Language and Folklore. 389 
[le] No. 214. The Woman who Married a Dog 
or 
The Origin of the Three Peoples of the Earth. 
Teemiartissaq A. Ajukutooq В. 
Mitsuarnianga С. Maratte D. 
By far the larger part of this tale has already been published in Holm’s 
no. 20 (First Part, p. 270) where it is called “The Origin of Kavdlunaks, Timer- 
seks, and Erkiliks”, and is localised at Ammassalik. Kavdlunak is the same 
as Qattunaag in my version, or the customary name for Europeans (whether 
this is the original meaning or another people is meant). Timersek means 
“people who journey about the interior’, and in Holm’s version they are 
mentioned as the “cousins” of the Inuit. They are more kindly than the 
Ergilik, who are the born enemies of the Eskimo people and identical with 
the Indians of the North-west Territory. 
This tale was first known from West Greenland through Hans Egede’s ! 
short version in his “Perlustration.” Later it appeared in Rink’s collection 
(1866, no. 17, supplemented in 1871, p. 150). In Egede’s account the tale opens 
with an explanation of the origin of the first people (“an Inuk grew out of 
the ground and took a woman from a low mound of earth”). Egede is mis- 
taken in believing that the Eskimo made this “fable” in order to render us 
foreign “Kablunat” laughable, for, according to Eskimo tradition, all the other 
peoples, even the Inuit are sprung from the relationship between the dog 
and the woman. However it seems that this idea is a fragment of an origin- 
ally broader myth. According to the version from Baffin’s Land?, the dog 
swimming across and weighed down with stones, does not succeed in reach- 
ing the shore but sinks to the bottom, where Sedna, the goddess of the deep 
gives it a position as watch-dog at the door of her house. That this is no 
chance accident appears from Lyon’s interesting tale from the Eskimo tribe 
living still further west at Iglulik3, a tale which Boas has classified correctly 
by pointing out the fact that Lyon has confused the visit of the angakok to 
Sedna with the tradition about her origin.4 We find that this woman of 
the sea, the mistress of the sea-animals, is none other than the deified “woman 
who refused to have a husband” and in Lyon’s description of her house 
in the deep we again meet the dog: “Immediately within the door of the 
dwelling, which has a long passage of entrance, is stationed a very large 
and fierce dog, which has no tail, and whose hind quarters are black.” 
The tale about the woman who gave birth to dogs is a very old and 
widespread myth, most of all resembling the explanations, often used in the 
totem-institutions of the origin of an institution or a custom or of human 
beings themselves. In the first-named version from Baffin’s land, “Europeans” 
are not mentioned by name but “the puppies sailed across the sea, where 
they landed is unknown.” The other peoples, descendants of the litter of 
puppies, are part of them called /jigat (in Greenland Isserqat), part of them 
Innuarugdligat (just as in Greenland a people of dwarfs), part of them Inuit 
themselves. 
The idea of descent from a woman and a dog is not only common to 
all the Eskimo tribes, but is to be found among the neighbours of the Eskimo 
* Hans Egede (1741) pp.116—117 note. 2 F. Boas (1901) p.165. 3 Lyon (1824) 
р. 362. 4 F. Boas (1888) р. 586. 
