Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/28

 20 Journal of American Folk-Lore.

rus, cutting off its flippers. The walrus stabbed him in the head with its tusks, and the swordfish swam off.

(In some of these tales that come from Greenland, it is explained that the man who converses with the animals sees them as persons, recognizing them in their true form only as they disappear. In the East Greenland tale given above, however, we clearly have the char- acteristic Indian idea of beings at once men and animals. At the opening, the Duck and the Ptarmigan are expressly stated to have had the form of men ; at the close, we find the Ptarmigan in the ani- mal act of flying.)

These examples characterize sufficiently the Eskimo animal tales proper. They are all very much alike, and clearly form a class by themselves which is distinct from the ordinary Eskimo tale. They are short, scant, and trivial. The action is insignificant, often absent. The short speeches, which are often sung, are the nucleus of the whole. They are in the form of repartee, and are generally humorous, as are at times the situations. The characters are ani- mals of all kinds, — mammals, birds, sea-mammals, fishes; but birds occur most frequently, and of these most often the raven. On the whole, they are suggestive of our European beast fables.

The relation of these tales to the animal tales of the Indians is now clear. It is evidently a relation chiefly of dissimilarity. True, the characteristic feature of the latter — the fact that animals are not distinguished from men — we see that the Eskimo tales possess also. In fact I do not wish to be understood to say that the dissim- ilarity is complete or absolute, or even radical. On the contrary, it is important to note that the essential feature of the Indian animal tales is found among the Eskimo. There is no absolute break be- tween the two mythologies. Indeed, in view of the fact that the two races are contiguous for several thousand miles, it would be strange if there were such a complete and radical difference.

Nevertheless, that there is a difference, and a great difference, is indubitable. The mere paucity and brevity of the Eskimo beast fable must differentiate it from the Indian animal tale. For in- stance, even if we add to these beast fables the stories of the first- mentioned group, — those dealing with the marriage of men and animals, — we have a total of only thirty. As the whole number of separate Eskimo tales is about 380, it is evident that less than eight per cent, of Eskimo tales distinctly contain an animal element. What the proportion among Indian tales may be, I cannot say ; but it is without doubt scarcely ever so low as this, while frequently it reaches one half. The scantiness of the Eskimo animal element is still more obvious when we find that the twenty tales in which it appears could all be printed in a few pages, and constitute quantita-

�� �