A kayaking couple discovers a dying young man in a foreign place. An angakok summons the witch responsible for his illness, confronting her ghost and wounding her with a harpoon. The witch is revealed to be the youth’s aunt, who dies simultaneously. While dining, the couple envies the household’s children, only to learn they are named after men lost to monster-gulls, silencing the gathering.
Source:
Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo
by Henry Rink
[William Blackwood and Sons]
Edinburgh and London, 1875
► Themes of the story
Supernatural Beings: The story involves angakok (shamans) and a witch, highlighting interactions with supernatural entities.
Cunning and Deception: The witch secretly causes the young man’s illness, embodying deceitful actions that harm others.
Family Dynamics: The revelation that the witch is the young man’s aunt introduces complex familial relationships and hidden malice within a family.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Inuit peoples
Abridged version of the story.
The husband and wife always used to go out kayaking together. Once they happened to come to a foreign place, where a young man was found in an almost dying state.
The angakok-man began a conjuration, summoning the witch who had caused his sickness. He detected the ghost of the witch approaching the sick youth in order to touch him with her black hands.
But the angakok thrust his harpoon at her, hitting her heel; and almost at the same moment the aunt of the sick youth died in the next house, and proved to have been the witch.
► Continue reading…
While spending the rest of the evening there, eating and talking in a pleasant way, the visitors noticed the children playing on the floor; and thinking of their own childless state burst out, “That crowd of boys might almost make people envious.” They were answered, “The boys yonder are the namesakes of those whom the monster-gulls carried off as food for their young ones” (viz., who perished in kayaks); whereupon the whole assembly at once became silent.
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Dreamtime Whispers 