Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/515

 COLLECTANEA.

The Gilyaks and their Songs.

The Island of Sakhalin, of which so much was written and spoken after the end of the war between Russia and Japan, and which is now divided between the two Powers, was formerly during several decades used by the Russian Government as a place of exile for both political and criminal offenders. Its name was held in awe and spoken with bated breath all over Russia. When I was sent as a political exile to the terrible Island, I set out as to the land of the dead, in which there is no hope, and from which there is no return. But, in reality, the Island is not so much naturally terrible as spoilt by white men. Though bleak and stern it is picturesque, and though so much detested by its white inhabitants it is the beloved home of three small, primitive tribes, who live on the products of its abundant fauna and flora.

The first of these tribes whom I met was that of the Gilyaks.^ At first they were afraid of me, as they had suffered from the neigh- bourhood of common criminal exiles, and feared that I might be one of them. Finding, however, that I was harmless, they came in time to regard me almost as an elder brother to whom they could confide their joys and sorrows. They sweetened for me many a bitter hour with their trust, their sympathy, and their songs.

The difficult circumstances which followed the reckless invasion of their land by a more cultivated nation had a bad influence upon

(Harper, 1903), by Mr. C. H. Hawes, who met Mr. Pilsudski when the latter was a political exile in Sakhalin (pp. 229, 263-4), and obtained from him the original and translation of one song and the story of another (pp. 264-8). Eu.]
 * [A recent account of the Gilyaks will be found in In the Uttermost East