Notches make along the pathway, The 



Landmarks upward on the mountain, Awakener 



That the hunter may not wander." of the 



Woods. 

 Still does Nyyrikki, or Pikker as he was called 



by the northmen long before the Kalevala 

 was wrought into Finnish runes, make notches 

 along the pathways of the woods, still the 

 huntsman on the hillside sees his signals on 

 the oak -boles. Perhaps to this day the 

 Esthonian peasant offers in his heart a prayer 

 to Pikker the woodpecker-god, god of thunder 

 and storm, so god too of the glades and fields 

 where these can devastate — a prayer such as 

 that which Johann Gutsloff, a Finnish author 

 of the seventeenth century, cites as the 

 supplication of an old Esthonian farmer : 

 ' . . . Beloved Pikker, we will sacrifice to 

 thee an ox with two horns and four hoofs, and 

 want to beg you as to our ploughing and 

 sowing that our straw shall be red as copper 

 and our grain as yellow as gold. Send 

 elsewhere all thick black clouds over great 

 swamps, high woods, and wide wastes. But 

 give to us ploughmen and sowers a fertile 

 season and sweet rain/ 



In Gaelic lands many an old name has been 

 dropped from common use, because thus as- 

 sociated with some shy and yet never -far 

 divinity, and so too the Finn and the Esth 



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