=] 
Language and Folklore. 15 
accurate as compatible with fast work and without fatiguing my in- 
formants too much so as not to lessen their good spirits and capa- 
city for work. For the same reason I postponed the difficult trans- 
lation of the poems until I reached home again trusting that later 
exploration and linguistic comparison would shed light on the ob- 
scure passages in the texts. 
The material collected I recorded week by week in my system- 
atically arranged card 
index supplied with 
preliminary numbers 
and accompanied by 
a more orless copious 
commentary. Like- 
wise during my stay 
over there I laid the 
foundation of an East- 
Greenland vocabul- 
ary in the shape of a 
card index which in 
the course of years 
has grown to about 
10,000 slips. It forms 
a necessary supple- 
ment to the West- 
Greenland dictionary. 
As some of my 
best authorities for 
my records of the tra- 
ditions and the poems 
I may mention my 
old friends Mitsuar- 17 b. Amer®q®aaiin viewed in front. 
nianna, Qiwinataag (W.T. phot. March 1906.) 
and Teemiartissaq, 
aged people who with a certain primitive understanding of the national 
interest in saving such traditions for future generations willingly 
opened to me the treasury of their souls and their lives and exerted 
themselves to bring their mental patrimony before the light of day. 
The national style in this rare material was not foreign to me 
as it corresponded essentially with the one in previous collections 
from the westcoast of Greenland, e. g my own from the northern 
part (Oommannaq Fiord, the Diskobay and Egedesminde), published 
in Medd. om Gronland, 31 vol. (1904). Nevertheless, none of these 
East Greenland poems had been previously recorded, among them 
