Throughout history, and around the entire world, people have preserved and transmitted their shared wisdom in the form of tales, anecdotes, proverbs, jokes, and symbolically laden ritual practices. These cultural devices are highly condensed formulae for interpreting and evaluating people and events, and for justifying expected modes of behavior. In the terms of Emile Durkheim, the famous turn-of-the-century French social scientist, the contents of these devices constitute some of the most important “collective representations” of a people. They manifest a shared consciousness.

An ox cart plodding through the outskirts of Susurluk

Historically, a people’s oral literature and ritual practices have illustrated, in symbolic form, their solutions to universal ethical and practical problems. In the past especially, when most of the world’s population was illiterate, oral folklore and ritual were the efficient means by which new generations learned the kernels of wisdom arrived at by their ancestors.

During the early 1970s, I collected samples of this folk tradition from Turkish peasants and townspeople in the district and town of Susurluk, located in the Balikesir province of northwestern Anatolia. This area has a cultural tradition that evolved out of a rich history of diverse peoples and civilizations.

Present-day Balikesir and Susurluk are located in the ancient land of Mysia, named after a people that the Greek geographer Strabo said dressed in deerskins and spoke a mixture of Lydian and Phrygian.