Ong's Interesting Insights

When asked to find a passage in the Ong book that surprised/intrigued me, I was drawn to the following portion of the text:

Without a text, how could a given hymn...be stabilized word for word, and over that many generations ?

As I read this, I thought of the little sing-song games that we all used to play when we were little. "Miss Mary Mack," the one about "Judy had a steam boat the steamboat had a bell...", all those little cheerleading ditties, "Cinderella dressed in yella, went upstairs to kiss her fella"...the list (of course) goes on. I'm fairly certain that these (seemingly) meaningless songs were never written down and studied in order that we all learn them. We memorized them through an oral community of kids and they have stuck with us. I think it's really interesting that although these words are not "cemented" in text, we will always correct each other if some one happens to make a mistake in his rendition of one of these songs. Unless a text is written down and acknowledged as the "right" version, I think that all interpretations are valid. Some would disagree but it seems that in orality there is a flexibility that is not present in literacy.