Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/323

Rh result of the action, which required that three maiden brides, or three Luonnotars, should be produced somehow or other, to be mothers of iron. What he did do, was to substitute the mode of action by which they were originated from one by rubbing or grinding to one by churning. And the fact that he derives them mediately from the spawn, and not immediately from the fish, tends to show that the notion of churning had passed through his mind. There are other reasons for supposing that he was not thinking of a real salmon, and that is the use of the words hete and lähde, to indicate the place in which it was spawning. The first means the water under a quaking bog, a boggy pool, a spring of water; the second means a source or spring of water. Therefore neither of them are places in which a salmon, or, indeed, any fish, could really be found; though either, in riddle language, are quite appropriate, from the confined area they imply, to stand for a churn. Further, the word 'thrust' is not a very fitting parallel word for 'spawn' ; but if he was thinking of a butterdash, it would be perfectly congruous. The second question for solution is, to explain how origination by handrubbing was substituted for one suggestive of churning. I imagine this to have been done simply by the author of the variant happening to see a churn, or hear it working just at the moment when he was about to recite the birth of the mothers of iron. If he knew the riddles — which is likely enough — the sight or sound of a churn would readily evoke in his mind the thought of a milting fish, and this he could easily interweave into his incantation as an impromptu variation. The origin of iron was recited over anyone who had received a wound from an iron instrument, and therefore, in most instances, the recitation would take place in a farmhouse : for a wounded person would naturally return or be carried home, to be treated there, and to allow of a wizard being sent for.

But if all that I have adduced is rejected as merely