Page:Eskimo Life.djvu/320

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
276
ESKIMO LIFE

hence come the spots on the moon. The sun seized a crooked knife, cut off one of her breasts, and threw it to him, crying: 'Since my whole body tastes so good to you, eat this.' Then she lighted a piece of lamp-moss and rushed out; the moon did likewise and ran after her, but his moss went out, and that is why he looks like a live cinder. He chased her up into the sky, and there they still are.[1] The moons dwelling lies close to the road by which souls have to pass to the over-world; and in it is a room for his sister the sun. This myth seems to have come to the Eskimos from the westward. Among the North American Indians the sun and moon are brother and sister, and even so far away as among the Indians of the Amazon district we find the same myth, only that there the moon is a woman who visits her brother the sun in the darkness. He discovers her criminal passion by drawing his blackened hand over her face. (Compare also the myths from Australia and the Himalayas on the following page.) Among the Incas of Peru, the sun and moon were at the same time brother and sister and man and wife. (Compare also the Egyptians' Isis and Osiris.)[2] It is remarkable that among the Green-

  1. P. Egede, Continuation af Relationerne, p. 16; H. Egede, Grönlands Perlustration, p. 121; Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 236; Holm, Meddelelser om Grönland, part 10, p. 268.
  2. A. Lang, Custom and Myth, p. 132; Tylor, Primitive Culture' i. 288.