Songs of the Copper Eskimos 21 



The Pisik 



The larger points of structure are the more obvious, not only to outsiders 

 but to the makers; as a rule, therefore, it is more logical to begin with them and 

 work to the finer distinctions. At once we discover that the pisik, so-called, 

 divides into_ several groups, first, those which have preludes and those which do 

 not. Practically all pisiks are more or less lengthy songs consisting of verses 

 and refrains. Usually these verses are subdivided into two or more parts, each 

 part generally followed by a refrain, but here at once we find numerous differ- 

 ences which make for several groupings. Before discussing these forms it may 

 be well to touch upon the features that have already been mentioned as being so 

 essential in the differentiating of our own types, such as metre, starting beat, 

 speed, etc. Nothing but metre seems to count very much in modern dance 

 music, where pieces in four-four metre are commonly accepted as' marches and 

 gallop^, etc.; those in two as two-steps; those in three as waltzes; those in one 

 serve for many of the later dances; certain rhythms are used for polkas and 

 schottisches, etc. Within limits the speed may vary considerably for some of 

 these, although there are tempos which are generally accepted. In classical 

 times much stress was laid not only on the metre but upon the part of the measure 

 upon which the music began, some dances beginning on the up beat, others on 

 the first beat of the measure. Some dances were slow and dignified, others 

 swift; in fact, much depended upon the movement. 



All these points have been borne in mind in the analysis of these Eskimo 

 dance tunes, and it must be confessed that not many of them can be depended 

 upon in differentiating types. There is apparently no rule as to the beat upon 

 which the song begins, songs which are as nearly alike in every other particular, 

 as much as these songs are ever alike, showing considerable variation in this 

 respect. It all seems to depend upon the words of the song. Thus, counting 

 songs as two in which a fusion is apparent, there are fifty-one pisiks. Thirty- 

 six begin on the first beat, four on the last half of the first, one on the beginning 

 of the final beat, four on the last half-beat of the measure, three on the last 

 quarter-beat, and one is uncertain, while two were not analyzed. But a begin- 

 ning on the first beat is certainly the most popular type. As to metre, they are 

 nearly all predominantly two-four, but there are only a few songs in the entire 

 collection which are practically absolutely regular in metre, and some of these 

 are weather incantations, while the others are scattered and the regularity 

 seems almost more of an accident than design. Practically every song is of 

 mixed metre, that is, two-four and three-four with more twos than threes (at 

 least in the Copper Eskimo area), but the threes are not distributed in any 

 regular succession in more than one or two instances, and one of the most perfect 

 examples of this is again a weather incantation. There are very few songs with 

 four-four metre and most of these are incantations or songs from other regions. 

 Nearly every song contains measures which have extra half-beats, sometimes in 

 profusion but not in regular order, so that it seems that the mere matter of 

 metre has little to do with the dance. Could one witness the performances one 

 might see perhaps that the words with strongly pronounced accents in the 

 wrong places had .a tendency to overthrow the metre of the dance music, or 

 rather to work in opposition to it, but such points are rarely discoverable in the 

 song as sung. There is only one case of this in the present collection which can 

 be detected, and the extent of the influence is necessarily obscured. This is the 

 song on record IV. C. 88, which is number 46. Here the rhythm of the word 

 qai-yu-q-eq-turi-a is strongly a three-beat rhythm with which the music fits 

 admirably at times, but with which it wars as strongly at others. This was the 

 most troublesome of all the songs to transcribe, for the musical accent was often 

 quite overpowered by that of the words, which again in an identical situation 

 seemed to give way to it. Repeated hearings only added to the confusion, so 



