A question for my more knowledgeable friends

[eveglass]

Consider a bard from a culture with an oral tradition (medieval, Norse, Celtic, whatever). How much material, either measured in lines or duration, do you think this person would have known?

Just curious.

Comments

[eveglass.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info.

The "well over a hundred four-line stanzas" doesn't surprise me at all. I wrote and memorized a 150-line poem in slightly under a week. Assuming I could keep that rate up for extended periods of time (doubtful, but possible if it was my full-time job), I could memorize nearly 2,000 4-line stanzas in a year.

As a comparison, Beowulf is 3182 lines long. If I could keep up my 150-lines a week rate, I could theoretically have it memorized in under half a year. (Of course, it would take about two and a half hour to recite it, but what else are you going to do on cold Medieval nights in the middle of nowhere?)

Just thinking out loud...