Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/13

Rh the Finnish language and metre would, in my opinion, render a prose version bald and unsatisfactory. My chief difficulty has been to fit the Finnish names into even a simple English metre, so as to retain the correct pronunciation, and I fear I have not always succeeded in overcoming it satisfactorily. I am greatly indebted to Prof. Kaarle Krohn and Madame Aino Malmberg of Helsingfors, for their kindness in looking over the whole of my typewritten translation, and for numerous suggestions and comments. Of course I am solely responsible for any errors and shortcomings which may be detected in my work.

I have added short notes at the end of each volume, and a glossary of proper names at the end of the book, but a detailed commentary would be out of place in a popular edition. The Arguments to each Runo are translated, slightly modified, from those in the original.

The religion of the poem is peculiar; it is a Shamanistic animism, overlaid with Christianity.

The Kalevala relates the history of four principal heroes: Väinämöinen, the Son of the Wind, and of the Virgin of the Air; a great culture-hero, patriarch, and minstrel, always described as a vigorous old man. The Esthonians call him Vanemuine, and make him the God of Music.

His “brother” Ilmarinen appears to be the son of a human mother, though he is also said to have been “born upon a hill of charcoal.” He is a great smith and craftsman, and is described as a handsome young man.

The third hero, Lemminkainen, is a jovial, reckless personage, always getting into serious scrapes, from which he escapes either by his own skill in magic, or by his mother’s. His love for his mother is the redeeming feature in his character. One of his names is Kaukomieli, and he is, in part, the original of Longfellow’s “Pau-Puk-Keewis.”

The fourth hero is Kullervo, a morose and wicked slave of gigantic strength, which he always misuses. His history is a terrible tragedy, which has been compared to that of Œdipus. He is, in part, the prototype of Longfellow’s “Kwasind.” He is the principal hero of the Esthonian ballads, in which he is called Kalevipoeg, the son of Kalev (Kaleva in Finnish), the mythical ancestor of the heroes, who does not appear in person in the