Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/44

36 She therefore removed further off, betook herself elsewhere, to an undulating pool, to the side of a natural spring. The deliverance is not accomplished.

She dragged herself to a stone surrounded by water, into the foam of 'fiery' rapids, under the whirlpool of three rapids, under nine steep declivities, but her deliverance is not accomplished.

The abominable woman began to weep, to shriek, to bewail herself; she knows not whither she should go, in what direction she should move in order to relieve her pain.

God spake from a cloud, the Creator uttered from the sky: "There is a three-cornered shelter on the swamp, on the beach facing the sea on gloomy Pohjola, at the extremity of far-stretching Lapland. Depart thither to be confined, to relieve thy pain. They have need of thee there, they await thy progeny."

The swarthy old wife of the North went thither to be confined, to relieve her pain. There the evil miscreant was delivered of her progeny, brought forth her vicious children under five woollen blankets, nine woollen rugs. She was delivered of nine sons, the tenth being a female infant, on one summer night, all at one birth.

She swaddles her progeny, knots up her acquisitions, summoned the Creator to baptise them, God to give them names. The Creator did not baptise them, the Almighty did not christen them. She sought for a man to christen them, for one to baptise the evil brood: "Do thou, Juhannes the holy knight, come to christen these, to baptise my progeny, to give my offspring names."

Juhannes, the priest of God, makes her a reply: "Depart, harlot, with thy sons, decamp, uncreated pagan, christen thy cursed progeny thyself I do not christen the wicked, I do not baptise the horrible, I have christened the Creator, have baptised the Omnipotent."

The wicked pagan actually took on herself to act as priest, profanely acted as christener, baptised her cursed