Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/40

32 recess of a rotten stump, the hollow of an alder-trunk. Thence it was brought into rooms, into houses of pine, to be used by day in a stone oven, to rest at night upon a hearth in a receptacle for charcoal.

(b.) Fire does not originate from a depth, does not grow from a fearful depth. Fire originated in the sky on the back of the Seven stars. Fire was rocked there, flame was swayed to-and-fro in a 'golden' thicket on the summit of a 'golden' knoll.

Lovely Kasi [v. Katrinatar], a young girl, the fire-maiden of the sky, rocks fire, swings it to-and-fro in the centre of the sky above the nine heavens. The silver cords vibrated, the golden hook creaked while the girl was rocking fire, was swaying it to-and-fro.

The red fire fell, one spark shot from the 'golden' thicket, from the silver enclosure, from the ninth aerial region, from above the eighth firmament through the level sky, the far-extending air, through the latch of a door, through a child's bed, and burnt the knees of the small boy, and the breasts of his mother.

The child went to Mana, the luckless boy to Tuonela, as he had been destined to die, had been selected to expire in anguish caused by red fire, in the torments of cruel fire. He went putrefying to Mana, stumbling along to Tuonela, to be reviled by Tuoni's daughters, to be addressed by the children of Mana.

His mother, indeed, did not go to Mana. The old woman was clever and furious, she knew how to fascinate fire, to make it sink down powerless through the small eye of a needle, through the back of an axe, through the tube of a hot borer. She winds up the fire into a ball, arranges it into a skein, makes the ball spin quickly round along the headland of a field, right through the earth, the solid earth, and propelled it into the river of Tuonela, into the depths of Manala.