Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v2.djvu/285

Runo L]

With a lock of bone secure them,

That from thence escape they never,

Nor in time may be untwisted,

Not unless the lock be opened,

And its jaws should be extended,

Not unless the teeth be opened,

And the tongue again is moving.

What would now avail my singing,

If the songs I sang were bad ones,

If I sang in every valley,

And I sang in every firwood?

For my mother lives no longer,

Wakes no more my own old mother,

Nor my golden one can hear me,

Nought can learn my dear old mother,

None would hear me but the fir-trees,

Learn, save branches of the pine-trees,

Or the tender leaves of birch-trees,

Or the charming mountain ash-tree.

I was small when died my mother,

Weak was I without my mother;

On the stones like lark she left me,

On the rocks like thrush she left me,

Left me like a lark to sing there,

Or to sing as sings the throstle,

In the wardship of a stranger,

At the will of a step-mother,

And she drove me forth, unhappy,

Forth she drove the unloved infant,

To a wind-swept home she drove me,

To the north-wind’s home she drove me

That against the wind defenceless,

Winds might sweep away the orphan.

Like a lark away I wandered,

Like a hapless bird I wandered

Shelterless about the country;

Wearily I wandered onward,

Till with every wind acquainted,

I their roaring comprehended;

In the frost I learned to shudder,

Rh