Four tales from the Kolyma country, told in 1896 and written down by Waldemar Bogoras. Three sisters find a baby in a rock — Chumo, who grows to the roof when the house is empty and eats all their stores — and flee from him over a mountain of ivory and a mountain of flint to a river of fire. A pike with iron teeth gives a mother a daughter who grows by the hour, and her brother escapes her up an iron tree. A young man wins a horse from every companion by daring at midnight to cut the braid from a dead shaman's head. And a one-eyed Kolyma healer succeeds where seven shamans have failed, and sends his fee home through the air on a flying horse.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Chapters:
01:24 Tale about Chumo
13:08 Yukaghir Tale — The Pike-Girl
20:34 Tale of a Shaman — The Braid
23:43 Tale of a Shaman — The One-Eyed Healer
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.114 told by Anne Vastriakoff, a Russianized Yukaghir woman, at Omolon, autumn 1896; N.115 told by Anne Korkin, a Russianized Yukaghir woman, at Sukharnoye, autumn 1896; N.121 told by John Parin, a Russianized Yakut, at Bystraia, summer 1896; N.122 told by Nicholas Kusakoff, a Russian creole, at Pokhotsk, summer 1896. Fresh in-house English rendering, heard exactly as screened: the first tale stands whole as printed, unfinished as its narrator left it; in the Pike-Girl, her parents' end stays offstage as printed, the reindeer pursuit is condensed, and the ermine's end is carried in a single plain clause; in the last tale, the healing is rendered without literal dismemberment, the cure whole. After the first tale and its music you will hear this episode's short spoken break, placed there by design.
Left out of this part, in book order and by name: the five tales between the Pike-Girl and the shaman tales stand held by name for the owner's ruling, and untouched — N.116 The She-Monster, N.117 The Monster with Iron Teeth, N.118 The Girl from the Grave-Box, and N.119 and N.120 Small-Pox (both versions). Also held by name and untouched: N.129 The Woman's Head and N.142 Story of Hungry Children. No tale in this part's span was excluded whole. This part tells Kolyma tales only, and the shelf claims no completeness that its register contradicts.
Music: opening and closing theme, with short separators between the tales — Cello Makam Pulse.
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