Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/519

 Collectanea. 48 1

undone." "Her lover is so weary without her" that he cannot eat or lie down to sleep or work. " I have made thee alone the object of my desire, but thou dost thou not think of me when many eyes gaze on thee."

II. A Song of Farewell.

" I am sad at leaving you, I could not lift my left foot ; it hung back when I crossed the threshold. I was so sad at leaving you. Will you remember me? I raised my left hand and I covered my eyes, and long I held them covered. I cannot forget you. But you know nothing of that. I stretched out my right hand, I would have caught your shadow. When at last I moved I went to the i)icking of whortleberries. But still with my right hand I covered my eyes, always remembering you. When I returned home to the Larevo village, I landed from the boat. Do you remember me? If you have seen another woman, surely you have forgotten me. I cannot work for grief, and you have no thought of me."

Sometimes humorous sentences are introduced. A girl says of her lover that he rows with so much strength that at every stroke he knocks against the bench in the boat. Another asks her lover to step carefully over the floor of the hut, and try not to break the planks, for she saw when he walked from the sea-shore to the houses how his legs sunk deeply into the sand, (strength and decision being the characteristics of good hunters). Occasionally the jokes become somewhat harsh : — " When I heard thy voice I thought thou wert a good man, but when I saw thee with my eyes thou ceased to please me." A man mocks the plait of his girl, comparing it to the teeth of a fork, and then adds, — "don't smile at me, don't wink at me, for I love another." Another poet says that the legs of his beloved are as thin as those of a mosquito, and her face is as flat as a board.

, In the rhythmical descriptions of nature, one meets with images not used in ordinary prose. Troubled water is compared to soup, and the swiftness of a torrent to the hoops with which children play. A large village is compared to a thick forest, and an open