Language and Folklore. 207 
B. RECITATIVE POEMS FOR CHILDREN OR ADULTS. 
Nos. 16—23. ANIMAL FABLES, PARTICULARLY THE BIRD POEMS. 
The bird-poems that are here given from Ammassalik for the 
first time were also known among the West Greenlanders. They be- 
long to the kind of poems or songs for children that were mentioned 
already by the missionary Н. С. Glahn in his “Notes to Cranz” in 1771 
as existing in West Greenland. Glahn, however, did not wish to go 
further into this subject in the book referred to because he expected 
the publication by one of his colleagues in Greenland of “a brief 
essay written ex professo on the Greenland songs.” ' From Greenland 
the manuscript of this essay had been sent to the Missionary College 
in Copenhagen where Glahn “himself had seen it.” The manuscript, 
though, was never published, and has not been found so far in our 
libraries, so must be considered lost. Of the songs therein mentioned 
Glahn gives this information that “animals therein are represented as 
contending with each other, singing, which calls to mind the well- 
known drum-contest songs of the natives.“ He mentions inter alia, 
a drum-contest between a Long-tailed duck (Greenland aglek) and a 
Ptarmigan. 
Still, even if the old paper mentioned by Glahn is lost, we have 
in an older manuscript (Royal Library in Copenhagen) * a few remnants 
extant of such bird-poems. I have published two of these before (in 
English) and compared them with the variations recorded by my- 
self about 200 years later.” The old manuscript referred to is a report 
from a missionary in Greenland to the missionary college in Copen- 
hagen. The missionary by whom it is written before the year 1736 
is undoubtedly no other than Hans Egede in whose “Greenland’s. 
Perlustration or Natural-History” (1741, р. 86) we read а character- 
ization of the songs in literal accordance with the manuscript. This 
characterization reads as follows translated into English: “Their songs. 
deals with nothing but sheer nonsense and fable; I do not think even 
they themselves understand the meaning. Still they seem to rhyme a 
little, and also to some extent to observe the cadence.” My variations 
of the same songs show how popular and wide-spread these little songs 
have once been among the Greenlanders, and how faithfully the na- 
tives have known how to preserve the most classical. They belong 
to that essence of poetry which has been next to the heart of the 
people. 
But the bird-poems belong to the larger group of animal fables, 
and of this as a whole we have not till later — and gradually 
received information from Greenland. Among these too there are many 
that have no doubt been classics and popular over vast stretches of 
the coast. 
I shall give a synopsis of the literary history of the animal-fables 
that commenced with the records of the first missionary in the 18th 
century (cf. Glahn’s evidence quoted above). After that a long time 
1 Glahn (1771) p. 279, cf. 273—276. 
2 Two transcrips: N. Kgl. $. (New Royal Collection) 1294 b fol., and Kall 275 fol. 
3 In “Festschrift Vilhelm Thomsen” (1912) рр. 114—117. 
