An Esquimaux Story.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 669, 2 September 1876, Page 2 (Supplement)

An Esquimaux Story.

There was once a woman who had a son and a daughter. As the son grew up ho became a hunter, and once he killed a thong-seal, from the akin of which he proposed to cut some thongs. But the mother wanted the skin for some other purpose, and she and the boy quarreled about it. Then she went and pronounced a charm on the sealskin, and when he went to cut it up, the end of a thong [ flew up, struck his eyes, and made him blind. The winter came on, they were destitute of seal-meat, and bad had to live entirely on mussels, for the blind hunter could go hunting no more. But one day a bear appeared at the window and began to eat away at the window pane, which was made of skin. The mother and daughter fled to the other side of the house, but the stripling asked for his bow. His sister gave to, him ; he bent it, asked her to takeiin for him, and then he shot and killed the animal. The mother said, ' Thou hast missed' But the sister wt ispered • Thou bast killed the bear. They had now plenty of meat, but the mother refused to give the boy any, pretending that as he had not killed the bear there was none, and only gave him mussels. But the sister gave him her share of the bear-meat in secret. Finally the in spring a flock of wild geese restored the boy's sight, and he resumed his hunting occupations. He, with his sister, used to go out on the edge of the ice, where the seals and white whales (a kind of dolphin) were seen, and he would kill them with his harpoon, tie had no hunting-blad-der, but he nsed to tie the harpoon line round his sister's waist instead, and when the animal was struck they wou d drag it upon the ice by means of the line. ne day he asked his sister, ' Dost thou like our mother ?' hhe made no answer, but upon his repeating the question she replied : ' I am fonder of thee than of her.' ' Then to morrow, 1 he replied, ' she shall serve us for a bladder.' The next day he accordingly proposes to -tis mother that. she should help in the hunt, and to this she consents without the alightest suspicion. He ties the line round her waist as he had done to his sister, but she now begins to grow -frightened at ' the look that is in his eyes, ' and when she sees him preparing to throw the harpoon she eries — 'My son, choosea small whale, choose a small one. ' Just then a large white whale rises to the surface of the water at the edge of the ice near his feet. He throw* his harpoon into the animal and then lets go the line. The whale instantly begins to drag his mother toward the edge of the ice, she struggling with all her might to get free and crying out for a knife to cut the line.

But the son only reproaches her with her cruelty in having made him blind, and says : ' This is my revenge. '.[hen she cries out, ' Oh, my ullo! 1 my ullo ! it was f that suckled thee it'waslthat suckled thee !' And this she continuos crying uutil the whale rlrags W into tho water. She floats for a few moments on the surface, still crying, ' Oh, my son ! it was I that suckled thee, it was J that suckled thee !' then disaappears forever. The brother and sister gaze a few minutes at the spot whore she went down, and then, terror-stricken, turn and flee. But the cry of their mother continues ruining in their ears, and folL,. them wherever they go. They finally fly from the village to the interior of the country, far away from any human kind, with this voice still pursuing them, still ringing in their ears, ' it was I that suckled thee, it was I that suckled thee!' like the refrain of ' Macbeth shall sleep no more, : in Shakspeare's sublime tragedy. They dissappear, and nobody who knew them ever sees or hears of them again. But they are not dead. Their death would not carry out the Esquimaux idea, and the poet has added one more to the tragedy in which there is a grandeur of conception not unworthy of Shakspeare himself. The event recorded in this act takes place a long time afterwards ; nobody knows how long. It nay be a hundred years, for all, even the children who knew the matricides, have grown old and died. The tradition of the crime is almost forgotten. The scene is laid in the interior of the house of the angakok, or prießtmagician. It ib night — a winter night in the Arctic, with an Arctic moon throwing its glamor over the plans and mountains of ice and snow. Inside the house the pi iest-inagician is performing a conjuration, an(^ Qe people are°gathered around silent and trembling, listening to his muttered incautations. Suddenly they hear a cry outside, and the angakok says : ' Something vil is approaching.' They go to the door and look out There they behold a gigantic hunter a little distance away, standing in the moonlight. His hair is white as the snow on which he stands, and it hangs down over his shoulders in long, silvery locks. But his face is black as night. They watched him for a moment, and he gazes at them with burning, fiery eyes. Then the angakok comes forword and asks the stranger who he is and what he wants ? The other replies : ' Do you not know me ?' They answered in the negative. Then ho asks : 'Do you remember the son who used his mother for a hunting bladder ?' A very old women then remembers hearing her mother talk about the crime when she was a. very little child. The hunter replies : ' I am that man, and I stiil live.' Then he tells them something of the ' life he and his sister have lived since that time ; says they art still suffering all the tortures of remorse an on the day of their flight ; that be has been driven by some mysterious power to come and denounce himself to the people, that the crime may not ba forgotten, and— fearful retribution— during all this life of three generations, day and night, the voice of their murdered mother has been always ringing in their ears — ' Oh, my son, it was I that Buckled thee, it was I that suckled thee !' Then he disappears, and is never hoard of more. — -Front Mac Gahan's 1 Under the Northern Lights?