قراءة كتاب A Treasury of Eskimo Tales
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his mascot which was a huge white bear (7)
I
THE BABY ESKIMO
The little Eskimo away up in the northern part of British America has a pretty hard time of it, as you may know when you think how cold it is there.
He is born in a snow hut, and when he is but a few hours old he is carried on his mother's back out upon the ice, and around and around in circles and after a while through deep snow back to the hut. If that does not kill him, the names he gets are enough to do it; for he is given the names of all the people who have died in the village since the last baby was born. He sometimes has a string of names long enough to weigh any baby down. Worse than that, if one of his relatives dies before he is four years old, that name is added to the rest and is the one by which he is called.
Worse still, if he falls sick he is given a dog's name, so that the goddess Sedna will look kindly upon him. Then, all his life, he must wear a dog's harness over his inner jacket. If he should die, his mother must rush out of the house with him at once. If she does not do so, everything in the house must be thrown away or destroyed, just as is done when a grown person dies in a furnished house.
For a whole year his mother must wear a cap if she steps outside her door, and she must carry his boots about with her. After three days she goes to his tomb and walks around it three times, going around to the left, because that is the way the sun travels. While she walks, she talks to the dead child and promises to bring him food. A year after his death she must do this again, and she must do the same thing whenever she happens to pass near the grave.
Now we shall tell you some of the tales which the Eskimo mothers relate to their children. The first one is about Kiviung, the Rip Van Winkle of the Eskimos.
II
KIVIUNG
An old woman lived with her grandson in a small hut. She had no husband to take care of her and the boy, and they were very poor. The lad's clothing was made of the skins of birds which they caught in snares. Whenever the boy came out of the hut to play, the other boys would call, "Here comes the bird boy! Fly away, birdie!" and the men would laugh at him and tear his clothes.
Only one man whose name was Kiv-i-ung, was kind to the boy and tried to protect him from the others, but they would not stop. The lad often came to his grandmother crying, and she would console him and promise him a new garment, as soon as they could get the skins.
She begged the men to stop teasing the child and tearing his clothes, but they only laughed at her. At last she became angry and said to the boy, "I will avenge you on your tormentors. I can do it by making use of my power to conjure."
She poured water on the mud floor and said, "Step into this puddle, and do not be frightened at anything that happens."
He stepped into it, and immediately the earth opened and he sank out of sight, but the next moment he rose near the beach and swam about as a young seal with a wonderfully smooth, shining skin.
Some one saw him and called out that there was a yearling seal close to shore. The men all ran to their kayaks eager to secure the beautiful creature. But the boy-seal swam lustily away as his grandmother had told him to do, and the men continued to pursue him. Whenever he rose to the surface to breathe, he took care to come up behind the kayaks, where he would splash and dabble in order to lure them on. As soon as he had attracted their attention and they had turned to pursue him, he would dive and come up farther out in the sea. The men were so interested in catching him that they did not observe how they were being led far out into the ocean and out of sight of the land.
It was now that the grandmother put forth her powers. Suddenly a fierce gale arose; the sea foamed and roared and the waves upset their frail vessels and plunged them under the surface. When they were drowned, the little seal changed back into a boy and walked home over the water without wetting his feet. There was no one left now to torment him.
Kiv-i-ung, who had never abused the boy, had gone out with the rest, but his kayak did not capsize. Bravely he strove against the wild waves, and drifted far away from the place where the others had gone down. There was a dense fog and he could not tell in which direction to go.
He rowed for many days not knowing whither he was going, and then one day he spied through the mists a dark mass which he took to be land. As he pulled toward it the sea became more and more tempestuous, and he saw that what he had supposed to be a rocky cliff on an island was a wild, black sea with a raging whirlpool in the midst of it.
He had come so close that it was only by the utmost exertion he escaped being drawn into the whirlpool and carried down. He put forth all his strength and at last got away where the waves were less like mountains. But he had to be constantly on the alert, for at one moment his frail craft was carried high up on the crest of billows and the next it was plunged into a deep trough of the sea.
Again he saw a dark mass looming up, and rowed toward it hoping to find land, but again he was deceived, for it was another whirlpool which made the sea rise in gigantic waves. At last the wind subsided, and the sea became less rough, though the whitecaps still frothed around him. The fog lifted, and at a great distance he saw land, real land this time.
He went toward it, and after rowing along the coast for some distance he spied a stone house with a light in it. You may be sure he was delighted to come near a human habitation again. He landed and entered the house. There was no one in it but one old woman. She received him kindly and helped him to pull off his boots, and she hung his wet stockings on the frame above the lamp. Then she said:
"I will make a fire in the next room and cook a good supper."
Kiviung thought she was a very good woman, and he was so hungry that he could scarcely wait for the supper. It seemed to him that she was a long time preparing it. When his stockings were dry he tried to take them from the frame in order to put them on. But as soon as he touched the frame it rose up out of his reach. He tried in vain several times, and each time the frame rose up. He called the woman in and asked her to give him his stockings.
"Take them yourself," she said. "There they are; there they are," and went out again.