Long before they were written down in booklets, these ketzai songs were being sung and revised by whoever sang them - adding a line here, pulling a stanza there. Constantly being refined, ketzai came to more and more reflect how people of that age lived and felt.
這些歌仔，早在歌仔成冊之前，就由老百姓口耳傳唱，你加一句、我刪一段，歌仔也就越來越精煉，越來越能反映時人的生活感受。