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Language and Folklore. 163 
The children’s rhymes and ditties have probably come into 
existence in direct continuation of the latter, the secondary petting- 
songs. These verses are recited or sung by the children and deal 
with their life and games, with domestic situations or family affairs, 
with animals or natural objects. They are called ilergerso:t, traditional 
songs or folk-ditties. The 
Eskimo has no ancient 
ballads like those we 
know from the middle- 
ages of Europe, no hist- 
orical songs of the feats 
of olden times like the 
Odyssey or the Kalevala 
of the Finns.’ The epic 
argument of these poems, 
if one may so describe it, 
touches the little affairs 
and happenings of intim- 
ate life; they only throw 
an occasional glimpse into 
a human fate as a mere 
hint and are never so- 
lemn or pretentious or 
sentimental. Nevertheless, 
I think they must pro- 
duce a strange impression 
on every receptive and 
attentive reader just be- 
cause they are so intimate 
and so different to our 
sphere of ideas. 
The ilergersoot have 
recitative forms like the 
Fig. 20. Teemiartissaq. 
petting-songs or more rar- (W.T. phot. February 1906.) 
ely melodies and some- 
times they contain a few words of refrain without sense (e. g. aja). 
Qiwinazaaq described expressly e. 5. nos. 24 and 32, Teemiartissaq 
nos. 17, 22, 29 and 34 as ilergersoot; no. 17 particularly as ilergerso:t 
1 Unless we assume that the Ooyortog song found in South Greenland towards 
the middle of last century was the last remnant of an old Greenland epic (or 
ballad) dealing with the Eskimo fight for deliverance from the rule of the Ice- 
landers. But in that case the greater part of the poem has been lost, and only 
a petty fragment remains. See First Part pp. 704—705. 
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