Language and Folklore (Supplement). 525 
seen on the Færoe Islands. The Danes in Greenland call this native 
manner of dancing, to baleare,. presumably a word of Romance origin. ! 
A single person stands in the centre of the circle beating a drum 
(tambourine) and singing in the Eskimo language, writhing his body 
to the measure of the dance, but without moving his feet; at the 
same time the other dancers revolve in a close circle about him from 
right to left and sing in chorus: aia aia or hot ho. In West Green- 
land this mode of dancing has been given up long ago and the last 
place where it was still remembered in 1901, though rarely executed, 
was the small island of Oommannätsiaq. Here I noted the last rem- 
nants of the songs (texts and melodies) and the following technical 
terms. The leader who stands in the center of the circle with the 
drum is called {wäsoq ‘a man or woman who fiwåwogs twisting the 
body in all sorts of contortions, and at the same time drumming 
and singing’ (quite as described from East Greenland by Holm in 
First Part p. 125—126); the term was known in the whole district 
of the Oommannag fjord and it corresponds to EGr. tiwaleq. The 
dancers of the circle, or chorus, were called iniortut ‘they who join 
in song’ or more particularly suäkätartut (suwakat-artut) ‘the exciters, 
ог provokers’ ? or isitaia‘riut ‘they who sing: let us wriggle the rump!’; 
the latter term is alike to the name of a children’s game (isila‘ia 
pap'ataia cf. Phon. Study р. 315—316) in which I see a reminiscence 
of the old dance of the grown-ups. The drum qila-"f or qilat; to 
beat the drum isuarLupo or kâtur'uyo; the stick katua, not to be 
beaten against the skin of the drum (isa: or isia) but against the 
wooden hoop (nina: or gila'pusa‘). The skin of the drum was made 
of the peritoneum of a seal or a dog. The handle of the drum was 
called par:umuta: or katälua. As late as the year 1862 the curate, 
Martin Mørch, heard a drum-song in Saaitut halfway up the fjord. 
The dancer stood in the middle of the floor of his hut beating his 
drum repeatedly to a measured rhythm, three taps for the more 
rapid (1) and two taps for the slower (2) tempi of the song, thus: 
1. PLCC EHE à fast ar [Рая ere 
These combinations of drum-beats correspond about to nos. 2 and 
5 among the types of drum-beats from East Greenland quoted p. 13. 
The terms used were about the same as the ones known from 
1 Even as early as the beginning of the last century К. GIESECKE (Diary for March 
19, 1811) uses the word during his stay at Umanak: “‘The Eskimos of the 
district were assembled and baleared the whole night.” — Rink uses the word 
in his description (1855) of North Greenland (Gronland, First Part, p. 186), 
where he refers to his visit to Uperniwik Nes in Umanak Fjord: “the so-called 
balear festivals during which both old and young spent many days and nights 
in a state of over-excitement with wild games and carousel.” Cf. the Spanish 
and Italian bailar < balear (earlier form closely agreeing with the Danish-Green- 
landic baleare); old Spanish ballar; Portuguese balhar, derived from balla, ‘a 
globe, a ball.’ “Ball-tossing in the Middle Ages as among the Greeks was a 
game combined with song and dance. From thence the Romance form, ‘ballare’ 
‘to dance’.” (Cf. Diez: Etymolog. Wörterbuch 1878.) 
2 Cf. sudkpok in Fabricius’ Gronl. Ordbog (1804) р. 441. 
