Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/27

 Rh individual one contained. This he did on the score that a collector is never given a charm complete; either through the forgetfulness of the reciter, or fear lest by doing so it should become inoperative when he again requires it for his own purposes.

Though the births or origins come last in the collection, I propose to take them first, on account of their greater variety of contents, and perhaps their greater interest. It does not seem difficult to understand what may have led the Finns to lay stress upon knowing the name, origin, and birthplace of a malevolent Being, such as a disease, a pain, a beast of prey, etc. To do so was highly natural, was only to act in conformity with every day’s experience. If a wizard were called in to exorcise the evil spirit, say of Ague, he would feel confident that a charm in which it was conjured to depart under the name of Rheumatism would be of no avail. He would be sure Ague would refuse to budge unless addressed by his proper name, and might even strongly resent being called Rheumatism. In fact it would be like serving a man with a summons in which someone else’s name had been substituted, thereby rendering it inoperative. It was therefore the business of a wizard to find out the real name of the evil Being, which in the case of disease was tantamount to correctly diagnosing the symptoms. With the ravages of wild beasts it would be just the same. If through them a farmer lost his cows or his horses pasturing in the forest, he would naturally think that reciting charms against wolves would be useless if the damage had been committed by a bear. He would feel bound to ascertain the true cause of the mischief. But in the collection of origins about to follow, several will be found that seem to be rather fragments of ordinary songs, with a sly vein of sarcastic humour running through them, than serious incantations or magic songs.

In the original the origins are given in alphabetical order, but here I have roughly classified them under the following heads: