Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/135

Runo XI]

While I waited for my dear one,

And to bear away my darling.”

On he urged his prancing courser,

Till he saw his home before him,

And the maiden spoke as follows,

And in words like these addressed him:

“Lo, I see a hut before us,

Looking like a place of famine.

Tell me whose may be the cottage,

Whose may be this wretched dwelling?”

Then the lively Lemminkainen

Answered in the words which follow:

“Do not grieve about the hovel,

Sigh not for the hut before you.

We will build us other houses,

And establish better dwellings,

Built of all the best of timber,

With the very best of planking.”

Thus the lively Lemminkainen

Reached again his home in safety,

Finding there his dearest mother,

She, his old and much-loved mother.

And his mother spoke as follows,

And expressed herself in thiswise:

“Long, my son, have you been absent,

Long in foreign lands been roaming.”

Said the lively Lemminkainen,

And he spoke the words which follow:

“I have brought to shame the women,

With the modest girls have sported,

And have well repaid the laughter,

And the jests they heaped upon me.

To my sledge the best I carried,

And upon the rug I sat her,

And between the runners laid her,

And beneath the rug I hid her;

Thus repaid the laughing women,

And the joking of the maidens.

“O my mother, who hast borne me,

O my mother, who hast reared me,