Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/520

 482 Collectanea.

glade to a carpet laid on the floor. A tree to which dogs are tied during a journey waves and bends towards the earth.

The Gilyak poet lacks many sentiments which we are used to find amongst European poets. He is wanting in sympathy with other people's troubles, and in understanding of the feeling of others. I could hardly find in the songs any passages in which the poet pictures the mental states of other persons. A simple life with no class differences allows no play for that sense of social injustice which arises wherever there is friction between two classes within a nation.

It is true that the tribes, formerly sole lords in their island, regard the domination of white men as a misfortune which has ruined the normal life of the whole race. But the Gilyaks have accepted conquest and subjection with a passive and permanent sorrow which kills any sort of protest. Their Irps utter no words of revolt. I was able to write down but one short song which complains of oppression on the part of the conquerors. The Gilyak, who dictated it to me before I left the country, asked me to repeat it to the " Great Master." (See song iv. below.)

The Gilyak poet is generally either a shaman or the bard of his tribe. He speaks a richer language than other men, with a finer voice, and is endowed with a greater memory. I will sketch here a few Gilyak poets whom I have personally known, beginning with my first friend, Nispayn, a boy of fourteen who at the time I made his acquaintance was wandering about with his father, an old beggar, half a shaman, of bad reputation. He would sit silent while his father told fortunes, and it seemed to me that he was ashamed of this open swindle. A few years later Nispayn had grown into a very handsome and highly sensitive young man. After his father's death he became a bard. He did not live in one place, but wandered from hut to hut and paid for hospitality with songs and tales. Amongst others he lived in my hut and dictated to me the poems of his tribe. He was as gentle as a well-bred girl. His life among strangers taught him unob- trusiveness, a virtue unknown to the Gilyaks in general. He was not absorbed by material cares, as is generally the case with even quite young Gilyaks, but I knew a whole series of his love-affairs, which always moved him deeply. Once, on returning from a long