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

The kitniha are the underground people of Sámi belief. This short piece of lore, the first of Halász's legends about them, was told in Pite Sámi by Sámi of Arjeplog parish and taken down by Ignácz Halász at Saltdalen in Norway in 1891. In three sentences it says who the kitniha are: they live beneath the earth as people live above it, they keep herds, and they want to hold on to people who come into their lands.

Translation

The kitniha are those who are living beneath the earth, and there they live like other people. They have herds of reindeer, and herds of cattle too. And they want to hold on to them, too, when people come into their lands.

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. 22, p. 28, in the section of kinē (kitniha) 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). Kitniha are "underground people" (Wiklund p. 35 s.v. katnɪhe-, nom. kanej and kanɪ, "unterirdischer Mensch, Wicht, Ungeheuer"); the word is kept in Sámi in the English, as the name of these beings. Lē … vėssūmen is "are living", the progressive of "to live" with the verb "to be" (Wilbur §8.2.2 and Tables 8.1–8.2, viessot, progressive viessomin; Table 8.25, lea, "they are"), and vēssu is "they live" (Wiklund p. 170 s.v. vęsu-, "leben; wohnen"; Wilbur Table 8.13, p. 170, third person plural present viess-o); mah is the plural relative pronoun, "who" (Wilbur Table 6.11, ma(h)); ētnamen vûlēn is "beneath the earth" (Wiklund p. 10 s.v. ætname-, "Erde"; p. 174 s.v. vuəle-, inessive vuəlen, "unter"); ku’ ēčā almača is "like other people" (Wiklund p. 42 s.v. ko, "wie, als; wenn, da"; p. 10 s.v. ęɔčąte-, nom. eča, "ander, plur. andere", used with ulmuč, "Mensch"; p. 4 s.v. almače-, "Mensch"); itni is "they have" (Wiklund p. 7 s.v. atne-, "haben, besitzen", with the a → i of the dialect); pōcuj-ēluit are "herds of reindeer" (Wiklund p. 97 s.v. pǫcuj, "Renntier"; p. 9 s.v. ælu-, "Herde"); slitūr-ēluit are "herds of cattle" (Wiklund p. 124 s.v. slɪɔture-, nom. slɪtur, "Vieh", from Swedish dialect kritur); āi is "also" (Wilbur Table 2.1, aj); thullit is "to hold on to, keep back" (Wiklund p. 147 s.v. tolɪje-, marked N.G., "halten, einhalten"), the infinitive after sihtė, "they want" (Wilbur Table 8.1, p. 154: sihtat, "want", takes the infinitive; the third person plural present in -e is in Tables 8.15–8.16, pp. 171–172); pọ̄hti is "they come" (Wilbur Table 8.2, båhtet, "come"; third person plural present, Table 8.19, p. 174); lānṭaiṭa is "into the lands", the illative plural of a loan from Swedish land (Wiklund p. 54 s.v. lanta-; Wilbur Table 5.1, illative plural -jda).

Read from context, or not settled by the dictionaries, and named here: tasne is rendered "there". Halász IV (p. 112 s.v. tāsne, with short-vowelled forms such as tasnie among its variants, "itt | hier") and Lindahl–Öhrling (p. 459 s.v. TASNE, "heic, här") give "here". Modern Pite Sámi has a pair, dánne "here" and danne "there" (Wilbur p. 145 and p. 139), but Halász's spelling does not show which of the two is meant; "there" is chosen because the place spoken of is the land beneath the earth. Thullit has no object in the Sámi; the English supplies "them", the people of the following clause. 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.

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Source Text: Kitniha

The Pite Sámi text as printed by Halász (1893), no. 22, transcribed from the page images in his phonetic spelling.

kitniha lē tā, mah lē ētnamen vûlēn vėssūmen ja tasne vēssu sija ku’ ēčā almača. itni sija pōcuj-ēluit ja āi slitūr-ēluit. thullit sija āi sihtė, kō almača pọ̄hti sijā lānṭaiṭa.

Source Colophon

Ignácz Halász, Svéd-lapp nyelv V: Népköltési gyűjtemény a Pite-lappmark arjepluogi egyházkerületéből (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1893), no. 22, p. 28. 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, û, č, and the apostrophe of ku’. His Hungarian translation and his notes are not reproduced.

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