Page:Eskimo Life.djvu/340

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296
ESKIMO LIFE

dive as he had seen the squirrel do, but was drowned. In Greenland we find this story split into two. In the one it is two sisters who go down to the shore and wish, the one for an eagle, the other for a whale, as a husband; and these animals at once come and carry them off.[1] In the other we are told of a pair of old people who live alone with their daughter. One day there comes a big unknown man, who says that he lives near them to the southward, and asks for their daughter in marriage. He obtains her, and on leaving her home asks his father-in-law to come and pay them a visit. This the father-in-law does. When he enters the house, his daughter hangs a kettle over the fire and her husband goes out. The old man looks after him through the window, but sees only a cormorant which flies over the water, dives, and comes up with a sea-scorpion. Presently the son in-law comes in with the sea-scorpion, which he gives to his father-in-law to eat. On the old man's return home he asks his wife to hang the pot over the lamp, then rows with her a little way out from the land, and ties a stone round his neck and a long rope round his waist, saying to his wife: 'I will dive into the water, and when I tug at the rope you must haul me up again.' He jumps overboard and

  1. Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 126; Holm, Meddelelser on Grönland, part 10, p. 276.