Feb. 27, 1885.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



165 



TllK KAT, KVAT. A. 



By Edward Clodd. 



II. 



THE national feeling among the Finns, fostered by their 

 new masters as a diversion against vain aspirations 

 for the future, turned to the neglected past, whose great- 

 ness and glory were enlarged by the refracting medium of 

 the imagination, like the seemingly swollen sun as he sinks 

 in the west. Interest in all that related to Finnish history 

 and literature was deepened, and etl'oit was stimulated to 

 preserve the fast-perishing fragments of popular verse and 

 legend telling of heroes who liad done mighty and re- 

 nowned deeds for the fatherland, and whose spirit was not 

 dead, but sleeping. Despite the labours of Porthan, 

 Ganauder, and others in the last century, mucli of this 

 oral folk-song had been lost ; the native bards lamented, 

 " As for the lays of old time, a thousand have been scattered 

 to the wind, a thousand buried in the snow. ... As for 

 those which the Munks swept away and the prayer of the 

 priest overwhelmed, a thousand tongues were not able to 

 recount them." 



Happily the work fell into right hands. Among the 

 earliest labourers was Topclius, a physician, whoso journeys 

 into the north of East Bothnia brought him into contact 

 with both shamon and runic singers, and the songs which 

 he collected, the first fruits of a goodly harvest, were 

 of immense value as indicating relation to some large 

 cycle of poems. The track thus opened was followed 

 by Dr. Elias Ltinnrot,* who devoted nearly seven years 

 to eager and often perilous search after the scattered 

 relics. He scoured the length and breadth of the land, 

 visiting the remotest districts as the more promising ground 

 for securing the songs in uncoiTupted form, making him- 

 self at home in the humblest cabin with the grandam 

 and the child, the fisherman and the boor, and over- 

 coming, as he best could, by skill and tact, the reluctance 

 of these unlettered believers in the magic power of words 

 to repeat the ancient and venerated runes to stranger 

 ears. In this the ser%"ices which as a doctor of medi- 

 cine he rendered to the sick and suffering, availed 

 him much. But it was from the Runaios, the professional 

 singers of the districts, that he recovered the larger portion 

 of fugitive, and yet related, fragments of the unwritten 

 songs. These native bards would lighten the dreariness of 

 their long, dark winters by engaging in contests of memory, 

 clasping each others' hands and singing the runes in turn, 

 no run« being repeated, till the one whose memory first 

 failed him loosened hold. But for this custom the songs 

 would have long ago perished. LOnnrot's labour of 

 love was well rewarded in the recovery of many isolated 

 folk-songs more or less ancient (which were published 

 under the title of the Kantfktar, from Kantele, a kind 

 of harp in use among the Finns), and, what is the 

 crowning glory of his endeavour, of the cycle of related 

 songs which is named the Kalevala, or " The Home 

 of Heroes " (from Kaleva, heroic, and la, a local 

 suffix). These last, which were published in ls.3.3, comprised 

 twelve thousand lines or verses, divided into thirty-two runes 

 or cantos. Their value and importance was recognised with 

 enthusiasm by the learned, prominent amongst whom was the 

 celebrated Jacob Grimm, who unhesitatingly classed the 

 Kalevala with the great epics of the world, both in the 

 underlying unity which connects the whole, in the splendour 



* Dr. Lonnrot died in the spring of last year. (Vide Athcnceam, 

 Jlarch 29, 1884.) M. le Due's words may be endorsed wherever 

 the Btory of Lonnrot's work is told : — " Ces deux oavrages ont k 

 jamais immortalise le doctenr Lonnrot. On I'a snmomme THomere 

 finlandais." — Introdnction to " Lo Kalevala," p. 9. 



yet simplicity of its diction, in the richness and freshness of 

 its imagery, and in the love and appreciation of nature which 

 runs through the entire work. It is no exaggeration to 

 say that it is to the Finns what the Ionian songs were to 

 the Greeks, the Nibelungen liied to the Teutons, the Maha- 

 Bharata to the Hindus, and the Shah - Nameh to the 

 Persians. 



Through the further researches of Dr. Lonnrot, Castien, 

 and others, the lacunm in the Kah^vala were tilled by the 

 discovery of fifteen more runes, and in ISl'J the complete 

 work, consisting of twenty-two thousand seven hundred and 

 ninety -three lines (seven thousand more than the Iliad), 

 divided into fifty runes, was ])ublished. 



The first edition was translated into Swedish by tlii; 

 great Finnish niythologist, A. Gastrin, the manner of whose 

 death, as he wrote the last lines of his important work on 

 Finnish mythology, recalls the well-known story of the 

 Venerable Bwda, dictating, as he lay dying, the closing 

 words of his translation of the Gospel of St. John. The 

 complete Swedish version has been rendered (according to 

 M. le Due, with some sacrifice of accuracy to elegance) by 

 K. Collan, of Helsingfors ; the German translation by the 

 learned A. Schiefner ; the French by tlie above-named 

 writer, M. Leouzon le Due ; but as yet no translation into 

 English has been made. In fact, our sources of knowledge 

 outside the above are meagre and fugitive ; some references 

 in the works of J\Iax Miiller, Sayce, atd Tylor, a small 

 volume of selections by the late Professor Porter of Yale 

 College, prefaced by an analysis of the poem ; abstracts in 

 Dr. Latham's " Nationalities of Europe,"* in Mr. Lang's 

 essay, and in an iustructive review of Gastrin in Frascr's 

 Magazine, May, 1857,1- complete the list. The metre in 

 which the Kalevala is composed — the eiglit-syllable trochaii", 

 characteristic of all Finnish poetry, and mostly common to 

 Ural-Altaic — is familiar to the readers of " Hiawatha," 

 having been adopted by Longfellow from the Swedish 

 version as a sonorous measure for the Indian legends on 

 which his poem is based ; and which, like all tales of 

 primitive races, were chanted in cadence, and transmitted 

 through the easier mnemonic vehicle of rhythmic form. 



The Kalevala is unique among epics. Its several parts 

 are less closely related than those of the Iliad, but, although 

 not the work of a single age or author, although various 

 ideas from foreign sources have been embodied in them 

 (notably in the closing rune, when the Virgin's son, the 

 child Christ, appears, at whose coming Waiuiimoinen departs 

 for unknown lands), and although their connection is 

 consequently broken, their unity is not obscured. 



It is unlike other epics in the absence of any apotheosis 

 of clique, or clan, or dynasty, and in the theatre of action 

 being in no ideal world, where the gods sit lonely on 

 Olympus apart from men. Its songs have " a common 

 author, the whole Finnish people;' the light of common 

 day, more than that of the supernal, illumines them. The 

 heroes not only bring down gifts from lieaven for men, and 

 work their wonders by aid of magic, but mingle in the 

 daily life of the people, sharing their toil and entering into 

 their rest. They are, as Mr. Lang remarks, " exaggerated 

 shadows of the people, pursuing on a heroic scale, not war, 

 but the common business of primitive and peaceful men." 



Moreover, the Kalevala, which opens with a creation- 

 myth of the earth, sea, and sky, from an egg, is a perfect 

 storehouse of unadulterated mythology, and, as the fore- 

 goin" remarks would indicate, of folk-lore and popular 

 customs ; also of beliefs in transformation, in a common 

 life shared by man and animal, in lifeless things as endowed 

 with speech and virtue ; in brief, in all the tangled and 



* Vol. 2, pp. 182-200. t " Jlytliology of Finland." 



