Four tales from the far north-east of Siberia, told on the Kolyma and the Molonda River in 1895 and 1896 and written down by Waldemar Bogoras. A rich Lamut master who struck his assistants for trifles watches his whole herd mount up to the sky, and stands to this day turned to stone on his own pasture boulder. The first Russians come to the Lamut with iron knives, axes and kettles, make friends of them, and write the tribute down in a big black book. One-Side, the one-sided hunter, walks a year of tundra to win back his goose-wife and his little son from her sisters, and at last hangs up the skin that hid his true, handsome form. And a Yukaghir girl, set down by a whirlwind at the foot of a rock that reaches to heaven, climbs it with a snow-bunting's help, keeps house for a one-sided husband she cannot at first believe in, and comes home to her father's village in mourning black.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Chapters:
01:21 A Lamut Man Turned into Stone
05:36 The Lamut and the Russian
08:46 One-Side
17:07 A Yukaghir Tale
Source: Waldemar Bogoras, Tales of Yukaghir, Lamut, and Russianized Natives of Eastern Siberia (1918), recorded for the Jesup North Pacific Expedition — public domain. Narrators as printed: N.103 and N.105, Ulashkan, a Lamut man, on the Molonda River, summer 1895; N.106, Katherine Rumiantzer, a Russianized Yukaghir woman, at Pokhotsk, summer 1896; N.107, Innocent Korkin, a Russianized Yukaghir man, at Pokhotsk, summer 1895. Fresh in-house English rendering, heard exactly as screened: in the first tale the master's harsh punishment is heard without its detail; in the second, the Russian chief's orders to kill and to chastise are not heard; in One-Side, the severed finger, the blows, and the killings at the tale's end are not heard — the reunion stands; in the last tale, the cut climbing-lines and the scalding of the hidden servants are not heard. Between the second tale and the third you will hear this episode's short spoken break, placed there by design.
Left out of this part, in book order and by name: N.104 A Shaman and a Boy — held by name for the owner's ruling; it is not stock and forms no part of this episode. N.034 and N.132 likewise stand held by name. This part tells Lamut and Yukaghir tales only, and the shelf claims no completeness that its exclusions contradict.
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