Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/526

 488 Collectanea.

to the ground. I look up at it : " Thou art like a dying man. I look at thee still to-day, but it is for the last time. Thou art gazing at my throat. With a plaited rope I sliall hang myself upon thee." From my left eye the tears fall and rain upon the ground. (Unhappy one ! ) I look around me and cease to cry. But again the tears flow from my right eye and rain upon the ground. Tiie grass which I have cut has come untied and the dry grass rustles. I cook a fish before the fire and try to eat it, but my throat is strangled and I cannot eat. I brew tea from my tears and try to drink, but I can neither eat nor drink. I will go back. I will go home. I will enter my hut, and will not cease to think upon my death. I have but one wish, to bind myself upon my chosen larch. (Oh, my sorrow ! ) My elder sister will not let me go out. Do not tell me that thou grievest for me. I will take my little knife with me and I will hang myself. I will unwind my left plait and will sink down upon the comb. I will kill myself. My mother and her sisters, and the wife of my uncle, will hear about me and will weep for me. They will hasten here to see me. But they will only hear my voice from the distance. They will hear me wail and sing from the land of Death. When my throat will ache from moaning I will make a flute from the rushes and will play upon it. Listen to my mournful songs. (Oh, my sorrow ! ) I will change my thoughts to thoughts of death. When you eat fish now you will eat it alone. My food will be frogs. ^ (Oh, my sorrow ! ) My dear mother will weep and come out of the hut. Why dost thou weep for me. Mother ? She weeps again and goes back into the hut. She grieves, but yet for me she will not kill herself. When she comes to seek me she v/ill sing this song : — "Against the current of swift water I go to seek my daughter. The Gilyaks lead me through the high and low valleys of the river. My lamentations are heard. On all sides the echoes are spreading. In the heart of the mountain and beneath it the echoes will resound. My dog Tlakr I will take with me, and will slay him upon the grave of my daughter. I shall have no dog left. I am poor. I have nothing in which to clothe my daughter. I have no cloth to make her grave-clothes. I have no funeral meats to give

^The suicide cannot go to Mlyvo, the spirit- world of the Gilyaks, but is forced to wander in the swamps and lakes, and to feed upon frogs.