Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v1.djvu/301

Runo XXIII]

When to wolf was changed my husband,

To a growling bear converted,

Turned his side to me when eating,

Turned his back asleep or working.

“I myself broke out in weeping,

And I pondered in the storehouse,

And my former life remembering,

And my life in former seasons,

In the homestead of my father,

In my sweetest mother’s dwelling.

“Then in words I spoke my feelings,

And I spoke the words which follow:

‘Well indeed my dearest mother

Understood to rear her apple,

And the tender shoot to cherish,

But she knew not where to plant it,

For the tender shoot is planted

In a very evil station,

In a very bad position,

’Mid the hard roots of a birch-tree,

There to weep while life remaineth,

And to spend the months lamenting.

“‘Surely, surely, I am worthy

Of a home than this much better,

Worthy of a larger homestead,

And a floor more wide-extended,

Worthy of a better partner,

And a husband far more handsome.

With a birchbark shoe I’m fitted,

With a slipshod shoe of birchbark,

Like a very crow’s his body,

With a beak like any raven,

And his mouth like wolfs is greedy,

And his form a bear resembles.

“‘Such a one I might have found me,

If I’d wandered to the mountains,

Picked from off the road a pine-stump,

From the wood a stump of alder,

For his face the turf resembles,

And his beard the moss from tree-trunks,