Legends and Tales from Angmagsalik. 273 



a dog. When he had put his harpoon in it, he set about to cast 

 the float, but it stuck fast to his kaiak. In order that the tupilek 

 might not upset him, he stuck his oar in under the cross-lashings. 

 The tupilek tugged away and clambered over the kaiak; it 

 was not until it began to bite him in the shoulder that he capsized 

 and lost consciousness. It was not an angakok that had made the 

 tupilek, but an ilisitsok. When Navagijak came to himself again, 

 he was away out by the horizon. He paddled along the horizon, 

 round the land, and came back to these parts; but now he was no 

 longer a man, but a spirit. 



He crept into a female saddleback and went along with the 

 shoal. When the seals came up and the kaiaks came to catch 

 them, the others dived down, and he was always left behind alone, 

 and did not dive down until the kaiaker was just about to throw 

 his harpoon. Once he said to the other saddlebacks: "How can it 

 be that I always get behind?" The others answered: "You have only 

 to kick in the direction of the heavenly Tukuija (the milky way?)". 

 Next time a kaiak came after him, he kicked in the direction of 

 the Tukuija. and got down before all the others. When he grew 

 tired of being in the saddleback, he crept into a 'she-grass' '); but 

 here he was scorched, and so he soon got tired of it and crept into 

 a dog. The dog was tied up and could say nothing but: "Wow- 

 wow!", and when the people came out they beat it. As he got 

 nothing but stripes, he, of course, soon got tired of it and crept into 

 a walrus. It was now his lot to starve, as he could not get a bite 

 of anything by reason of his long teeth. So he said to another 

 walrus: "I cannot get anything to eat on account of my long teeth", 

 to which the other answered: "Have you never been on the other 

 side of the terrace?" No, he had never been there, and so he went 

 to the other side, and saw a number of takanat (sand-gapers) grow- 

 ing out of the sand. He eat of them until he was filled. 



He got tired of being a walrus, and so he crept into a ringed 

 seal. In the autumn a saddleback said to him : 'We are going to 

 move out to sea, as we cannot scrape holes in the ice". In winter 

 when the sea was frozen over, he came up to the blow-holes in the 

 ice in order to breathe. When people came who wanted to spear 

 him, he went down. One day when he was breathing at a blow- 

 hole, he saw a man with bear-skin boots on stealing up to him. 

 It was his former wife's husband. When he came up to the blow- 

 hole, Navagijak could not see him any longer, because he had on 

 bearskin boots and an amulet. The man stuck the ringed seal in 



^) Name of a kind of grass (Lange: "Flora Groenlandicae", p. 164). 

 XXXL^L. 18 



