Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/63

Rh He contemplates the chips on the spot where the red tree was felled, where the wide spreading oak lay, and thus expressed himself in words: "One might get useful wood from these branches of the level-headed oak. Whoever takes a branch has obtained eternal luck, whoever severs a (heavy bough has severed an eternal power to inspire love, whoever breaks off a topmost branch has broken off eternal magic skill."

The chips that had scattered, the splinters that fell in such a way as to be drifted about on the clear open main, were driven by a wave, were tossed by the ocean-swell, were jolted by a gust of wind, were floated ashore by the water to the end of a long promontory [v. to Tuoni's black river] to the beach of an evil pagan.

Hiisi's tiny little lass, a woman of fair complexion, was Avashing dirty linen, besprinkling ragged clouts at the end of a long gangway, on the top of a great landing-stage. She seized the chips, split them into splinters, cut them into chips for cow-litter, gathered them into her wallet, carried them in her long thonged wallet to the courtyard at home. Here she snatched up the chips in her pouch and upsets them about the house.

Three of her brothers are at home, who interrogate her about this: "What might a wizard get from these, what would an elf-smith (Keito) hammer out?" The maiden thus expressed herself: "A craftsman will get something, a man of skill will forge something, a wizard will obtain wood for arrows, Lempo will get leaf-headed spears and Sudden Death pleurisies."

Hiisi [v. the devil] chanced to overhear, an evil one to observe this. He sent his son to a smithy to hammer out arrowheads, to forge spears. The laddie went to the smithy, makes arrows, hammers out blunt arrowheads, prepared a little pile of bolts, a heap of heavy arrows. He forged a dozen pikes, made a bundle of spears from the branches of the 'fiery' oak, from the hard spikes of the red tree. He made them neither great nor small, he made