Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1909-08-21
A GREENLAND LEGEND
Rx MARK ANDERSON.

changes in different parts of the earth
is well known. But, though biologists
can tell US that they have occurred,
they do not tell US why. Some of them
have possibly come to pass since man
attained sufficient intelligence to hand
down from generation to generation
traditions concerning their origin.
These aditions, arising when the hui
man fancy was untrammeled by fact
and when rude people spoke by natural
symbols, are often very poetic. Here
is one current among the Eskimos of
Greenland accounting for change they
believe long ago took place depriving
them Of perpetual sunshine and sub
shutting the dreary arctic night:
''Time was when the sun, which now
hides himself beyond the southern
ocean for many months in winter, cir
cled always above the northern hori-
zon. AS it is now night for many
months, it was then always day, for
at midnight the sun still stood above
the horizon. Then our MANTLE instead
of the white one 1t now is, was a per-
petual green. Our people lived on
luscious fruits that grew without cul-
ture and bathed in the tepid waves
that danced lightly on the strand. In
those days they knew only happiness.
''But one day when some were max
ing merry under the green trees and
others were sporting in the waves a
canoe white as the snow amid which
we now live was discovered far out at
sea, now gently raised on the crest OF
a below, now sinking out of sight but
slowly drifting toward the land.
"Awestruck, the people waited on
the verge till the white canoe reached
the sands, and there within it, Unfold
ed in a robe of ermine, lay maiden
whose skin was fair and whose hair
fell over her shoulders like rivulets of
sunshine The chief stood where the
canoe touched the beach and, STOPPING
took the maiden in his arms, carried
her up to a grassy slope and asked:
what art thou, and whence cometh
thou?
81 am DELTA, the daughter of the
Spirit Of the Winds, and l come from
his ice castle in the far north
"'And will you stay with US. asked
| the chief, or will you, having gladden.
ed our hearts by your coming, leave us
to remember you as in q dream?
"I viii not leave you. My home
shall be with you forever
''Then was heard a far distant
moaning in the north. rising as it APP
! preached till it became an awful roar
1t was the voice of the Spirit of the
Winds, and it commanded our people
TO return at once his daughter to her
white home in (the north. Terror
stricken, the people focked to their
chief and besoughta him to give the
maiden to her father. But the chief
stood mute, pointing to his house.
which was now a ruin. >-Entering there
the5 SAW on Il couch the maiden, ker
| hands, white as MARBLE foldeT over
her breast.
'"Then an awe greater than that
which had fallen on the people when
the maiden first touched their land
came to them, for they knew a great
calamity was about to visit them. The
King of the Winds looked down on the
form Of his daughter, now cold in death.
and great was his wrath. The multi
tude knelt before him. supplicating
him to spare them. But he needed not
their prayers. At his command his
servant, the darkness, came and threw
black mantle over the land
and so. bereft of the light and
warmth of the sun, the verdure whiten-
ed and died. The north wind blew
snow from the clouds and the cold
CONCEALED the waters. The sun. whose
track had been a golden circle in the
north, went to the south and hid be-
hind the ocean for many months. Then
our ancestors. who had lived under
the trees, fearing no frost. were
obliged to build huts to protect them
from the cold. The warm waves in
which they had bathed became icy
cold, then hardened. The people, bereft
!, Of the fruits of the earth exposed to
the cold, died in great numbers. 1t
was many months before the snow
king relented sufficiently to permit the
sun to show his face again and his
warm breath to revive the frozen land
even for a brief season.
"Since that period, every winter, the
sun goes south and leaves US in dark
ness. The fruits which grew so plen-
fYJI1v
again. But the spirit that deprived US
of them sent the white bear and the
walrus, and we are obliged to hunt
them in order to sustain ourselves with
their meat and warm our bodies by
burning their oil. The sun continues
every winter to hide his face beneath
the ocean and when he comes back in
summer shines for so short a period
that there is no time for the fruits of
the earth to ripen."
Is this tradition based on some
change in the plane in which the earth
revolveS, a new direction in the cur
rent of that mighty river we call the
gulf stream, a shrinkage in the terres-
trial crust, or is it an ebullition of
that poetic constitution common among
men when they first enter upon civil
lized condition? Whether it is to be
explained by the first or the second
hypothesis, it is certainly a very beau
tiful conception. And it is to these
conceptions of primitive people, CROP
ing in the unexplained universe. grasp
ing for the truth, that the poet who
interprets the world of romance is in
| debted. Without them he would have
no song to sing.