TURNER, WHITE, MAUD 1989 75

CUTTING UP WALRUS MEAT

There is a blood-red dish, a long wooden platterstained with red blood.

Umigluk took from the bag a heavy sagging slab.It filled the platter from end to end.

It showed strata.The surface was deep gray. This was a walrus—

such skin is impenetrable.We took the ulu knives, Piquk and I:

like halberd blades, short, with neat wooden handles—like slicing with a new moonof tarnished steel. Umigluk

had filed at the great curved edge and it shone.We began to slice.

Piquk's wrists looked slender. She turned the meat overand took the red-black flesh first,

slicing to the fat.It swung open; she pressed surely and turned

the blade as it passed.Now it tore into the gristle, bounced and tore.

She persisted. And reached the coconut fat,Cut it into crisp squares, then tackled the skin.Yes, she cut the skin, the knife pressed nearer and nearer the wood,the dark gray parting at last—the wood grooved.

I tried.And I knew the precious mammals' regard for its skin

by that last tearing: it was tough.

Edith TurnerDepartment of Anthropology

Brooks HallUniversity of Virginia

Charlottesville, VA 22903

anthropolimericks

According to Claude Levi-StraussThe ultimate gift is a spouse.

It forms an alliance,Helps minimize violence.

And's a great thing to have in a house.

Hot on each footstep of HegelMarched Marx and his friend Frederick Engles.

The tracks finally ledTo the top of his head

Where they found his feet tied up in tangles.

According to William Graham Sumncr,A law lasts a while, and a folkway lasts longer;

But when a pie hits your faceAnd you suffer disgrace,

That's a more—and it's even stronger.

Daryl WhiteDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology

Box 247Spelman College

Atlanta, GA 30314

BOOK REVIEWS

THE EGOTISTICALPREDICAMENT

Alan Dundcs. Parsing through Customs: Essays bya Freudian Folklorist. Madison, Wisconsin: TheUniversity of Wisconsin Press, 1987. xvi + 216 pp.$22.75 (cloth).

Bruce Chatwin. The Songlines. New York: Viking,1987. 293 pp. $18.95 (cloth).

Ralph MaudDepartment of Sociology and AnthropologySimon Fraser UniversityBurnaby 2, BC V5A 1S6Canada

There is nothing unexpected in Parsing throughCustoms; Dundcs has collected articles written andpublished since his previous collection, Interpret-ing Folklore (Indiana University Press, 1980), andthe same wit and insight is here extended to other