Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/141

Runo XII]

Through the night in time of summer,

On a rock all naked standing,

Wearing neither clothes nor waistband;

Not a rag was twisted round them,

But they got what I could give them,

Like the miserable codfish,

Like the axe on stone that’s battered,

Or against the rock the auger,

Or on slippery ice a sabot,

Or like Death in empty houses.

“Otherwise indeed they threatened,

Otherwise events had happened,

For they wanted to o’erthrow me,

Threatened they would sink me deeply

In the swamp when I was walking,

That in mire I might be sunken,

In the mud my chin pushed downward,

And my beard in filthy places.

But indeed a man they found me,

And they did not greatly fright me.

I myself put forth my magic,

And began my spells to mutter,

Sang the wizards with their arrows,

And the archers with their weapons,

Sorcerers with their knives of iron,

Soothsayers with their pointed weapons,

Under Tuoni’s mighty Cataract,

Where the surge is most terrific,

Underneath the highest cataract,

’Neath the worst of all the whirlpools.

There the sorcerers now may slumber,

There repose beneath their blankets,

Till the grass may spring above them,

Through their heads and caps sprout upward,

Through the arm-pits of the sorcerers,

Piercing through their shoulder-muscles,

While the wizards sleep in soundness,

Sleeping there without protection.”

Still his mother would restrain him,

Hinder Lemminkainen’s journey,