Episode Details

Seven tales close the Big-Raven cycle of Bogoras's Koryak Texts — Big-Raven's hidden daughter, won by the kamak who alone can name the making of the louse-drum, who kills the man-eating kamaks with her knife, escapes up the comb grown tall, and, swallowed at last as the kamak foretold, cuts her way out and comes home; Gull-Woman and Cormorant-Woman, each swallowed whole by a kamak and each cutting her way out, the one with her woman's knife and the other with her nails; Yinia-Nawgut and Kilu, whose feigned kamak-becoming by a fish's cheek-bone wins each of them a Fish-Man husband; Big-Raven hidden in the whale's mouth, sucking the oil under the neighbours' noses, and the fox's gratitude; Ememqut and Envious-One, and the contest of the wives' beauty that ends in swoon upon swoon; Fish-Woman, twice killed by jealous Miti and twice revived, who at last goes back to the sea; and Kilu, who flees the night visitor in terror and reports her cousin devoured, and finds the monster a handsome suitor who marries the cousin instead.

Chapters:

00:05 — How Big-Raven's Daughter was swallowed by a Kamak

04:16 — Gull-Woman and Cormorant-Woman

07:15 — Yinia-Nawgut and Kilu's Marriage with Fish-Man

10:01 — Big-Raven and Fox

11:48 — Ememqut and Envious-One

13:37 — Big-Raven and Fish-Woman

14:49 — Kilu and Monster-Man

From Koryak Texts (1917) by Waldemar Bogoras — Publications of the American Ethnological Society, Vol. V, the Jesup North Pacific Expedition recordings of 1900–01. Public domain. Fresh English rendering by KacheliTV. In keeping with this shelf's practice, some tales are heard with single beats left out or told in outline, and the register records them all: in How Big-Raven's Daughter was swallowed by a Kamak, the heroine's escape from the kamak's body is heard without the manner of the cutting. In Gull-Woman and Cormorant-Woman, the two escapes from the kamaks are heard the same way. In Big-Raven and Fox, the fox's gratitude-cake closes the tale in the book's own single line — the killing is stated and not shown, and no means is named. In Ememqut and Envious-One, the wives' contest is heard without the book's gross beats — neither the washing on the road nor what followed Envious-One's swoons is heard. In Big-Raven and Fish-Woman, Miti's jealousy is heard without the cooking — Fish-Woman is killed, and revives, and is killed and revives again, as the book has it, and the meal the book describes is not heard. Ememqut and Envious-One is a fragment as printed in the 1917 edition — the tale begins mid-course, and the edition's own note says the narrator knew no more; it is heard exactly as printed. One tale of the cycle is not heard at all: The Kamak and his Wife, which stands in the book between How Big-Raven's Daughter was swallowed by a Kamak and Gull-Woman and Cormorant-Woman, is excluded whole under this shelf's law and is recorded in the shelf's written exclusion register. With this part the Big-Raven cycle stands complete in the order the book prints it, the excluded tale standing in the register in its place. Northern Tales gathers the Chukchi, Siberian Eskimo, Koryak, Yukaghir and Even tales from Bogoras's Jesup North Pacific Expedition volumes, in the books' own order.

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