Page:Kalevala (Kirby 1907) v2.djvu/286

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And I learned to cry with freezing.

Even now do many people,

Many people I encounter,

Speak to me in angry accents,

Rudest speeches hurl against me,

Curses on my tongue they shower,

And about my voice cry loudly,

Likewise they abuse my grumbling

And they call my songs too lengthy,

And they say I sing too badly,

And my song’s accented wrongly.

May you not, O friendly people,

As a wondrous thing regard it

That I sang so much in childhood,

And when small, I sang so badly.

I received no store of learning,

Never travelled to the learned.

Foreign words were never taught me,

Neither songs from distant countries.

Others have had all instruction,

From my home I journeyed never,

Always did I help my mother,

And I dwelt for ever near her,

In the house received instruction,

’Neath the rafters of my storehouse,

By the spindle of my mother,

By my brother’s heap of shavings,

In my very earliest childhood,

In a shirt that hung in tatters.

But let this be as it may be,

I have shown the way to singers,

Showed the way, and broke the tree-tops,

Cut the branches, shown the pathways.

This way therefore leads the pathway,

Here the path lies newly opened,

Widely open for the singers,

And for greater ballad singers,

For the young, who now are growing,

For the rising generation.