Oral Tales of Mongolian Bards

The project Oral Tales of Mongolian Bards is devoted to the internet publication of eighteen oral tales performed by bards of eastern Inner Mongolia, including four epic poems and fourteen tales based on Chinese adventure novels, known as qughur-un uliger - tales of the fiddles, viz. tales accompanied by the music of the four-stringed fiddle (qughur, huur). The tales form a portion of a large collection of tales, oral histories of bards, and ritual songs of Qorchin (Horchin) Mongol shamans. The collection is currently preserved at the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts in Duesseldorf. Eleven of the tales are provided with long English summaries, five of them with commentaries, while seven tales are made available with short summaries. As to how the tales became a collection, in 1984, 1986, 1991, and 1995, the late Professor Walther Heissig, the distinguished Mongolist of Bonn University, recorded part of the tales on tape from the oral performance of bards (qughurchi, the fiddle player) in different regions of eastern Inner Mongolia.