The Trustworthiness of Oral Tradition

A disturbing proof of the capacity of oral literature to keep entire texts unaltered over millennia consists in this incantation, gathered at the end of the previous [nineteenth] century in Oltenia [south-western Romania], and which is identical with the one cited by Marcellus Empiricus fifteen centuries earlier:

Original Latin	Romanian version	English translation of both
Pastores te invenerunt Sine manibus colligerunt Sine foco coxerunt Sine dentibus comederunt	Ciobanasii te aflara Fara maini te culesera Fara foc te fripsera Fara gura te mancara	Shepherds found you Without hands they plucked you Without fire they fried you Without mouth they ate you

Alexandru Diaconescu, Rhetorical Discourse on the Original Spirit of the Romanians,
Interval magazine, No. 3/1990, page 29.