a Pite Sámi legend from Arjeplog, from Ignácz Halász, Svéd-lapp nyelv V (1893)

This short legend of origins stands among the primeval legends that open Halász's collection. It was told in Pite Sámi by Sámi of Arjeplog parish and taken down by Ignácz Halász at Saltdalen in Norway in 1891. Out of spite the devil spits into the reindeer's leg, at the place that has a name of its own, and from then on people have had to herd their reindeer night and day.

Translation

Then, in the old days, the devil was going to spit into the reindeer's leg. That is called the ńûlas hole; and when the devil had spat that out of spite, the reindeer became exceedingly wild, and the people had to herd them night and day.

Colophon

Translated from the Pite Sámi of Ignácz Halász, Svéd-lapp nyelv V: Népköltési gyűjtemény a Pite-lappmark arjepluogi egyházkerületéből (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1893), no. 11, p. 12, in the section of primeval legends. Halász took these texts down in 1891 at Saltdalen from Sámi of Arjeplog parish, and printed a Hungarian translation after each, which was not consulted: it was masked out of the page images before translation.

The words that decide the reading were checked in K. B. Wiklund's Lule-lappisches Wörterbuch (1890), in Lindahl and Öhrling's Lexicon Lapponicum (1780), in Halász's South Sámi dictionary (Svéd-lapp nyelv IV, 1891) and in Joshua Wilbur's A Grammar of Pite Saami (2014). Tolēn is "in the old days" (Wiklund s.v. tole-); pahahkės is "the devil", "the evil one" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. PAHAKES, "diabolus, den onde"); čolókoṭėt and čolókoṭam are "to spit", "had spat" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. TJÄLGAT, "tjälgåt, spuere, spotta", with the inchoative tjälgåcåtet, "begynna spotta"; Wiklund s.v. čol°ko-, "Speichel"); Halász IV s.v. čolökotet prints "bespotten, verspotten", that is "mock", and refers to the same word, but with pūhcu jœʼlĕḳai, "into the reindeer's leg", the sense "spit" is taken; jœʼlĕḳai is "into the leg" (the word for foot or leg in Wiklund's čeɔkcas-juɔl'ke, "hinterfuss", s.v. čekcase-, and outoč-juɔl'ke, "vorderfuss", s.v. outoče-); raʼiḳē is a hole (Wiklund s.v. raɪ'ke-, "loch"; Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. RAIKE, "foramen, hål"); ńûlas is kept in Sámi: it answers to Wiklund s.v. ŋuəla-, "a capsule-like widening of the skin between the claws of the reindeer's hind foot", full of yellowish hairs, which the Sámi say the reindeer moistens its growing antlers with; kohčūhtuwwā is "is called" (Halász IV s.v. kohcét, "nennen, heissen", and kuhcsuwwut, "genannt werden"); niddūn is "out of spite" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. NIDDOTET, "odisse, hata; vexare", and their Swedish index s.v. Niding, where niddo pargo is "illdåd", an evil deed); rīdnuhet is "to herd" (Wiklund s.v. rei'nuhe-, "hüten, weiden"); iďďa-päʼivē is "night and day" (Wiklund s.v. iʒa-, "iʒa peive nacht und tag").

Read from context, or not settled by the dictionaries, and named here: kōcič in the title (Halász's variant kûcič), and kûcič in the text, "wild", what the reindeer became, is found in no dictionary; it is read from this text, where the reindeer must afterwards be herded night and day, and from no. 14, where the wolf becomes kûcič and angry when it gets meat and must be let go. Wiklund s.v. kuɔca-, "laufen (von tieren)", with kuɔcaɔte-, "laufen lassen, antreiben", would allow "given to running off", but that stem is spelled with hc in no. 10 (kûhcā) and kûcič has none, so it does not decide the word. Virhtijė, "had to", is read as a form of the verb virhtit, "must"; its ending is not decided. The opening words of the title, "Now I shall tell", are Talle kalhkap mon supcastėt. Halász's bracketed variant (kûcičen) is kept in the Source Text. Pite Sámi is close to Lule and South Sámi; where no dictionary of those languages decides a word, the reading is named here.

No English translation of this text 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.

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Source Text: Talle kalhkap mon supcastėt, kokte pōcuj šattai nau kōcičen (kûcičen)

The Pite Sámi text as printed by Halász (1893), no. 11, transcribed from the page images in his phonetic spelling. Line-end hyphens are joined.

tē kalhkai tolēn pahahkės čolókoṭėt pūhcu jœʼlĕḳai. ńûlas raʼiḳēn tat kohčūhtuwwā, ja ko pahahkės lī talle niddūn tāb čolókoṭam, tē šattai pōcuj alvūs kûcič ja tē almača virhtijė rīdnuhet iďďa-päʼivē.

Source Colophon

Ignácz Halász, Svéd-lapp nyelv V: Népköltési gyűjtemény a Pite-lappmark arjepluogi egyházkerületéből (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1893), no. 11, p. 12. Public domain. Transcribed from the page images of the scan of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (REAL-EOD 4154). Halász's spelling is kept letter for letter, with his length marks, dots above and below, breves, the accent over o in čolókoṭėt, œ, the raised stroke of the checked syllable (written here ʼ), and his bracketed variant in the title. His Hungarian translation and his notes are not reproduced.

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