Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/134

108 justice in a limited space. To anyone interested in Finnish poetry it is invaluable, and on that account we may point out a few slips for the benefit of its readers. At p. 86, l. 8 from the bottom—apropos of Lemminkainen's mother searching for his body in a river—for "raft" read "rake;" and two lines below, for "she launched her raft on the river" read "she raked through the river with her rake." At p. 87, last line, and p. 88, l. 6, for "raft" read "boat." At p. 88, for "like an alga" read "like an otter." At p. 159, l. 17, for "oak" read "elk"; here the Italian printer has evidently read elce instead of alce.

This volume is certainly not an easy one to translate, especially those portions that are themselves from a Finnish original. Here the translator sometimes translates into English mechanically, without reference to the context, and occasionally, indeed, is scarcely intelligible. Speaking of Väinämöinen, as he floated on the sea, we read, p. 160, l. 79-82, "there six years went he wandering, for eight years was he harried, like a sprig of fir went wandering, like the top of a pine trunk wandered," instead of "there for six years he drifted about, floundered for eight years, drifting about like (i.e. as helplessly as) a sprig of fir, or like the end of a trunk of pine." At p. 161, l. 108, for "but his chin did not hang down" read "but his chin did not move to and fro," i.e. he was silent. At p. 166, l. 355, for "hopes the devil to hear his cow" read "the devil imagines that it is his cow." At p. 224, n. 3, "from the hair of the work of Kapo, from the body of the offspring of the mother" means "from the body-hair of a [man] made by a Kapo, from the body of a [man] born of a mother." At p. 250, "the pride of the heroic character outraged in the possession of the woman" means rather "the fierceness (fierezza) of a hero whose rights to the sole enjoyment of his mistress have been outraged." At p. 263, "the shamanic idea informs (read "gives shape to") the mythof this people." P. 288, "the informing spirit of the Finnic myth" means "the motives (le ragioni) of Finnish myth." An index to a volume of this sort is almost indispensable, but there is none to the original, and the translator has not thought it worth while to make one for her translation.