Page:The Finding of Wineland the Good.djvu/245

 (56) Einfœtingr, i.e. a One-footer, a man with one leg or foot. In the Flatey Book Thorvald's death is less romantically described. The mediæval belief in a country in which there lived a race of one-legged men, was not unknown in Iceland, for mention is made in Rímbegla, of 'a people of Africa called One-footers, the soles of whose feet are so large, that they shade themselves with these against the heat of the sun when they sleep.' [Rímbegla, l. c. p. 344.] This fable seems to have been derived, originally, from Ctesias: ['Item hominum genus, qui Monosceli [Monocoli] vocarentur, singulis cruribus, miræ pernicitatis ad saltum: eosdemque Sciapodas vocari, quod in maiori aestu humi iacentes resupini, umbra se pedum protegant: non longe eos a Troglodytis abesse,' [Ctesiæ Cnidii quæ supersunt, ed. Lion, Göttingen, 1823, p. 264], and was very widely diffused [cf. C. Plinius Secundus, Naturalis Historia, lib. vii, ch. 2; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticæ, lib. ix, iv, 9; C. Jul. Solinus, Polyhistor, ch. lxv, &c.] It is apparent from the passages from certain Icelandic works already cite [pp. 15, 16, ante], that, at the time these works were written, Wineland was supposed to be in some way connected with Africa. Whether this notice of the finding of a Uniped in the Wineland region may have contributed to the adoption of such a theory, it is, of course, impossible to determine. The reports which the explorers brought back of their having seen a strange man, who, for some reason not now apparent, they believed to have but one leg, may, because Wineland was held to be contiguous to Africa, have given rise to the conclusion that this strange man was indeed a Uniped, and that the explorers had hit upon the African 'land of the Unipeds.' It has also been suggested that the incident of the appearance of the 'One-footer' may have found its way into the saga to lend an additional adornment to the manner of Thorvald's taking-off. It is a singular face that Jacques Cartier brought back from his Canadian explorations reports not only of a land peopled by a race of one-legged folk, but also of a region in those parts where the people were 'as white as those of France;' 'Car il (Taignoagny) nous a certiffié auoir esté à la terre de Saguenay, en laq̃lle y a infini or, rubis & aultres richesses. Et y sont les hom̃es blancs comme en France & accoutrez de dras de laynes...Plus dict auoir esté en autre pais de Picquemyans & autres pais, ou les gens n'ont que vne iambe.' [Voyage de I. Cartier, ed. d'Avezac, Paris, 1863, p. 40 b.]

(57) These words, it has been supposed, might afford a clue to the language of the Skrellings, which would aid in determining their race. In view not only of the fact, that they probably passed through many strange mouths before they were committed to writing, but also that the names are not the same in the different manuscripts, they appear to afford very equivocal testimony. Prof. Storm with reference to these names, which he cites thus, Avalldamon, Avaldidida, Vætilldi and Uvæge, says, that, while the information they afford is very defective: 'So much seems to be clear, that in their recorded form, they [these words] cannot be Eskimo, for d is entirely wanting in Eskimo, and even g is rare except as a nasal sound [''he refers: Fr. v. Müller, Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, ii. 164'']; Avalldamon especially cannot be Eskimo, for Eskimo words must either end with a vowel, or one of the mute consonants, b, k, [q], t, p....Especially is the soft melody of these Skrelling-words altogether different from the harsh guttural sounds of the Eskimo language. We must therefore refer for the derivation of these words to the Indians, whom we know in this region