Oral tradition as a Chain of Testimonies

When I outline how I would set about describing the special nature of oral tradition as a historical source, the task assigned to this chapter was that of defining oral tradition and of examining the feature which this definition specifies as characteristic., namely, transmission by word of mouth—the natural consequence of which is that a tradition is a chain of testimonies. Then three problems are dealt with in greater detail in the sections which follow. These are: the relation between each testimony and the tradition as a whole, the methods of transmission, and finally the kind of distortions that may arise in the course of transmission.