662 W. Thalbitzer 



If a player makes a bad shot and is struck by the ball, he falls to the ground 

 unable to rise and is now attacked by the enemies. This happened to Niw- 

 nittaq the first time. But by the next increasing moon, when a return visit 

 for revenge was paid Ъу the people of his district, he conquered his enemies; 

 he drove the ball up in front of all the pursuers — without anj^ody suc- 

 ceeding in "running under it" — and ran homewards with the ball. His 

 father-in-law cried to the opponents: "You have lost, you must try again!" 



General remarks on the playthings. — The majority of the 

 toys mentioned here are real Eskimo toys common to all the Eskimo 

 in and outside Greenland. This is the case with the dolls, the top, 

 the buzz, the bull-roarer, the ajagaq and the ball. There may be 

 some doubt as to the genuineness of the two nodding birds, the 

 mill- wing buzz and the puzzle with the two beads (figs, 373, 376 a 

 and 378), as these forms of toys are only known from Ammassalik 

 inside the Eskimo region , but on the other hand are well-known 

 from European toy-shops. This is however no certain proof that the 

 Eskimo may not have invented these tricks themselves. With regard 

 to the nodding pair of birds I may refer to the fact that Nelson from 

 Alaska gives an illustration of a single bird which stands on a board 

 and by means of a small string is made to nod its head up and 

 down^). The puzzle with the beads is no more subtle than the cat's 

 cradles, which both the Smith Sound Eskimo as well as the natives 

 on Baffin Land know, as also many of the Indians in North America^), 

 but which are no longer remembered on Greenland's east coast. 



The tops have everywhere almost the same shape from Green- 

 land to Alaska^). The "Brumm-Kräusel" from southern West Green- 

 land mentioned by Cranz and also described by Egede*) is undoubt- 

 edly a "humming-top" of the common top-type: a flat wooden disc 

 with a transverse stick going through the middle. The game is now 

 played in this way, that the person towards whom the end of the 

 stick points, after the top has ceased buzzing round, has won the 

 prizes offered by the other parties in the game. The 8-shaped buzz 

 is characteristic of Greenland as I have previously shown in con- 

 nection with a similar toy found by Amdrup on Sabine Island 

 (74°45' lat. N. on the east coast) '^). Outside Greenland this toy has 

 a rhomboid or discoid shape *^). 



») Nelson (1899) fig. 123, p. 341. 



2) Kroeber (1899) pp. 298—299; Boas (1888) p. 569 (fig. 525); Culin (1907) pp. 

 763—779. 



3) Murdoch (1892) fig. 375; Nelson (1899) fig. 122; Culin (1897) figs. 971—980. 

 *) Cranz (1770) p. 231; Hans Egede (1741) p. 92. 



б) Amdrup coll. no. 113; Thalbitzer (1909) fig. 71, pp. 494-495; Kroeber (1899) 

 fig. 51. 



в) Boas (1901) fig. 80, p. 53; fig. 165, p. 112 (and 363); Murdoch (1892) fig. 376, p. 378; 

 Nelson (1899) p. 341, 



