Page:Eskimo Life.djvu/292

248 unwillingness to use it; partly, too, as Hans Egede says, to the fact that the sight of these things and the consequent recollection of the dear departed would be apt to set them crying, and 'if they cry too much over the departed they believe that it makes him cold.' This idea reminds one strongly of the second song of Helge Hundingsbane, where his widow Sigrun meets him wet and frozen, and wrapped in a cloud of hoar frost, by reason of her weeping over him. ('Helge swims in the dew of sorrow.' ) Compare also the well-known Swedish-Danish folk-song of 'Aage and Else,' in which we read:

'For every time that in thy breast

Thy heart is glad and light,

Then all within my coffin seems

With rose-leaves decked and dight.

For every time that in thy breast

Thy heart is sad and sore,

Then all within my coffin seems

To swim in red, red gore.'

But, beyond this, it was doubtless the belief of the Greenlanders that the deceased had need of his implements, partly for earthly excursions from the grave, partly also in the other world. They saw, indeed, that the implements rotted, but that only