Note 67 — WAWENOCK DRINKING SONG

For the want of a better explanation it seems that the song refers to some place called “Long Town” (gwenodana´, “long-town"), probably in Canada. The expression gwe nǫ da nǫ may, however, be a verse ending having a value similar to Kuwenodinu, “It is long O,” occurring in a Passamaquoddy song recorded by Professor Prince. (Cf. The Morphology of the Passamaquoddy Language of Maine, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. LIII, No. 213 (1914), pp. 115-116-117.) In still another Passamaquoddy song given by Leland and Prince (Kuloskap, The Master, pp. 308-309), there is an untranslated stanza ending anigowanotenu. These independent occurrences of the burden in question seem to attest to its antiquity in the Northeast.