding Finns of the culture and perspective unique to them throughout history, the saga helped usher in a desire for Finnish independence.[36] In 1863, Finnish officially became the national language, which only helped spur on the nationalist era. In 1899, shortly after the Kalevala’s rise to popularity – with Finnish nationalism coming to an all-time high – Russia introduced its policy of Russification, aiming to assimilate Finland into Russia.[37] Only 18 years later, following the Russian Revolution, Finland finally broke away from Russia and declared its independence.[38] Because the Kalevala existed to encourage traditional Finnish culture and customs, the country was able to develop enough of its own identity and individuality, eventually allowing it to become independent. The Kalevala would not have come to fruition without well-preserved oral history, showing just how big a role oral traditions play in establishing culture and preserving identity.

In addition to preserving the culture of a nation, oral storytelling and song often preserved the experiences of those excluded from written history, such as peasants, serfs, or other laborers. This phenomenon was especially true during periods of rebellion or societal upheaval, like during the German Peasants’ War of 1524–1525. In the early 16th century, the German states had a total population literacy rate of 5%, which was mostly nobility and a few clergy, but very few peasants.[39] The social instability brought on by the Reformation less than a decade prior had made the nobles – becoming increasingly wary of the peasants – raise rents and taxes, as well as be generally more hostile.[40] Naturally, the peasants, spurred on by the jarring message of the Reformation to break away from the organizations (the church, mainly) that had held power over them for centuries, were quick to revolt. The vast majority of the written accounts of the German Peasants’ War were written down by the clergy or nobility, and many of the accounts were biased against the peasants, representing them as inhuman or barbarians. Such is one account from Martin Luther: “Thereby [the peasants] become the greatest blasphemers and violators of God's holy name, and serve and honor the devil under the semblance of the gospel, so that they have ten times deserved death of body and soul, for never have I heard of uglier sins.”[41] The few exceptions for peasant-sided accounts of the revolt would include those of Müntzer or Zwingli, but there is no doubt that there are more written accounts of the revolt from those biased towards the nobility.[42] The peasants, being illiterate and largely unable to preserve their viewpoint of the event through written media, still managed to pass their story on for generations following, via oral history and other songs. There are multiple examples of preserved peasant songs from the time, and likely even more that are not yet written down. Many of these songs talk about the desire for equal rights and opportunities for the peasants, topics rarely mentioned in the nobility’s accounts. One such 1525 peasant song goes:

No more hard mattress nor hunger for me,
No more will I be a serf
In bondage, slaving without any rights.
I am poor Conrad.
Equal laws — that's what we want —
For prince and beggar alike.
Heiho, I am poor Conrad.[43]

Or another unnamed peasant song from 1530, with lyrics: “Many poor people are crying for bread,” and “Tomorrow the fighting will begin.”[44] These songs give a unique perspective to the revolt, and without them, history would be lacking a vital viewpoint of the war. Despite facing mass illiteracy and social oppression, the peasants and serfs managed to preserve their history and perspective orally through song, which allows their descendants – as well as historians – to understand their situation five centuries later.

Similar to how the peasants preserved their side of the war using song, Scottish border ballads provide insight into how a culture can preserve its narratives of fights with neighbors. Unlike with the Peasants’ War, these border ballads are about two distinct cultures fighting against each other: the English and the Scottish.[45] The Border Wars were a series of fights and other skirmishes that happened along the English-Scottish border between the 14th and 17th centuries.[46] The traditional Scottish ballad was often used to recount events like these and, as it is typically sung, is an example of oral history preserving accounts and perspectives regarding the battle for centuries to come, as well as adding to the identity and culture of a region. One notable example of a pair of border ballads is the “The Battle of Otterburn” and the “Ballad of Chevy Chase,” which recounts the Scottish and English perspectives (respectively) of the 1388 fight.[47][48] In this battle, Douglas, a Scottish Earl, fights against Lord Percy, an Englishman. The battle was bloody, and while the English outnumbered the Scots three to one, there were an estimated 1,860 English deaths, while only 100 Scottish ones (this figure is debated but still, it is much lower than that of the English).[49] The ballads, however, both record the fight between Lord Percy (a leader of the English) and Earl Douglas (the leader of the Scots). They differ in language, details, and events, showing that they are two separate ballads recounting the same event: one displaying the sentiments of the English, and the other of the Scots.[50][51] For example, the English ballad recounts Earl Percy defiantly standing up to Earl Douglas: “I will not yield to any Scot\That ever yet was born!”[52] In the Scottish ballad, on the other hand, Earl Percy is recorded to have said that he would yield to Earl Douglas: “But I would yield to Earl Douglas, Or Sir Hugh Montgomery, if he were here.”[53] Sir Hugh Montgomery is a Scottish knight who kills Lord Percy in both ballads, but the English ballad never mentions Percy’s surrender to him, only that he was killed suddenly with Montgomery’s “hateful spear.”[54] These ballads provide English and Scottish perspectives on the fight, and both still contribute to the culture and pride of the surrounding regions today.[55][56]

Another prominent – and more modern – example of culture and history being preserved orally during times of oppression can be found in interviews with Holocaust survivors, of which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has compiled over 50,000.[57] The Holocaust was a Jewish genocide and left many of its survivors too traumatized to immediately write down their experiences, leaving many firsthand accounts to be kept in memory or, eventually, given in an oral interview.[58]

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