Language and Folklore. 169 
bitter and angry opponents might look forward with pleasure to the 
singing duel as to the appearance of an artist, a festive tournament 
where one hoped to shine and triumph. Read the legend of Aara- 
ättuaq, the two enemies who after having reviled each other in 
song through many years, at last became so used to it and so fond 
of it that they decided to continue their drum fighting after death. 
And then, when Aaraattuaq was the first to die and in his grave 
heard his opponent approach singing, calling him out, he rises from 
the stones of the grave and sings his drumsong dancing on them, 
and “using his scapula as a drum and his fibula as a drumstick” 
— a true apotheosis of the Eastgreenland drumsinging. 
There may have existed one or two more kinds of drumsinging 
than those here mentioned. I am thinking e. 5. of such a “game” as 
the one Hans Egede refers to from the westcoast, performing barter 
and trade in the guise of drumsinging. One man sings drumming 
something for sale and names in the song its price. The one of the 
audience who offers to buy at the price sung smacks the singers 
backside and is then liable for his bid. (Egede, Perlustration, 1741, 
p. 92.) A similar custom is reported from Alaska (Nelson, p. 361) 
where traders arriving did their bartering as a singing game. 
REFRAIN, BURDEN AND STROPHE 
The natives call the refrain fima: ‘the body of the song’; it be- 
longs to all species of drumsongs and takes up most space in the 
song, but has the least to do with its sense as its principal object is. 
merely carrying on the melody. Generally, though, it contains one 
word of sense, namely a demonstrative pronoun, a “word of direction” 
or a similar particle, but beyond that only one or two meaningless 
words for padding which are repeated in slightly varying forms (qa; 
ara; ä'ge etc.). The refrain opens and closes the song, often with an 
added derisive shout or a moaning yell last of all.’ It is repeated 
in its entirety for each verse or “burden”, the parts of the song in 
which the singer expresses “what he has on his mind to say.” The 
burden consists of just a short line which the natives call the song’s 
ta-ia or (in the plural) ta'iåt or ta’rnät, ‘the line with the characterizing 
1 Besides the refrain many drumsongs contain a shout, an interjection of scorn 
or anger that is repeated a few times during the singing (cf. p.166). It is pro- 
bably this to which Otto Fabricius alludes in his Grammatica p. 360 where he 
deals with “interjectiones gaudentis’’, and among them particularly iæ-hi, ‘ia-hei” 
which he calls “the old men’s bass-stroke during the singing, especially when 
something is said that tickles them.” He also distinctly mentions the forms of 
the refrain, ajah, yjah. 
