Legends and Tales from Anginagsalik. 265 



17. HOW THE OLD FOLKS AVENGED THEIR SONS 



told by Kutiiluk. 



There were once a married couple who had a son. Every time 

 he went out kaiaking, his parents w^ent with him in Ihe umiak; 

 but he always rowed far in front of them, and when they came 

 up with him he had generally caught a walrus. 



Thus one day when he had rowed on in front, and his parents 

 approached a naze, they saw him standing on it; but he remained 

 quite immovable. It was not before they came up to him that they 

 saw that he had been stuck up on a harpoon-shaft which had been 

 inserted through the fork up the body, and that his sexual organs 

 were bound round his head with a strap and hung down 

 his forehead. The parents wept over their son and then they jour- 

 neyed further north, till they came to another old married couple 

 who had lost their son in the same way. Winter now came on; 

 they therefore built a house, and the two old married couples lived 

 together. 



The old man was an angakok. So in winter he performed 

 tornak incantations in order to find out what way the people who 

 had killed his son had taken, and at last he managed to find out. 

 W^hen summer came, the two men journeyed thither. They row^ed 

 out from land until they lost it from sight, and presently they 

 caught sight of the country whither they were bound. When they 

 approached it, they found they could hardly get to shore for the 

 green leaves that had been blown away from the land here and 

 stopped in their passage by the land on the other side; however 

 they managed to get through the leaves, and they went on land 

 after having covered the kaiaks with green leaves, so that they 

 might not be seen. 



When they had come up, they saw two tents with their openings 

 facing each other, in which a drum-match was going on. While 

 they were looking on, two boys came out from the tent and went 

 down to the winter-house. Soon afterwards they came back to the 

 tent again. When the boys came out from the tent again and ent- 

 ered the house, the two old men ran down there too and, seizing 

 hold of the boys, kept them from going out. They enquired who 

 it was that was having a drum-match inside the tent. "It is my 

 father who is having a drum-match with that boy's father", said 

 one of the boys. "What are they singing about?", enquired the old 

 man. "They are singing about one w^ho had his sexual organs 

 hanging down his forehead", replied the boy. The old man said 

 that he was very fond of seeing people try their strength with their 



