Songs of the Copper Eskimos 341 



dance songs of the Copper Eskimos show a larger percentage of sameness than is 

 altogether agreeable when too many are heard at one time, the weather incanta- 

 tions reveal the great variety of musical effects of which their composers are 

 capable, and rival easily the dance songs from the Mackenzie in loveliness of 

 theme. After all, one would expect much monotony in music composed for a 

 single purpose in such large quantities as the pisik, as our own jazz has long 

 since shown, and the pisik is of sufficiently fixed character to demand a certain 

 uniformity, while if Mackenzie specimens were more numerous their charm 

 ij,'|fct pall somewhat. 



The latter, however, seem never to have attained this formal structure, 

 if the examples collected are representative; thus fancy is allowed freer play. 

 They are short and therefore not as monotonous as would be "the case if they 

 were encumbered with numerous verse-parts, refrains and connectives. They 

 are, nevertheless, far more melodious than necessity demands and this proves 

 that their composers also are gifted with no mean musical imagination. The 

 lively tempos of the majority of the tunes, the finer dotted and syncopated 

 rhythms, are distinctively their own, or at least not shared to any extent with 

 the Copper Eskimo songs, if they may be with those of other regions which will 

 be examined after the Mackenzie examples. have been studied in detail. 



