Language and Folklore (Supplement). 547 
sider to sing true, more musical than the former, would be а kind 
of anachronism, would it not?! 
3. 
I wish here to add a few remarks and corrections to Thuren's 
and my first articles on ‘Eskimo music. We began the account by 
quoting some of the direct impressions made on the oldest authors 
by the music of these Arctic “wild men”,—to quote Hans Egede, — 
in Greenland (see p. 3—4 here). | 
Hans EGEDE’s description from 1741 (it is well to emphasize 
the matter at this point) appears then, to be misleading on several 
points. He mentions the song of the drum-dancer as “refrains refer- 
ring either to their occupations in general or his own in particular’, 
but does not mention, nor does not seem to realize the poetic art of 
the people, nor the many varieties of songs and the part these played 
in the social life of the natives. Hans Egede’s son and his successors 
(О. Fagricius and GLAHN) were already able to give a more complete 
and concise account of the songs of the Greenlanders; they under- 
stood the content and were able to differentiate between refrain and 
burden. Hans Egede’s interpretation in the above-named quotation 
(p. 3) is quite childish, as though the point in hand were merely an 
opportunity for the drum-singer to show his ability in “buffooning.” 
Also the following quotation from Davip CRANZ's description is hardly 
quite pertinent when we read that the dancer “jumps a little up in 
the air at each stroke of the drum-stick” and that the beat of the 
latter is in tact with the body. The first characteristic is otherwise 
unknown from Greenland, but may be correct. On the other hand 
I have my doubts as to the statement in regard to the rhythmic 
congruity between the movements of the drum-stick and the body. 
Generally the movements of drum, song and dance were quite in- 
dependent (as I have personally observed at Ammassalik). They do not 
dance in time to the drum beats, and the rhythm of the singer pays 
no attention either to them or the movements of the dance (body). 
Thuren also quotes (p. 4) W. E. Parry’s journal from 1824, ac- 
cording to which the natives of Melville Peninsula, “sing in octaves.” 
1 I have referred to my material on wax rolls from Ammassalik (p. 49—50) and 
from South Greenland, (р. 156). All of this is deposited in the Folk Lore 
Collection (Folkemindesamling) | in the Royal Library in Copenhagen (bronze 
matrices and wax casts). Prior ee botanist С. Kruuse took a phono- 
graph to Ammassalik (1902) and the first melody from his phonograph I re- 
corded in 1904 (Phon. Study p. 386—387, Cf. here p. 6). The Royal Library 
also contains the phonographic records from Cape York _made in the summer _ 
of 1909 by the } Norwegian, C. LEDEN (ef. pP. 36). As far as I have been able to 
mr 
ascertain, his material has not ven been "published. 
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