Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/453



Steep’d in lustrous purple sheen. Catkins dangled on the hazels, On the oak the acorns sprouted, And the black-thorn blossom’d white, Sudden wreathed in snowy tresses, Fragrant in the evening glory, Scenting all the moonlit night.” Then the second son of Kalew goes to a birchwood, and sings there. Then the corn begins to kern, the petals of the cherry to drop off, and the luscious fruit to swell and redden, the ripening apple to blush towards the sun, the cranberry and the whortle to speckle the moor with scarlet and purple.

Then the third son intones his lay in a forest of oaks, and the beasts assemble, the birds give voice, the lark sings shrill, the cuckoo calls, the doves coo, and the magpies chatter, the swans utter their trumpet-note, the sparrows twitter, and then as they weary, with sweet flute-like note sad Philomel begins his strain (Kalewpoeg. Rune iii.).

In the Finn mythology, these results follow the playing of Wainamoinen’s magic harp. The story of this instrument is singular enough.

Wainamoinen went to a waterfall, and killed a pike which swam below it. Of the bones of this fish he constructed a harp, just as He