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

An animal fable in Pite Sámi, the Sámi language of Arjeplog in Swedish Lapland, taken down by the Hungarian linguist Ignácz Halász in 1891 from Arjeplog Sámi living at Saltdalen in Norway. A wolf comes back hungry to the half reindeer he left behind, finds that the fox has eaten it, and lets the fox talk him into biting a horse.

Translation

In the old days a wolf had eaten a reindeer as food for himself, out in the wilds, and had eaten his fill of half the reindeer, at a certain homestead, on the land. Then, terribly glad, he went on farther out. With his belly full of food, the wolf wanted to find himself a place to sleep, and he wanted to look for food for himself in the forest. The wolf went far, but he found no place to sleep.

Then afterwards he began to be hungry again, and began to remember (he remembered) that he had eaten there before, at the old eating-place. Then he set off there, to where the half reindeer was, but he did not find it. The fox had found the wolf's leftover pieces, and had eaten, and had carried it all away into the wilds (into the forest).

Then the wolf asked the fox: "What are you eating, brother? (Did you eat it all, brother?)" The fox answered: "A fat morsel." "Where did you find it, brother?" asked the wolf. "Here at the homestead there is a horse, as you see," answered the fox; "from that horse's loin I bit off the morsel, brother; but it does not give up the morsel of its own free will; it rose up, and lay down on the side from which the morsel had been eaten."

The poor wolf was so hungry, because he had lost that food. Then the wolf said to the fox: "Perhaps I'll go there too, and take a bit of it?" The fox said, terribly glad: "Just go, brother!"

The wolf went so quietly to the horse, and bit into the horse's loin. The horse rose up so quickly; the fox went along with the wolf so quietly, and so terribly glad. The horse set off running, and the wolf bit into the loin, and so hung down. He had no time to get his teeth out. Then the wolf was in such distress.

The fox ran quickly alongside, and laughed, and showed himself a friend, and called to the wolf: "Where are you going, my brother?" "I don't know, brother, my good brother, where the horse is going off with me," answered the wolf; "with my eyes I count the stars, and with my feet I knock against the trees."

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. 75, pp. 120–121, in the section of animal fables. 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 tale calls the wolf by two words, both given here as "wolf": kumpe, the Sámi word (Wiklund s.v. kumpeke-; Wilbur p. 54, gummpe), and vaʼrăḳa, the Scandinavian varg (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Warg, "lupus, varg"). The fox, rēpē, is Wiklund s.v. reɔpihe-; the reindeer, pōcuj, accusative pūhcuw, is Wiklund s.v. pɔcuj and Wilbur's båtsoj, accusative buhtsuv (Wilbur p. 104, Table 5.17). lahkē is "half" (Wiklund s.v. laɔk̮e-, "Hälfte"), and its variant halva is the Swedish halv; kallanēpmai, "to satiety", is from Wiklund's kalane-, "satt werden". kāmpol is the Swedish gammal, "old" (Wiklund s.v. kampale-); orrūm, here "homestead", is a dwelling-place (Wiklund s.v. oru-, orum-saɖe "Aufenthaltsort"). oððim-saje is read as "a place to sleep", beside porrum-saje, "eating-place", from Wiklund's ote-, "schlafen"; in Pite Sámi the words for "sleep" and "new" share one root shape (Wilbur p. 52), so "a new place" is the other possible reading. vœudnas āvun is "terribly glad": āvu is joy (Wiklund s.v. ávu-; Halász IV s.v. ávuo), and vœudnas matches Lindahl–Öhrling's wuowdnajes, "terribilis", used as an adverb "terribly" (also Friis 1887 s.v. Vuovdnai, attributive -dnas). ọlhkūbui, "farther out", is a comparative of olᵒku-, "outside" (Wiklund s.v. olᵒku-), read by its form. čoivi is the belly (Wiklund s.v. čoiʼve-), tēwwa "full" (Wiklund s.v. tieva-), skoukon "in the forest" (Halász IV s.v. skoaka, from the Swedish skog). vast is "again" (Wiklund s.v. vas, "wieder", with the variants vasten and vastu, "= vas"); -ḳōhta, "begins to", is the inchoative known from North Sámi -goahtit, and its variant muihtaje is Wiklund's "sich erinnern". ouṭēp is "before" (Wiklund s.v. outo-, comparative outep). stuhču is a piece or morsel, from the Swedish stycke (Halász IV s.v. stuhca); pᵘoiṭē is "fat" (Halász IV s.v. puóitka, "fett", with the form puöitᵉe "id."; Friis 1887 s.v. Buoidde); kaʼihka is "all" (Wilbur p. 185, gajk). o is read as "and": it is in none of the dictionaries consulted, and stands where the tale elsewhere has ja.

tāle is "here is" (Wiklund s.v. ta-, tale "voici"). The čor-pēlle is the loin (Wiklund s.v. čorʼve-: čor-pele "Lendenbraten"); pēlle alone is "side" (Wiklund s.v. pele-). kāskēst- is "bite" (Wiklund s.v. kask̮e-); čᵘœǯǯēli "rose up" (Wiklund s.v. čuɔʒele-); vēlliṭi "lay down" (Wiklund s.v. velɪte-, "sich legen"). stahkar is the Swedish stackare, "poor one" (Halász IV s.v. stahkares; Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Stakkar); tan tēt is "because of that" (Wiklund s.v. teɔtɪ, "wegen; tan t. darum"). marja is "perhaps" (Wiklund s.v. marʼji, marʼju, "vielleicht"); pihtau "a bit" (Friis 1887 s.v. Bitta); pära "just" (Wilbur p. 185, ber∼bar). so sœʼibma is "so quietly": sœʼibma is Wiklund's suiʼma, "still, langsam", and so is taken here, and throughout the tale, as the Swedish så, "so" (Wilbur p. 185), not as "his". spaʼihta is "quickly" (Wiklund s.v. spaiʼɔta, "schnell"); mañēn "along with" (Wiklund s.v. maŋe-, inessive maŋen "(zusammen) mit"); vaʼńĕkāt "to run" (Wiklund s.v. vaŋʼka-, "laufen"). iċči thiďďau anē is "he had no time": thiďďa is time, from the Swedish tid (Halász IV s.v. thijje, "Zeit"), and anē is the negative form of "have" (Wilbur p. 181). hojīn is "in distress" (Wiklund s.v. hoɖe-, hoɖen orut "betrübt sein").

In kûhcā kûrau varkau, kûrau is "along, alongside" (Wiklund s.v. kuɔra-, accusative kuɔrau "längs etwas") and varkau "quickly" (Lindahl–Öhrling s.v. Warg, adverb "cito, fort"; Wiklund s.v. varʼka, "bald"); kûhcā is "ran" (Wiklund s.v. kuɔɔca-, "laufen (von tieren); klettern"; also Friis 1887 s.v. Guoccat). čaʼibmā is "laughed" (Wiklund s.v. čaiʼma-), vûsēt "showed" (Wiklund s.v. vuɔseɔte-), vēnahken "as a friend", from the Swedish vän (Wiklund s.v. vænak̮e-), čuʼrŏvu "called" (Wiklund s.v. čuɔrʼvu-). In the wolf's last words, lokōu nāstit is "I count the stars" (Wiklund s.v. looko-, naste-), cǟbmiw "I knock" (Wiklund s.v. cabme-, "schlagen, klopfen"), and mûra ńäʼiḳa "against the trees", ńäʼiḳa being the postposition "against" (Wiklund s.v. næiᵃka, "gegen"; also Friis 1887 s.v. Njeigga). kihcusi is read as "hung": with vûlus, "down", it tells what became of the wolf when the horse set off running with his teeth in its loin. It is taken as the past of a verb "to hang" such as Wiklund's kaɔcuse-, "hängt, intr." (s.v. kaɔcuse-, from kaɔca- "aufhängen"), and Halász IV's South Sámi kjahcet, "aufhängen"; neither dictionary has the word with i in its first syllable (though i answers to Lule a in other verbs, as in Halász IV s.v. ḳihčet, Lule kahčat "fragen"), so "hung" is a probable reading, not a certain one. Halász's bracketed variants are given in brackets where they differ in sense, and left out where they are only another pronunciation of the same word. 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.

🌲

Source Text: Kumpe ja rēpē

The Pite Sámi text as printed by Halász (1893), no. 75, transcribed from the page images in his phonetic spelling.

kāmpol āikī vaʼrăḳa porrom pūhcuw päbmun allasis olŏḳun mēhcin ja porrom kallanēpmai lahkē pūhcus. muhtēm orrūmen lāntan. ta vœudnas āvun mannā ọlhkūbui. kumpe sitai kāudnat allasis oððim-sajēw porrom tēwwa čoivin ja sitai ēčā pēpmuit ohcot skoukon. kumpe mannā kuhkās, valla i kauna oððim-sajēn.

tē vast näʼlăkūḳōhta maññēla ja muihtēḳōhta (muihtaje), at porōi toppēn ouṭēp kāmpol porrum-sajēn. tē vœʼlĕḳā (vᵘ̍elĕḳā) tohko, konnë-l tat halva (lahkē) pōcuj, män iċči kāuna. rēpē kāunai kumpē pāhcēm stuhčait ja porrom ja kᵘœddām (kᵘettām) kaʼihka mähhcāi (vûmē sisa).

te kahča kumpē rēhpėhest: «maiṭe porō väʼlĕjam? (purri väʼlĕjam kaihka)» — rēpi svärruj: «pᵘoiṭē stuhču.» — «konnë väʼlĕjam kaudni’ tau?» kahčā kumpe. — «tāle orrūmën hässta, kokte vuinā», svärruj rēpē, «tan hēsta čor-pēllāst kāskēstiu stuhčau, väʼlĕjam; män ī tā vattē tau stuhčau ēčas mēlast (mīelast); čᵘœǯǯēli pajās o vûlus vēlliṭi tan pēllai, koste tau stuhčau porrum.»

vaʼrăḳa stahkar so näʼlăkūmen tan tēt, ko le lahpam tau pēpmūw. tē vaʼrăḳa hollā rēhpihi: «marja mon āi vūlhkāu tohkō vallṭēt pihtau tastë?» rēpē hollā vœudnas āvun: «vāccē pära väʼlĕjam!»

vaʼrăḳa manna so sœʼibma (sᵘeʼibma) hässtai ja kāskēst hēsta čor-pēllai. hässta čᵘœǯǯīli pajās so spaʼihta; rēpi mannā so sœʼibma mañēn kumpen o so vœudnas āvūn. hässta vūlhkī vaʼńĕkāt o vaʼrăḳa kasskēsti čor-pēllai o so kihcusi vûlus. iċči thiďďau anē pǟnit ulhkus oǯǯūt. te li tallē vaʼrăḳa so hojīn.

rēpē kûhcā kûrau varkau o čaʼibmā o vûsēt ēčaus vēnahken o čuʼrŏvu kumpiu: «kosō manā mū väʼlĕja?» — «iu tētē, väʼlĕjam, mu purrē väʼlĕjam, kosō hässta vœʼlĕḳā (vᵘäʼlĕḳā) muina», svärruj vaʼrăḳa; «mū čėlmiji lokōu nāstit ja mū jūlᵉhki cǟbmiw mûra ńäʼiḳa.»

Source Colophon

Ignácz Halász, Svéd-lapp nyelv V: Népköltési gyűjtemény a Pite-lappmark arjepluogi egyházkerületéből (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1893), pp. 120–121, no. 75. Public domain. Transcribed from the page images of the scan of the library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (REAL-EOD 4154). Halász's phonetic spelling is kept letter for letter, with his raised vowels, length marks, breves, dots above and below, and the raised tick (written here ʼ) that marks a checked syllable; in (vᵘ̍elĕḳā) a small tick stands above the raised u. Line-end hyphens are joined. Halász prints the tale as one paragraph, all in lower case after the title; it is divided here at the same places as the English. His Hungarian translation and notes are not reproduced.

🌲