Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/133

Rh sammas, was connected with Sämpsä Pellervoinen, and cites a passage in which Ahti is said to have brought Sämpsä from a treeless island. And in another passage in which Sämpsä Pellervoinen is mentioned as sleeping in the middle of a corn-stack or a grain-ship, the same is said, in a variant, of sampo. If, then, sämpsä, sammas, sampo are all corruptions of a single common form, the latter was originally a spirit of vegetation that brought good luck to agriculturists. But, as a luck-bringer can be conceived in various ways, such as a wonderful mill which grinds out all sorts of wealth, or as a chest, a store-house, or ship, containing treasures of all sorts, the possession of which receptacles brings luck to the possessor, the word could be explained by singers in the above-mentioned ways. Curiously enough in the oldest version the sammas seems to be a bird—Krohn tried to explain this away—an interesting particular, for many European instances of a corn-spirit in the shape of a cock are adduced by Frazer (Golden Bough, ii., 7-10). How the sampo came into possession of the mistress of Pohjola is never stated in the songs. That she stole it, just as she is said to have stolen the sun and locked it up, may be an original feature, or the myth of the stolen sun may have infected that of the sampo. But even on the latter supposition, this transfer would not have happened unless the change had been congruous with the general idea embodied in the sampo myth when it was better understood.

Professor Comparetti is very fertile in conjectures, and quixotically tilts at all the most difficult proper names in Finnish mythology, though we cannot but believe with small success. Nevertheless, while discoursing on the personages in Finnish myth, he often hits the right nail on the head. For instance, Kaleva is a giant of immense strength, with an origin not unlike that of mountain giants in Teutonic mythology. That he was intimately connected with rocks is shown by the belief that the erratic granite boulders that strew the surface of Esthonia were thrown there by a Kalevipoeg. The difference of conception concerning Kaleva and his sons, as held in Esthonia and Finland, is carefully pointed out, with the conclusion that Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen are not, properly speaking, sons of Kaleva at all. The only person in the Kalevala to whom this title is applicable is Kullervo.

To a volume of such varied contents it is impossible to do