A long time ago lived Charchaxan.

He had a wife and she had a child

Living in this way Charchaxan was the biggest shaman.

It was a time when there were many shamans.

So he lived.

He roamed on a boat in summer and on a dog sledge in winter. They lived roaming.

Comment:
Eks'il' is the small Yukaghir canoe boat traditionally made of three boards cut from a larch tree and sewn together with reindeer sinews, while qa:rbEs is a larger Russian boat made of poplar boards.

One day Charchaxan was shamanizing all the time.

When the shaman shamanized, his wife asked him about it. Later he told her: "I saw that and that."

His wife understood some of it.

That woman understood the language of the ravens.

Comment:
The Dative form tudin functions as the external possessor.

If she asked him soon afterwards, he used to tell her what he had done.

One day they roamed away from their place. He said: "Let's roam on the big road," and so they went.

So they came to the place where they were going. They had had the silver spoons, but saw that only the spoon case was left.

And hose silver spoons had either been left behind, or had been lost on the road, perhaps.

Comment:
According to traditional beliefs, one should not pick up an object dropped on the earth even if it is very valuable because it now belongs to mother earth. In this case the child has to pick up the spoons and therefore violate an important prohibition. This is one of the reasons for its death. The word monut here functions as an evidential marker.

He sent his child.

He sent his best child to see if they were lying on the road.

Comment:
The word monut functions as a complementizer.

To find them the child walked on the recently frozen ice. When he was walking on the ice, the ice broke, he fell and died.

His wife mourned over him. In her mourning she asked what had happened to him and where he had disappeared. And she said: "Why were you shamanizing all the time?

Why didn't you see what happened?"

Charchaxan didn't answer.

He was pretending that he was crying.

One day a raven came flying past.

Comment:
Like other peoples of north-eastern Asia, the Yukaghirs thought that the raven was a holy bird. Its beak, claws and wings are used as talismans.

The woman asked it: "What happened to my child?

He could have grown up to be an adult. What happened to him?"

Then the raven answered: "It happened because he was defeated.

Your husband is a shaman. He fought against two shamans and they defeated your husband. When they started defeating him, he gave them his child instead of himself.

Comment:
Shaman competitions were quite frequent. The defeated shaman either died or lost his/her shaman power, but instead he/she could also give the winning shaman the soul of one of his/her relatives.

With this he escaped and was rescued."

That's how it went.

That woman wanted to beat Charchaxan very much saying: "Why did you do that?"

Then Charchaxan said: "How do you know I did it?"

He said: "Who told you?"

Comment:
There is no expected focus marker on the word 'who'.

The woman said: "The raven told me why you did it."

The shaman didn't know she could speak to ravens. She used to look at the road, watch and ask.

At the time when she was little and didn't speak, any child who didn't speak was fed with raven's eggs.

That's why they understood the language of the ravens when they wanted to speak it.

Now there are people like that who live in the forest.

They say that some people can understand it.

It is like this here.

This is the end.