Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/369

 Reviews. 329

phic character as the magic smith, after which the old conception of him was continued under the new appellation of "Ukko." Mr. Abercromby mentions in support of this view : (i) the corre- spondence of the name with the Votiak "Inmar"; (2) the evidence of Bishop Agricola ; (3) the fact of Ilmarinen's appearance on the Lapp gobdas in the place of a native wind-god. But in the Magic Songs and in the Kalevala Ilmarinen appears almost invariably in the character of a magic smith, and it is difficult, in the face of Comparetti's arguments (Kalevala, p. 217-8, German edition), to believe in his being personified from an old divinity. As to Bishop Agricola's evidence, it must be remembered that he lived with the Tavastian branch of the Western Finns, and evidently did not know the magic smith as he then existed in Karelian runes.

Mr. Abercromby also looks upon Vainamoinen as the sky-god under another name, and thinks that the transference to a song- and culture-hero may have come about in this way. " The sky- god was also the thunderer ; thunder is the voice of the god speaking ; but speaking can easily be turned, if the god is thought of as in a joyous mood, into singing." But if Vainamoinen is more than an idealised wizard, his various functions seem to me more appropriate to a wind-god; and although Mr. Abercromby's suggestion in the sentence quoted is quite possible (especially having regard to the peculiar character of wizards' " singing "), yet thunder does not after all seem so naturally and universally suggestive of song as the wind is. It would have been interest- ing to have had Mr. Abercromby's opinion as to the derivation of the word Vainamoinen or Ainimiiinen. Clearly he does not accept any of those derivations which refer to earth or water, nor that of Ahlqvist, who traces it to the River Dvina (Viana —

I cannot dwell upon the many points of interest that arise in connection with the author's account of Tapio (in whose name Schiefner recognised the Christian saint Eustace), and his nume- rous family of woodland deities. Hiisi Mr. Abercromby rightly regards, with Castren, as originally a tree-god, afterwards trans- formed, through the ban of Christian missionaries, into a devil. The Finns are unusually rich in names for the Devil, most of them descended from a good old pagan stock : for example, Perkele (from Perkunas, the Lithuanian Thunder-god), Piru