THE WHITE WORLD . 



to and fro, flinging his long black hair sideways at each 

 movement, his eyes closed and his face tense with excite- 

 ment, of course greatly adds to the effect. The way the 

 singers manage to keep exact time without a division of 

 the melody into measures of equal length is astonishing. 

 Of course, a similar phenomenon may be observed in the 

 Gregorian chant of the Catholic churches. Sipsu explained 

 to us that in the regular performance each one has to take 

 the leading part a definite number of times. These num- 

 bers are the same for the two men in each pair, but differ 

 with the different pairs. So far as I could judge, all sing 

 the same air at one performance, though when they sing 

 alone there are almost as many variations of it as there 

 are individuals, each one having his own, which seems to 

 be recognized as his property. When a great number of 

 them get together the performance continues for hours, 

 until the exigencies of business put an end to pleasure. In 

 the movements of the leaders I could never detect any- 

 thing of the nature spoken of by Ross. This song is the 

 natives' great refuge from ennui. When stormbound in a 

 snow hut, with nothing to do, or when whittling away at a 

 whip or a bit of ivory, they invariably begin crooning 

 " Haya ya ya ya " to themselves in a low tone, keeping it 

 up for hours. 



Evidently this song is quite different from that recorded 

 by Kane, yet the correctness of the latter is not to be 

 doubted, in view of the close agreement of the words with 

 those recorded by Ross. I repeated Kane's version to 

 many natives, but none recognized it, except Utuniahsoa, a 

 man of about sixty, who said that he had heard it in his 

 youth, but that it had been forgotten for many years. 



I had thus settled down in the belief that the natives had 

 only one song, when one day at Cape York, sitting in my 

 tent, while two young men, Publa and Igia, were sitting 

 outside, I heard the latter softly humming a tune. Think- 

 ing it a white man's air, such as I had heard many natives 

 humming (" Ta-ra-ra Boom Dee-ay!" "Kitty, Kitty, Ki' 

 Me O," " A Hot Time," etc.), I asked him to repeat it. 

 He did so with great alacrity, but on being asked from 

 what white man he had learned it, he replied, " Kabluna 

 naga, Inuin kisene " (" White men not, Eskimos rather "), 

 adding that it was the song of the kopainu (snow-bunting). 

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