NELSON] DOLL FESTIVAL—BLADDER FEAST BW Ay) 
festival to the dead « little later in the season. Later, during the same 
evening, I sat with a lighted candle before me in the kashim writing my 
journal when a number of men came very quietly and seated them- 
selves in a semicircle about me with their backs in my direction so that 
the light of the candle was shut off from the rest of the room. I 
inquired the reason for this and was told they wished to sing but could 
not while the room was lighted, so they had arranged themselves in 
this manner to shut off my light from the cther part of the room with- 
out disturbing me. I immediately blew out the light, leaving the room 
in intense darkness, and the song began. I did not obtain the song, 
but a chorus of the common syllables, tin/-ai-yd-hai'-yd-yd, occurred 
between every few words as they were given out by some of the old 
men. About twenty-five men were singing, their heavy bass voices 
sounding very well. Each time they came to the end of the portion 
recited, they closed with a curious kind of howl, and waited until the ~ 
next words were chanted by the prompters and then went ou again. 
They told me afterward that their reason for practicing this song in 
utter darkness was that any shade which desired to be present to hear 
the singing might do so without being driven away by the light. 
DOLL FESTIVAL 
For notes on the Doll festival ( Yu-gi-yhik’ or I'-ti-kd-tah’), observed at 
Ikogmut, the reader is referred to the tale of the Yu-gi-yhtk’ among the 
legends, and in this connection attention is also called to the Doll festi- 
val, or Tih-tuhn’, among the Tinné near Anvik. The Russian priest at 
Mission (Ikogmut) regards this festival as idolatrous, and has tried for 
many years to prevent the people from observing it at that plaee and 
in the neighboring villages. As a consequence, I found it difficult to 
learn much about it from the Eskimo during my brief stay in that 
vicinity. 
One old man at Ikogmut told me the legend of the Yu-gi-yhik’, giving 
an account of the origin of this festival as kept in their traditions, and 
added that the day after the images were set up in the kashim the men 
and the large boys of the place go out to bring firewood to the village, 
which they leave at the doors of the women and girls with whom they 
are paired during the festival. 
During the continuance of the festival the namesakes of dead men 
are paired with namesakes of their -deceased wives without regard to 
age, and during this period the men or the boys bring their temporary 
partners firewood, and the latter prepare food for them, thus symboliz- 
ing the former union of the dead. 
BLADDER FEASTS 
The bladder feast (Chai-i-yik) occurs annually at St Michael, com- 
mencing between the 10th and the 20th of December, the exact date 
depending on the phase of the moon. 
