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

The ehpér is the ghost of a murdered infant in Sámi belief. This one-sentence account opens the section of ehpér legends in Halász's collection; it was told in Pite Sámi by Sámi of Arjeplog parish and taken down at Saltdalen in Norway in 1891. It says what an ehpér is: a child its mother hid in the forest, which finds no rest unbaptized and wanders on purpose until its bones are found and the mother is exposed.

Translation

The ehpér is a child whom they (the mothers) have hidden away in the forest. And because those little ones still have no peace to rest, and because they are not baptized, they wander about, and do so on purpose, so that it may be revealed where their bones lie, and so that the mothers who have hidden those little children would come to light.

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. 31, p. 43, in the section of ehpér 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). The ēhpēr is the "ghost of a murdered child" (Wiklund s.v. ąɔparaha-, nom. ąɔparɪ, "Gespenst von einem ermordeten Kinde"); it is kept in Sámi in the English as ehpér, the spelling of the section's name. Mannā is "child" (Wiklund s.v. mana-, "Kind"; Wilbur Table 5.13, mánná); mähhcai is "into the forest", used as "in the forest" (Wiklund s.v. mæɔçe-, "Wald", with the illative mæɔçaɪ); vurhkim is "hidden away" (Halász IV s.v. vuorhket, "verwahren, verbergen"; Wiklund s.v. vuər'kute-), and so is čēhkam (Wiklund s.v. čękate-, "verbergen, verstecken"); lijhka before the negative verb is read as "still, yet" (Halász IV s.v. liek, līk, "doch", with the negative "doch nicht"; Wiklund s.v. lɪḳ, "doch, jedoch"); rāfēp̣ is "peace" (Wiklund s.v. rafe-, "Friede, Ruhe") in the accusative singular, whose ending Halász writes -p̣ where Wilbur's Pite has -v (Wilbur §5.2.3, p. 85; sálbmagirjev, p. 30), the object of anē, the form of "have" used after the negative verb ē, as in Halász IV s.v. luhpie, where luhpiep utni is "er durfte" (Wilbur Table 8.26 for the negative verb; §8.5.3 for adnet, "have", a Class III verb, whose connegative is formed as in Table 8.19); vᵘoiñastėt is "to rest" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. WUOIGNASTET, "respirare … It. quiescere, otium quaerere, hvila sig"); kāstahtuwwum is "baptized" (Wiklund s.v. kąstaɔte-, "taufen"), after älle, "are not" (see below); vantarṭė is "they wander" (Halász IV s.v. vantạrtet, "wandern", from Swedish vandra); vāi is "so that" (Wiklund s.v. vaj, "dass, damit"; Lindahl–Öhrling, Swedish index s.v. At, "jutte, atte, waj"); pikûtuwwā is "is revealed" and pikūs "manifest, in the open" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. PIKOTET, "manifestare … revelare, uppenbara", passive pikotowet, "uppenbaras", and s.v. PIKOS, "manifestus, uppenbar"), so that pikūs pōhtēt is "to come into the open"; kosne is "where" (Halász IV s.v. kusnie, also kušne, "wo"); tāktē is "bones" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. TAKTE, "os, ben"; Wilbur p. 41 n. 2, dákkte); lūlin is "they would be", which with the infinitive pōhtēt, "come" (Halász IV s.v. poạtet, "kommen"), gives "would come" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. LULIB: plural lulin, "essent, de voro", with the example Jus lulib tietet, "si scirem"); mau and mah are the relative pronoun, singular object and plural subject (Wilbur Table 6.11, mav, ma(h)).

Read from context, or not settled by the dictionaries, and named here: ēmēs, "on purpose", is not in the dictionaries in this form: the nearest entries are Wiklund's eme, "gewöhnlich; … stets, immer" ("usual; always"), and emest, "von anfang an" ("from the beginning"), which differ from it in the long vowels and the ending. "On purpose" is read from context, as the one sense that fits this place and both places where the word occurs in no. 34 of this collection (people go on purpose to a haunted place, to test a priest); here ja ēmēs gives "and do so on purpose". Älle, "are not", is read as the negative verb (Wilbur Table 8.26, 3pl eh) run together with "be" (Table 8.25, connegative lä); the contracted form itself is not in the grammar. Tā ētnē is read as plural, "the mothers", because the words that refer to it are plural (sija, "they"; lūlin; mah); a single mother is not ruled out. Lijhka could instead be the Swedish loan lik, "corpse" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. LIK, "funus, lik"), which would make the clause "since those little bodies have no peace to rest". 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: ēhpēr

The Pite Sámi text as printed by Halász (1893), no. 31, transcribed from the page images in his phonetic spelling.

ēhpēr lē akta mannā, mau lē sija (tā ētnē) mähhcai vurhkim ja kō tā smawwa lijhka ē rāfēp̣ anē vᵘoiñastėt ja kū älle kāstahtuwwum, tē sija vantarṭė ja ēmēs, vāi pikûtuwwā, kosne sijān tāktē lē ja vāi tā’ ētnē lūlin pikūs pōhtēt, mah lē taiṭe smawwa mānait čēhkam.

Source Colophon

Ignácz Halász, Svéd-lapp nyelv V: Népköltési gyűjtemény a Pite-lappmark arjepluogi egyházkerületéből (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1893), no. 31, p. 43. 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, the circumflex of û, the raised vowel of vᵘoiñastėt, ñ, ä, the apostrophe of tā’, and his own bracketed words (tā ētnē). His Hungarian translation and his notes are not reproduced.

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