Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/64

56 the spears of medium size, with which he stabbed a hundred men, kept pricking a thousand.

The devil took up his pricking-tools, Keito seized the spear, kept brandishing his spears, launched angrily his sharp spikes, which come as stitch and pleurisy to men, as sudden sickness to kine. Hiisi cares nothing where he has shot his arrows, whether into a beast with horns, or into a neighing horse, or else into a human skin, into the body of a woman's son.

(c.)

Formerly a great oak grew, a sapling without a blemish sprang up. The oak was of an evil sort, with its broad head it hid the sun, encompassed the moon with its foliage, the Great Bear with its branches.

To live without light is hard and wearisome for human beings, when the sun never shines, when there is no moonshine. No man, no mother's son came forward of the rising generation, or indeed of the old men, that could fell the oak, could break down the murderous tree. There was none in our native land, in these wretched borderlands between the two Karelias, a land disputed by three kingdoms.

They made a search through the country in five parishes, in six church districts. But as no one was found they made inquiry in heaven. An old man came from heaven to all appearance fit. His chest was a fathom wide, the hat he wore was a fathom wide, the drawers upon his legs were two fathoms wide. On his shoulder rested a golden axe with a golden handle, at the end of which was a silver knob.

He looks about him, turning here and there. With one foot he stepped to the edge of a willow-bush, with the other he advanced to the root of the sappy oak. He hacked the sappy oak, kept slashing at the level-topped tree, strikes off the top eastwards, casts the root-end north-westwards. Every chip of it that he cut off became a water-lily leaf, every branch that he strewed around got