April 10, 1SS5.] 



♦ KNOV/LEDGE ♦ 



297 



utilised according to our conceptions, are therofore neces- 

 sarily wasted. To the ignorant savage, grain which is 

 planted in a field instead of being used for food, stems 

 wasted, the wide field seems wasted, the time wasted during 

 which the grain is growing and ripening into harvest ; but 

 wiser men know that wliat looks like waste is in reality- 

 economy. In like manner the sun's rays poured on nil 

 sides into space so that liis circling family receives but tlie 

 2.30 millionth portion, seem, to our imperfect conceptions, 

 almost wholly wa.sted ; but, if our knowledge were increased, 

 we should perhaps form a far different opinion. So it may 

 well be with the questions which perplex us when we con- 

 template the short duration of the life-sustaining condition 

 of each world and sun and galaxy compared with the whole 

 existence of these several orders. The arrangement which 

 seems so wasteful of space and time and matter and force, 

 may in reality involve the most perfect possible use and 

 employment of every portion of space, every instant of 

 time, every particle of matter, every form of force. 



THE KALEVALA. 



By Edward Clodd. 



V. 



THE story is interrupted in the eleventh rune by the 

 appearance of the young, good looking, hot-blooded 

 Lemminkiiinen, the gay Lothario of the piece. He is the 

 son of Lempi, and is also known as Ahti, a sea-god, and as 

 Kaukomielir a surname given him on account of his adven- 

 turous life. 



Leaving his wife that he might woo the maidens of the 

 island of Saari, he made sad havoc with their hearts and 

 reputations, only one of them, Kylliki, resisting his advances. 

 This had the usual result of quickening his desire to win 

 her, and, foiled in this, he carried her off by force. She 

 yielded to the inevitable, and bargained with him not to 

 go to the village dances if he would not go to the wars. 

 But she broke her word, and thereupon Lemminkainen 

 left her and started for Polijola to capture a bride from that 

 country. When his mother sought to dissuade him from 

 this, he threw down the hair-brush* which he was using, 

 and angrily said that blood would flow from it if harm 

 came to him. In this incident we have the sur\ival of 

 barbai'ic belief in sympathetic connection between a man 

 and his image, or something belonging to him, the ill be- 

 falling the one being indicated by the other. It is also, as 

 Mr. Lang remarks, a form of divination, as when the 

 natives of Australia tie round a stick some of the hair of 

 a person whose fate is to be ascertained. 



On reaching Pohjola Lemminkainen sent all the people 

 to sleep by enchantment, except one wretched-looking herds- 

 man, who seemed beneath notice, and who stole off to lay 

 in ambush near Tuoni, the river of death. Lemminkainen 



•Some of the variants Bay a comb. On the introduction of 

 domestic and toilet articles in mythological stories, Mr. I'aleton 

 remarks in respect of a story in which the heroine eifects her 

 escape by means of a magic comb and towel, and in which trees 

 spring up from the bristles of abmsh, that, " metaphorically speak- 

 ing, a brush may be taken as a miniature wood; the common, use 

 of the term brush-wood, is a proof of tlie general acceptance of 

 the metaphor. A comb does not at first sight appear to resemble 

 a mountain, but its indented outline may have struck the fancy of 

 many primitive peoples as being a likeness to a serrated mountain 

 range. Thence comes it that, in German, kamm means not only a 

 comb, but also (like the Spanish sierrn) a, mountain ridge or 

 crest."— iJHssian Folk Tah', p. 144. 



asked Louhi for the hand of her daughter, and was 

 promised it on condition that he caught an oik belonsi'g 

 to Hiisi, the arch forest-demon, that ho bridled lliisi'a fire- 

 breathing horse, and shot the swan on the river of Tuoni. 

 Like Wiiiuiimoinen, he was successful in the first two feats, 

 being aided by I'kko, but in the third he was surprisi d by 

 the concealed herdsman, who killed him and cast his body 

 into the river, where it was cut to pieces. Thereupon 

 blood flowed from his brush, and his mother knowing 

 therel)y that evil had befallen him, hurried to Polijola to 

 learn his fate. "Then like Denn'ter seeking Persephone, 

 the mother questions all the beings of the world, and their 

 answers show a wondinful poetic sympathy with the silent 

 life of nature. ' The Moon .said, I have sorrows enougli of 

 my own without thinking of thy child. My lot is hard, 

 my days are evil. I am born to wander companionless in 

 the night, to shine in the season of feast, to watch through 

 the endless winter, to fade when siunnier conies as king.' " * 

 Louhi deceived her, and at last the Sun told her where the 

 fragments of the body were lying. Then, with a metal 

 rake having teeth one hundred ells in length, .fhe gathered 

 up the scattered members and put them together ; the birds 

 brought magic balm from heaven, or, as in another version, 

 a bee brought vivifying honey from " the cellar of Jumala," 

 the goddess of man's blood gave her aid, and Lemminkainen 

 was restored to life. 



In Eithonian myth, it is Kaleva who is killed by his 

 brother Untamo or Hiisi, and cast into Tuoni's river. So 

 in Egyptian myth Osiris is killed by his jealous brother 

 Typhon, and thrown into the Nile. Isis, with grief bor- 

 dering on madness, seeks her husband, as Kave Luonotar 

 seeks Kaleva, as Lempi seeks Lemminkiiinen. And as 

 with his remains, so with those of Osiris, which Isis 

 gathers together, only that one limb is missing, which has 

 been devoured by fishes, and so likewise with Kaleva's, of 

 which the eyes have been eaten by the guinard. Both are 

 healed with honey, wax, and spices. In Greek myth, 

 Medea, pursued by her father yEtes, to battle his pursuit, 

 dismembers Absyrtos and casts his limbs into the sea, 

 when, the danger past, she reunites them by her magic 

 spell. In German folk-tale, when a younger sister finds the 

 fragments of her two sisters' bodies in the wizard's chamber, 

 she gathers the limbs together, and, putting them in order, 

 life returns.t 



In the sixteenth rune we return to Wuinlimciinen, who 

 reappears as building the boat which Pohjola's maiden 

 required, but as unable to finish it because he had forgotten 

 the three magic words needful to that end. For these he 

 sought in vain in Wainola. He was bidden to look for 

 them in the topknot of a swallow, the wings of a wild 

 goose, the tongue of a reindeer, and the lips of a white 

 squirrel, but, although he shot hundreds of these creatures, 

 he failed to find the lost words. So, as a last resource, he 

 went to Manala or Tuonela, the under-world, in search of 

 them. Tuonela, in the conception of the ancient Fiiin.s, 

 was like the upper-world. The sun shone on it, the forests 

 gave shelter to bears and wolves, the waters to fishes, but 

 the forests were wrapped in gloom, the waters were bl«ck, 

 and the cornfields brought forth teeth for the Tuoni- 

 serpent. Tuoni, its ruler, was a pitiless old man, aided in 

 his grim rule by his wife, a hag with hooked, iron-pointed 

 fingers ; by Tuonen-poika, his bloodthirsty son, and by his 

 men-destroying daughters. 



Arriving at the river's brink, he called to the maidens. 



* Lang. Citstoiii and Myth, p. 171 and Le Due's trans. Rune 15, 

 p. 125. 



+ Grimm, K. vn'l H. M., III., 385 Eng. edition. No. 46, the 

 ' Fitcher's Bird." And cf. Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, p. 232. 



