156 М’. THALBITZER. 
It was surprising to our generation to discover this handful of people 
with their rich fund of old traditions. _ 
I had not lived long among the natives before it had become 
evident to me that they possessed a variety of unwritten literature, 
not only tales in prose and drumsongs of which already G. Holm’s 
large collection gave us copious information and many specimens 
(se First Part), but also poems and songs of a kind of which hitherto 
nothing was re- 
corded. Even from 
the west coast long 
ago discovered 
there had hardly 
been recorded nur- 
sery-rhymes and 
old ditties, mimic 
drum-songs and 
sacred angakok- 
and charm-songs 
similar to those we 
gradually came to 
know at Amma- 
ssalik. 
In the course of 
a year I recorded 
on the Greenland 
coast my folklore 
material partly on 
the wax cylinders 
ofmy phonograph, 
and partly from 
direct dictation — 
Fig. 17a. Ayer’q”’aalin wiewed in profile, to the different 
middle-aged man in gutskin frock. means ofrecording 
I refer in the fol- 
lowing by the abbreviations Phon. and DD (cf. p. 59). A list of my 
informants will be found at the end of this section, where also parallel 
numbers referring to the melodies in the previous section are given. 
On the phonograph I recorded almost 100 songs and poems, partly com- 
plete, partly fragmentary, besides a number of tales; directly on paper 
I put down ab. 300 poems and folk-tales, etc. (variations included). 
It was important to me to set down as much as possible during 
my one year’s stay — I had to spend the first months in studying 
the unknown dialect — and I recorded everything as phonetically 
