In Brethna tradition, to speak a truth in verse was to author law. Legal legitimacy came not from written text or signatures, but from who could recite, who remembered, and who was remembered. This post explores oral authorship as legal authority, and why colonial systems erased it as illegitimate.
Poetry Held Legal Weight
Legal records were preserved in poetic form—not for art’s sake, but for fidelity. Structured verse enabled accurate memory, easier transmission, and communal verification. If the lines were known and stable, the law they carried was trusted. Rhythm made truth resilient.
To Be Quoted Was to Be Cited
Poets and jurists didn’t claim originality. They claimed lineage. To say "as spoken by" or "as remembered from" was authorship. Repetition didn’t dilute meaning—it sharpened it. This chain of quotation preserved the sovereign voice of the original speaker within a lineage of recall.
Because It Couldn’t Be Owned
Colonial systems required fixed authorship and exclusive rights. Oral law, with its collective authorship and ritual memory, disrupted these categories. A poem that many could recite became illegible as property. So it was deemed primitive—or ignored altogether.
What If Citation Meant Remembering Together?
Brethna authorship asks us to imagine a protocol layer where memory itself is the citation system. Where repetition maintains legitimacy. Where oral circulation can authenticate a rule more robustly than signatures or smart contracts. Recital becomes ledger. Memory becomes proof.