58 W. THALBITZER and HJALMAR THUREN. 
wise unknown name, which may have come from a still older period 
Usually the composer of the song is unknown. 
It seems to me that we must conclude, that the relatively high 
development which music, dance and poetry have reached among | 
this isolated tribe of men, must be ascribed to the growth of many 
hundreds of years. The culture of the Ammassalik Eskimo _ bears 
the stamp of a local, special development, in their songs, their 
ornamentation and their ethnography. Favourable natural conditions 
seem to have rendered this high degree of development possible, 
just as the natural exclusion from the surrounding world in these 
fjords, between the inland ice and the polar ice-current, has condi- 
tioned the originality of their mode of development. Although this 
development has been in constant progress at this place, it has 
preserved its Eskimo character pure and unmixed. 
The grouping of the melodies is primarily determined by the 
contents of the text, since indeed the form of the composition is 
originally dependent on what it is intended for. The groups are 
the same as those which have been used in the subdivision of the 
Ammassalik poetry (only the incantations or magic spells are not 
included here, because they are exclusively recitative). Within 
each group HJALMAR THUREN has arranged the melodies according 
to purely musical considerations. 
In the phonograms 70 and 72 I have endeavoured to introduce 
the singing of a chorus. Chorus singing is common both in the 
house and in the open. In No. 50 it can be heard that the song is 
accompanied by beats of the drum. 
The groups are as follows: 1) recitative songs of epic-lyric nature, 
and children’s songs. These are recitative poems with musical accent 
fixed by tradition, even partially sung with a fully developed melody, 
sung especially by women and children; — 2) magic spells; 3) reli- 
gious songs and angakoq songs; — 4) theatrical songs or songs of 
amusement, sung with dance and drum, «) in disguise by men only, 
2) without disguise chiefly by women: — 5) juridical drum-songs, 
with dance and drum; —- 6) kayak songs (to pass the time in rowing) 
and hunting songs; — 7) songs occurring in old tales. Supplement: 
songs and dances from West Greenland. 
At the end of the following part, which contains the Eskimo 
text and also the English translation, will be found a list of the 
corresponding melodies and texts. 
