A gull abducts a young girl to be his wife, carrying her to his cliffside home. While he searches for food, the girl escapes using a rope and returns home. The gull, overcome with grief, is shot by a man from her household. Another tale recounts a girl being swallowed by a narwhal, only to be expelled unharmed later.
Source:
Tales of the Smith Sound Eskimo
by Alfred L. Kroeber
[The American Folklore Society]
Journal of American Folklore
Vol.12, No.46, pp.166-182
July-September, 1899
► Themes of the story
Supernatural Beings: The gull exhibits anthropomorphic qualities, such as abducting the girl to be his wife, indicating interactions with beings beyond the natural world.
Forbidden Knowledge: The girl’s experiences—being taken by the gull and swallowed by the narwhal—expose her to extraordinary events that are beyond common human understanding.
Transformation: The narrative involves the girl’s physical relocation to the gull’s cliffside home and her subsequent escape, symbolizing a journey of change and resilience.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Inuit peoples
Greenland and Labrador story
High up on a cliff lived a large gull. Once he saw an unmarried girl come cut of a house. “Will you not be my husband a little,” said the girl, who was still wearing a child’s hood. The gull flew down, and, picking her up by the tip of her hood with his bill, carried her to his habitation to be his wife far up on the cliff. But then the gull went away to get something to eat for his wife. He flew far away over the sea to get whale-meat. When he was gone, the girl let herself down from the cliff by a rope, and ran home. The gull, coming back, saw her, but was too late to catch her, and in his grief flew about, crying, kotiuk. Thereupon a man came out from the house, and shot him, hitting him under the wing.
This (or another?) girl is also said to have been swallowed by a narwhal, but to have been puffed out again by it.
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