Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/189

 Some Mythical Tales of the Lapps 179

became partly revealed in the year 1849, when the venerable pastor of Umea, J. A. Linder, published in a Swedish journal the translation of a hitherto unknown poem called Peiven Parnek, " the Sons of the Sun," the words of which he had taken down from Fjellner's dictation.

The riches of his memory were afterwards placed at the disposal of Mr. J. U. Gronlund of Stockholm, and of Baron Gustaf von Dliben. These communications formed the basis of von Diiben's chapter on Lappish poetry in his comprehensive work on Lapland and the Laplanders. This book was published in the year 1873, and in the following summer another scholar, 0. Donner, made a journey to Sorsele, and there found the pastor blind and bowed with age, and no longer able to write. Nevertheless, he was able to dictate to the German scholar the original versions of many different poems, which were afterwards published by him, in the year 1876, in his Lieder der Lappen.

The " Sons of Peive, the Sun." both in substance and in form, resembles a common type of Finnish song, several specimens of which are given in Lonnrot's Kanteletar, e.g. Kanteletar, Part III. Nos. 46, 47, 49, 50, pp. 307, 311, 314 and 315 (3rd edition, Helsingfors, 1887). The latter are mainly derived from Russian sources, but the Lappish poem bears also the signs of Scandinavian influence. It was taken down by Fjellner in the district of Tornio, or Jukkasjarvi (Lappmark), from the dictation of a Lapp named Leuhnje, but Fjellner stated that the song was also sung further south in Herjedal, and he had heard it and previously written it down in other districts and dialects.

The Sons of Peive are the inhabitants of Peive- Pele, Sunside, "ilia pars montis quae vergit in meridiem,"^ a region which is opposed to Ittka-pele, North-side, " ilia pars montis quae ad septentrionem vergit," ^ or, as it is

^ Lexicon Lapponicutii (Lindahl & Ohrling), Stockholm, 1780, p. 320. '^Ib. p. 82.