a song from Arjeplog and Lycksele, from Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (1876)

A small Sámi song to be sung over little children. P. Læstadius heard Sámi sing it in Arjeplog and Lycksele Lappmark, in Swedish Lapland, and the Finnish collector C. A. Gottlund took it down from him and printed it in 1832. Otto Donner reprinted it in 1876 together with a reading of it in the North Sámi of Utsjoki, made with the Utsjoki Sámi Aslak Laiti, and the English follows that reading. The singer calls on the ant as a comrade, to come and pull the child to the lake with a rein made of hair.

Translation

Ant, my comrade, ant, my comrade!
Come, come — pull, pull
The child to the lake
With a rein of hair!
Vana, vana.

Colophon

Translated from the Sámi of Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1876), no. 8. C. A. Gottlund took the song down from P. Læstadius, who had heard Sámi sing it in Arjeplog and Lycksele Lappmark, and printed it in his Otava II, p. 223 (1832), in the Sámi of those parts (Pite and Ume Sámi) in his own spelling, under the title Jöijuhtahta uhtje maanai piijeln. Donner printed beside it a reading of the song in the North Sámi of Utsjoki, made by himself and the Utsjoki Sámi Aslak Laiti; that reading is a rendering of Gottlund's text, not a separate oral version, and it is what is translated here. Gottlund's older form is printed below the Source Text. Donner printed a Finnish translation after each song; it was not consulted. The text used is the Project Gutenberg transcription of Donner's book, with the Sámi lines proofed against the Sámi of his German edition, Lieder der Lappen, 1876.

The words of the Utsjoki reading were checked in J. A. Friis's Ordbog over det lappiske Sprog (1887), in the Sámi–Norwegian glossary of his Lappiske Sprogprøver (1856), and in the Good Works Library's North Sámi word list; the older form and the title, which Donner gives only in Gottlund's Sámi, were checked in Lindahl and Öhrling's Lexicon Lapponicum (1780), K. B. Wiklund's Lule-lappisches Wörterbuch (1890), Ignácz Halász's South Sámi dictionary (Svéd-lapp nyelv IV, 1891) and Joshua Wilbur's A Grammar of Pite Saami (2014). Kotka is the ant (Friis 1887 s.v. Gotka, "formica, Myre"), and the older form's korko is the ant as well (Wiklund s.v. korᵒko-, "Ameise"). Skipparam is "my comrade" (Friis 1887 s.v. Skippar, "socius, comes, Kammerat"). Poađi is "come!" (Friis 1856, Boattet), and keäsi "pull!", from gæsset, "draw, pull, drag" (Friis 1887 s.v. Gæsset); Māna is the child, as the object of the pulling (Friis 1856, Manna), and the older form's manav has the accusative ending of the Pite noun mánná, "child" (Wilbur, Table 5.23, p. 109); jaurai is "to the lake" (Friis 1887 s.v. Javrre). Vuoktaläučīn is "with a hair-rein": vuokta is the hair of the head (Friis 1887 s.v. Vuokta) and lavčče a rein (Friis 1887 s.v. Lavčče, "habena, Tømme"), here with the ending "with"; the older form's vuobta is hair (Wilbur, ex. 39, vuopta "hair") and labče a rein (Wiklund s.v. labᵉče-, "Zügel"). In the title, jöijuhtahta is built on the verb for joiking (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Juoiket, "Lapponum more canere", with juoikem "a Lapp song"; Wiklund s.v. juoiᵉka-; Halász IV s.v. juóiket), though its ending is not explained in the dictionaries at hand; uhtje is "small" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Utse, "parvus, liten"), maanai "of the children" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Mana, "infans, barn", with the same plural form in Manai manah, "children's children"), and piijeln "over, above" (Wiklund s.v. paᶁe-, inessive paᶁeln "oben, über, oberhalb"; Lindahl and Öhrling note that the southern Sámi say pijel for pajel, "over").

Keäsi could also be read as "summer's" (Friis 1887 s.v. Gæsse, "aestas, Sommer"), but the object māna and the rein in the next lines make "pull!" the likelier reading. One word is left in Sámi: vana, vana, the last line, which Donner and Laiti carry over unchanged from the older form's vanah, vanah. Friis knows vana only as "without" (Friis 1887 s.v. Vana), and Lindahl and Öhrling have the same word, wana, "without" (s.v. Wana, "sine, absque, förutan"), with the plain a that Gottlund writes; but "without" does not fit here. It may be their wåna, "friend" (s.v. Wåna, with the example Påte wånekam, "come, my friend"), or it may be a sung syllable. No word is read from context alone.

No English translation of this song is known to us.

© 2026 Tianmu Anglican Church. This English translation is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: you may share and adapt it for non-commercial use with credit to the Good Works Library, tianmu.org. The source text keeps its own terms. For other uses, see Rights and Reuse.

🌲

Source Text: Jöijuhtahta uhtje maanai piijeln

The Sámi text as printed by Donner (1876), no. 8, in the Utsjoki rendering by Donner and Aslak Laiti, from the Project Gutenberg transcription, proofed against his German edition.

Kotka skipparam, kotka skipparam!
Poađi, poađi — keäsi, keäsi
Māna jaurai
Vuoktaläučīn!
Vana, vana.

Source Colophon

Otto Donner, Lappalaisia lauluja (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1876), no. 8, in the Utsjoki rendering by Donner and Aslak Laiti; the title is Gottlund's, as Donner prints it. Public domain. Text from the Project Gutenberg transcription of the book (PG #73262, 2024), proofed against the Sámi lines of Donner's German edition, Lieder der Lappen (1876; Internet Archive identifier liederderlappen00unkngoog). Donner prints no verse numbers with a song this short. His letters are kept as printed, including ā, ä, ī, č and đ.

🌲

Older Form as Printed by Donner

Gottlund's text, in the Sámi of Arjeplog and Lycksele in Gottlund's spelling, as Donner printed it after the Utsjoki rendering, from the same transcription, proofed against his German edition.

Korko graddnam, korko graddnam!
Påtheh, påtheh — keseh, keseh
Manav jaurai,
Vuobtalabtjijn'!
Vanah, vanah.

🌲