Language and Folklore. 295 
Fig. 57. Uaajeertoq player. (Drawing by Okusuk.) 
and ducks his head down into the cooking vessel, withdrawing it 
dripping with seal-meat soup. So he continues at all the other places, 
ducking his head down into water-barrels or pots. In conclusion he 
sings and dances again. 
No. 119. Aweertoq — He who sends out Decoy-signals. 
Ajukutook. 
The uaajeertoq, clad in his kaiak skirt and with his face sooted, 
sits on the window platform and plays at rowing a kaiak. He has 
a piece of wood for a paddle and another piece for a harpoon. He 
pretends that he is luring bearded seals, and utters the decoy signal 
quite softly in two changing notes: “oo-h, 00-h, 00-h.”! Suddenly he 
puts on speed, harpoons one of those present as representing a bearded 
seal, fixes the hunting-bladder in him and triumphantly exclaims: 
"ho! umia argisorsiwara, umia argisorsiwara”, ‘ha! I shall repair 
(the skin of) my umiak!.’ He next pretends that he comes home 
and lands, and seizing the drum dances while he sings and wriggles 
his head and searches backward over his shoulders “to see if any 
1 Decoy signals are used by the hunters to lure seals or birds near enough to 
provide a safe shot (more samples, see Phon. Study р. 323—326); and in the 
animal world it is sometimes a call from the male to the female. Here one 
specially thinks of the sound which the male bearded seals utters in order to 
allure a female to mate with. The hunters imitate this sound, which Kuannia 
reproduced for me thus: o0-0-0'"" е**, sung in a falling chromatic scale. 
