384 



♦ KNOWLEDGE . 



[May 8, 1885. 



There Marjatta found him and carried him home. But 

 as yet he had no name, only the pet names which mothers 

 all the world over give to their babes, and the opprobrious 

 name of base-born idler, which the neighbours cast at him. 

 So Marjatta took him to Wirokannas, " god of oats," to 

 be bapti.sed, but he refused unless Wainiimuinen gave con- 

 sent. When the old Runaio was consulted he said that 

 so strangely-begotten a child should have no baptism, but 

 be knocked on the head and buried. The child, then only 

 two weeks old, rebuked the " old and steadfast," for his 

 crass stupidity, folly, injustice, and crime, whereupon, with 

 such proof of his supernatural power, Wirokannas hesitated 

 no longer, but baptised him, gave him a royal name, and 

 sole kingship over Karelia. 



Filled with despair and rage, and crushed in spirit, 

 Wainiimiiinen fled to the seashore, and sung his Jeremiad. 

 By the magic of his song he built a magic ship, then 

 taking helm in hand, was borne tideward to the farthest 

 marge that fringes the undiscovered land, singing as he 

 went : " Times go by, and suns shall rise and set, and then 

 shall men have need of me, and shall look for the promise 

 of my coming, that I may make a new^ Sampo, and a new 

 harp, and bring back sunlight and moonshine, and the joy 

 that is banished from the world."* Reaching the lower 

 spaces of the sky : 



There liis galley gained the haven ; 

 There abode the ship and hero ; 

 i3ut he left his harp behind him ; 

 Left his mnsic sweet in Suomi, 

 Tor the people's joy eternal — 

 Noble songs for sons of Finland. 



With this, a brief epilogue excepted, ends the Kalevala. 

 In the foregoing analysis but scant space has been given to 

 the question of the source of incidents of which corre- 

 spondences exist in the ejjics of other races. The lyric 

 songs interspersed amongst the runes, forming a rich and 

 independent literature, are indigenous to Finland, and 

 perhaps to Esthonia. They are the wood-notes wild of a 

 jieople whose life is pitched in a mournful key ; under whose 

 ungenial sky and amidst whose melancholy forests and 

 waters there could arise no song of gladness, such as the 

 groves and valleys of more favoured lands, the smiling 

 banks of the Peneiis, the plains of Olympia, inspired ; 

 nor cheerful, happy gods and nymphs of river, tree, and 

 meadow be created. Finnish song says of itself that its 



Harp is made of sorrow only, : , 



Built np only out of sadness. 

 Of the clouded day its framework, 

 Of distress its chords are fashioned. 



But in the epic portions the influence of the myths and 

 legends of other peoples may be traced. That those of the 

 Esthonians and Finns would correspond is to be expected 

 in view of the common origin of both races, and it may be 

 that more primitive forms of the Kalevala and the Kale- 

 vipi^ieg exist among the half-savage Ugrian tribes, to whom 

 those peoples are more or less related. Some ethnologists 

 have identified the Finns with the Accads, or primitive 

 non-Semitic Babylonians, from whom the Semitic culture 

 appears to have been derived, whereas their true home is 

 the Altai region. And M. Lenormant maintains that the 

 Accadian triad of deities. Ana, Hea, and Muh-ger, corre- 

 sponds to the Finnish triad, Ukko, Wiiinamoiuen, and 

 Ilmarinen. But Ukko forms no part of such triad, the 

 place given to him by M. Lenormant being filledj by 

 LemminkUinen. If we are to find any parallels of these 

 three heroes, they must be looked for in the Scandinavian 

 Odin, Thor, and Loki, or Baldr. Perchance certain 



* In Esthonian myth, Kalevipueg vanished, and was nailed to 

 the gates of hell. 



characteristics of the one group of demigods have been 

 adopted by the other, as, eg., the harsher physical 

 features of Wiiinumoinen may have been softened by the 

 moral qualities of Odin. The pre-eminence of Odiu lies in 

 his wisdom, his lordship over nature, his invention of 

 the art of poetry, all which has its counterpart in W;ii- 

 niimoinen. Thor, the god of lightning and thunder, always 

 armed with hammer, corresponds to Ilmarinen, " the ever- 

 lasting hammerer." Passing by further similarities in the 

 respective heroes, there is in the Sampo (the resemblance 

 of which to the quern of Norse myth has been already 

 pointed out) a curious correspondence to the magic fetter 

 called Gleipnir, made by the dwarfs at the command of the 

 Al-Fatlier to bind the wolf Fenrir. " It was fashioned out 

 of six things — to wit, the noise made by the footfall cf a 

 cat, the beards of women, the roots of t,tones, the sinews of 

 bears, the breath of fi.sh, and the spittle of birds."* 



The Scandinavian constituents in the Kalevala are, 

 however, not numerous ; the correspondence between its 

 gods and those of the Egyptian, as Osiris, Typhon, Isis, and 

 Horus, are due only to the personified natural phenomena 

 which lie at the base of each, and not to historical inter- 

 course through the Greeks or otherwise, as some critics 

 contend ; and the origin of this Iliad of the North must be 

 referred to that mythopojic stage in the history of the 

 Finns, or of their ancestors, when the operations of nature 

 and the deeds of heroes became blended into one tradition 

 which inspired the immortal songs whose burden is the 

 passion and prowess of man. 



OUR HOUSEHOLD INSECTS. 



By E. a. Butler. 



COLEOPTERA (conJi/vitec;). ' ' - 



ALL the insects hitherto enumerated belong to the family 

 Plinichf, of which they constitute one section, the 

 Anobiides, distinguished, at least so far as our house- feeders 

 are concerned, by their more cylindrical form, compact 

 make, and shorter legs. In the other section, the Ptinides, 

 to which we now turn our attention, the shape is more 

 globose, the antennw and legs much longer, and the thighs 

 so much thickened at the outer extremities as to become 

 club-like. From their shape it would be easy to conjecture 

 what would be in accordance with facts, that they have less 

 to do with cylindrical burrows than their companions who 

 "swear by " Anobium. 



Fig. 1. — Ptinus fur. A, male ; B, female. 



The typical genus of the Ptinides is Ptinus, and the 

 commonest species of that genua P. /wr (Fig. 1). This is 

 also a household insect, and is of somewhat varied habits. 



• MaUet's Mhn. Anti^., p. 424. 



