The Eskimo build larger houses than those they usually occupy, for feasting, singing and dancing on particular occasions. The singing house is dedicated to a particular spirit which has the shape of a bow-legged, hairless man. It is generally built upon the usual round plan of the igloo, sometimes three being grouped together, apse and transept fashion, with a common entrance (nave). The company disposes itself in concentric rings round the house, married women by the wall, spinsters in front of them, and a ring of men to the front. Children are grouped on either side of the door, and the singer or dancer, [[218]]stripped to the waist, takes his stand amid them and remains on the one spot all the time. A pillar of snow in the middle of the house supports as many lamps as it requires to illuminate the proceedings and to warm the air. Singing festivals and competitions in the Kagge especially mark the great occasion of the tribal deer hunting in the spring, so that it will be described at somewhat greater length in that connection.
A Kagge or Singing House. (Elevation.)
Singing competitions at the assembly of the tribes are held in these. The songs are composed by the singer, the audience joining in the chorus, the head men and conjurors being judges. Much fun and merriment are caused by the songs.
As soon as everyone has crowded in, all the new made (temporary) couples are bidden to join hands and guide each other out. Everyone is laughing, but the pair in question have to preserve the gravity of owls. If they yield to the infectious merriment and badinage going on, and fail to keep absolutely solemn faces, some grievous sickness will befall them. The conjuror touches their feet as they cross the threshold, [[219]]and when he himself follows out the last pair, blows off hard, like a seal.
At the risk of wearying the reader with the apparent uncouthness of all this (an alien humour is always hard to perceive), one more incident of the festival must be given.
A Kagge or Singing House. (Plan.)
The Mukkosaktok possesses himself of a whip with a particularly short handle, and starts on a tour of the village on his own account. He enters the first house he comes to, and starts to lay about him in play. He fillips one of the inmates with the end of his lash, and orders him to sing a song—an extempore song of his own composition. If the victim fails, another one has to take his place, and so in turn until the circle is exhausted. This goes on in every household, all sorts [[220]]of weird howls and chants and guttural distiches being elicited by force majeure, until at last the Mukkosaktok is playfully hustled to the door and pushed outside.
The underlying idea of much of all this is doubtless that of promoting sociability and good feeling all round. The Eskimo are an intensely sociable people, and, to the very limited extent of their powers and opportunities, delight in entertainment. These festival songs, for instance, have required a certain amount of preparation. They are composed about some event that has taken place and caught the singer’s attention. They have been rehearsed and, if successful, will be repeated all through the long winter nights, when the folk spend so much weather-bound time in visiting each other and exchanging tales and gossip round the igloo lamps. No tribesman likes to be laughed at, so he really does his best over his song.