Language and Folklore (Supplement). o11 
No. 260. Okuamaaq. The Unnatural Mother-in-Law. 
Kuannia С. Moolätte (Moloote) DX. 
Cf. the texts A and B on pp. 234—235. Melody p. 539 (no. 144). 
This interesting supplement to the little poem I set down at Ammassa- 
lik in 1906 from the dictation of two women p. 234, no. 36 I received in 
South Greenland in 1914, principally from Kuannia, also a fragment from 
Moolätte (= Moses), partly from his dictation, partly on the phonograph. 
Moolatte was an old man who, like Kuannia, originated from the east-coast, 
and who, before his baptism was called Tapéeata. The supplement gives me 
occasion for some further remarks. 
Okuamaag = Ukuamaaq means: ‘one (the mother-in-law) who has accust- 
omed herself to her daughter-in-law (okua or ukua ‘daughter-in-law’ with 
suffix -ma‘q ‘accustomed to’). This indicates the main subject: The old wo- 
man (who according to one version, was an angakok) took to living like a 
man, kaiaking and catching seals, and used her daughter-in-law as her 
wife, in that at night she transformed herself into a man. The remaining 
features gather in various versions about this. 
From the South Greenland version I think I understand that the daugh- 
ter-in-law was a transformed Greenland seal, which the son (or his mother?) 
had caught and brought home, and if this is correct, it may be an old motif, 
compare my record from Northern West Greenland of a poem about “the 
male seal’s daughter, the pursued seal’s separated wife” whom the kaiak man 
got for his wife because he had the fore-paw of a seal for an amulet on his 
breast (Phon. Study, 1904, pp. 289—290) cf. here no. 283 (p. 533). 
The main subject of the story was in any case formerly known over 
great parts of the West coast of Greenland, as Rink received the story in two 
versions, the one from Egedesminde district, and the other from Sukker- 
toppen.! It is also found in Knud Rasmussen’s collection from Cape York.? 
Kuannia’s version from the Cape Farewell district has been given a 
very surprising introduction, Christian in its style: The old woman’s change 
of sex is connected here with the biblical tradition of the fall of man or the 
later digressions of “Adam’s race”. This has suggested to me that the main 
subject of this story might be influenced by only half comprehended accounts 
from the first Christianized part of the west coast, to which the pagan 
Easterners began their commercial journeys long ago — a century or more 
before any Christian European spoke with those in East Greenland. It is 
very probable that the preaching of the first missionaries has effected some 
odd turns in the Eskimo’s presentation, and has sometimes been interpreted in 
the light of their own traditions. No doubt the biblical stories often reached 
the distant heathens by various intermediate links, only disconnected frag- 
ments being received at second, third, or fourth hand. In the present nar- 
rative with the comments originating from the south, which I received 
through Kuannia, the following misunderstanding or secondary interpreta- 
tion might, for example, have crept in (unless the whole story is based on 
it from the first). Adam as pronounced in Greenlandic gets the same sound 
as Esk. a'tarm ‘a Greenland seal’ (in genitive); and Eve (Eva in Danish and 
1 Rink I (1866), no. 39, p. 141. 
2 Knud Rasmussen (1905), p. 202—208. 
