The verb has participles and tenses, which have many modifications of meaning with no equivalent except an entire sentence in English. In narration, there is an extraordinarily graphic past, not adequately rendered by “When So-and-So lived;” [[182]]but “in So-and-So’s own time of being in the world.” There are impersonal verbs, and irregular verbs, and all sorts of particles; potential (I can do a thing), optative (I wish to do it), negative (I do not do it), the proper “sorting out” of which is half the battle of learning Eskimo. Time is expressed by time particles placed between the verb and the verbal termination; there are also verbal and adverbial particles which have fixed rules as to position, always preceding the time particle. Thus, a word may be elaborated, such as Tikkenarsuakpok, “He-endeavours-to-arrive,” or Tikkenarsuatsinakpok, “He-endeavours-always-to-arrive;” and “I-indeed-hear-you,” or “I-indeed-hear-only-you.”
It would be perhaps superfluous to offer further notes on the Eskimo tongue, since the foregoing will suffice to give some idea of its scope and complexity. The syntax falls under two headings, the formation of compound words and the arrangement of these into sentences. The position of words in a sentence, particularly a short one, may be changed without altering the sense. It is no part of the present writer’s purpose to do more, here, than to sketch the briefest outline of one whole section of his subject. To do justice to this language would require very considerable space. Again, there is no particular object in adding a chart of the syllabic characters, which are purely arbitrary, have no history beyond that already given, and belong in no sense to the genius of the Eskimo themselves. The only recommendation they [[183]]might have—if the general reader could pronounce them—is that they far more nearly give the sounds of what is really a flowing and not unmusical tongue than the barbaric conglomeration of outlandish consonants and double vowels which, as a poor expedient, represent to the eye only, Eskimo words in our inadequate letters. It is for this reason that we have so often given, in the foregoing pages, only the translation and not the Eskimo words themselves. In Roman characters they convey a hideous idea to the eye, and a still worse idea to the ear.
It is for the future to reveal whether or no the newly found gift of writing will lead these people on to extensive literature. The Moravians have published some well known books, such as “Christie’s Old Organ,” etc. If so, by the analogy of every literature in the world, it will begin with verse, by the enshrining of the folk tales immemorially dear to every nation, and by the composition of some sort of Eskimo saga. The Greenland Eskimos composed long songs in honour of Fridtjof Nansen before he took leave of them, after the first crossing of their icy continent. It may be that these Eskimo poems, printed in his book, together with Dr. Rink’s collection of “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” and Dr. Boas’ similar collection of the fables of this people (“The Central Eskimo”) and the present writer’s contribution to the same subject, constitute so far the bulk of the offering made by these children of the arctic to the literature of mankind. [[184]]
CHAPTER XIII
Legends
There exists among the Baffin Islanders, as among all the other tribes, one long consecutive legend in particular, which should rank, if not with the great Scandinavian and Icelandic Sagas beloved of William Morris and of Wagner, at least with some of the most picturesque of Grimm’s immortal fairy tales, and certainly with any of the strange and monstrous legends of Kalevala, the Finnish cycle of national song.
Students of national story-telling will probably find analogies and relationships between the Eskimo story of “Sedna” and the characteristic folk tales of the other arctic or sub-arctic peoples east and west. “Sedna” is beguiled into marriage by a gallant hunter who is really not a man at all, but a sea bird. This sort of tragedy, or disillusionment, is common in Eskimo fable. In one Alaskan-Eskimo tale, the heroine marries the human semblance of a bear.
The Sedna legend—a religious legend around which turns a large volume of Eskimo superstition—has its repulsive as well as its poetic aspects. But to one who has lived intimately with these people, it would [[185]]seem that so strange and awesome a story of the wild north as the tragedy and death of Sedna should be set, in song, to the metre of Kalevala and Hiawatha. It is the metre of a child-like version of adventures happening to a child-like folk.
Belief in this legend, in the existence and the power of Sedna, a maleficent sea-goddess of the underworld, forms a large part of the Eskimo religion, and the annual autumnal festival arising out of it is the principal celebration in their calendar. In connection with this phantasy, it is noteworthy that the Eskimo conception of the spirit of evil—or at least of hostility to man—is unlike that of any other nation. The Eskimo devil is a woman.