Magic Songs of the West Finns, Vol. I, by John Abercromby, [1898], at sacred-texts.com
CHAPTER VI
BELIEFS OF THE WEST FINNS AS EXHIBITED IN THE MAGIC SONGS
SPIRITS.
In the previous chapters enough has been said to allow us to gain some idea of the civilisation of the Finns as a whole at various stages of their history. And now that our attention has to be turned solely to the West Finns we shall be in a better position to estimate the amount of change and evolution that has taken place in their ideas from their first appearance in Europe to the beginning of the present century. For the sake of convenience no notice was taken of the West Finns in that part of chapter iv. relating to the existing beliefs of the Eastern Finns and Ugrians. The reason is that as the following chapters contain an analysis of the beliefs of the West Finns, so far as they can be extracted from the Magic Songs in vol. ii., it is better to keep this matter together, referring back, when necessary, to any coincidences of belief and practice in chapter iv. The references in brackets refer to the numbered sections of the Magic Songs in vol. ii.
Till recent times it may be said that the West Finns held the same belief in spirits as the East Finns. They were of opinion that every lake, stream, forest, heath and swamp, every tree and flower, as well as every living being,
was inhabited or ruled by a spirit, sometimes called a haltia, who might be of either sex, as among the East Finns. We have already learnt that haltia is an early Scandinavian loan-word meaning 'governor, ruler.' For instance, in Genesis, Joseph is termed the haltia or steward of Pharaoh's household. In the Magic Songs it occurs several times as the spirit-ruler, or wielder of authority. An exorcist declares that God is his haltia, who assisted him against sorcerers (2 f). The Creator is the haltia of the heavens (59 a). Old mother Eine, life's haltia, is invoked to rouse herself before a sorcerer rises, to help a beloved son, by whom the exorcist himself is intended (176 a). A hunter begs Annikki, Tapio's daughter, to awake with shouts the king of the forest, the haltia of the backwoods (139 n). A herdsman beseeches 'the old wife' of cattle, the haltia of kine, to awake before any sorcerer or jealous person rises (132 c). A treasure-seeker exclaims: 'Kinsmen of Hiisi, now arise! awake, thou mountain haltia!' (111). A prayer begins: 'Welcome! O Earth, welcome! Earth's haltia' (102 a). A hunter sadly complains that with other men luck does the work, their haltia fetches them coin, but his luck, his haltia, lies confused under a stone with gloves on his hands, or as we should express it colloquially, with his hands in his pockets (89 e). A snake is addressed as a ghost or phantom that looks like a haltia (29 e). Again, a wizard in working himself into an ecstasy invokes his haltia to rise from its hole, from under a fallen tree, or stone, or moss, or wherever it may be, and mentions its brilliant eyes and spotted cheek, as if he had a snake in his mind's eye (12 a, b). The technical term for being in an ecstasy (olla haltiossansa l. haltioisansa) means literally 'to be in one's haltia or among one's haltia,' in
other words, 'to be in the spirit or among the spirits.' From the above examples we see that the heavens, the earth, the forest, the mountain, and individual men, have each their spirit, ruler, or guardian. Such an idea goes back to the earliest times. That the word 'haltia' is a loan-word is of no moment, it merely related to function and carried with it no connotation of spirit. Nearly parallel with this is the usage of the native terms isäntä, emäntä, 'house-father, master,' 'house-mother, mistress.'
UKKO.
Ukko, the 'old man,' was the anonymous air- and thunder-god. In the text his usual epithets are 'the god (lord, father) on high,' 'the god above the clouds,' 'the aerial god,' 'the great lord of the air,' 'the god that rules over journeys,' 'the god known everywhere,' 'the golden king,' 'the mighty father of the sky,' 'the father of the rulers of the sky,' 'the ancient father of the sky' 'who lives at the midpoint of the sky,' 'at the edge of a thunder-cloud,' 'the ruler of thunder-clouds,' 'the white-headed.' The Finns, therefore, assigned him many honorific epithets, but no wife or children. He remained a spirit almost without any anthropomorphic tendency. He is not, like the thunder-god of the Mordvins, amorously inclined, first making love to and then carrying off the fair maidens that live on the earth.
In the older period Ukko appears armed with a club or axe, usually of gold, and it is by no means certain that these were intended to symbolise the thunderbolt. He merely carries the indispensable weapons used by the ordinary Finns of that period. It might be supposed that
the club was a metaphorical expression for a thunderbolt when he is said to strike down with his club the spirit of disease (17 x), or when he splits with it the head of rust in corn (95 b). But it cannot be so when he is invoked in child-birth to bring his golden axe or club to remove obstructions and allow a child to be delivered in safety (166 a, b); or when a wizard asks for the loan of his golden scraping knife or his silver axe to remove a tumour with (129 a); or when a trapper wants the loan of his axe to fell a honeyed aspen with which to make an attractive trap (151 a). Instead of a scraping knife Ukko, on one occasion, is requested to drop his pincers from the clouds into the right hand of an exorcist, who will then proceed to extract the arrows of a sorcerer (149 a). And as the golden king he is begged by a hunter to take his golden club and beat the woods, so that pine branches may turn into squirrels and the wooded wilds into otters (139 i). In these last six examples it is clear the speaker is not thinking of a thunderbolt, but of some appropriate instrument which Ukko would be sure to have.
When armed with a sword, which became known in the fifth Period, Ukko appears more clearly as a god of lightning, though not always. By striking fire in the sky with his fiery-pointed sword he gave humanity the great blessing of household fire (226 a). Another time when the great lord of the air struck fire, a spark shot down into the sea and turned into rock-salt for the benefit of man (223). As ruler of thunder-clouds he is asked to thresh out his fiery barns, to thunder and clatter in the bellows of the air, and to pour down fire to destroy jealous persons and witches (176 p). Sitting on the edge of a thunder-cloud he is implored to destroy with his fiery sword all injuries caused
by spells (154 b); or to lend an exorcist his fiery sword with which to scatter and destroy such injuries (154 a); or to give a sufferer a fiery sword with which he can slash and for ever destroy the spirit of disease (154 c).
As god of the air he causes snow to fall (89 b), and is invoked to let fresh snow descend and form a good road for a sleigh to glide along (152). By a cautious soldier he is requested to bring the clouds together to rain on the touch-holes or let snow cover up the locks of the enemies’ guns (162 a). As golden king of the air he is begged to raise a storm to destroy the boats of a dreaded enemy (180 a). With drops from the clouds, with iron hail Ukko condescends to break the head of the destructive cabbage grubs (119); and with sharp needles and iron hail he is invoked to pain the head of disease (17 f). As the kindly god, Ukko is implored by a husbandman to create a cloud and let water and honey drizzle down on the newly-sown seed (130 a). On the other hand when too much rain has fallen he is besought to take his clouds to Russia, his rainbows to Karelia where they want water to baptize a child (156). As powerful father of the sky he is asked to join the clouds and rain down honey and water to make a goodly salve (181 e); or to bring a bottle of pure water and luscious juice to make a salve to promote the delivery of a child (166 c). As god above the clouds he is prayed to roll a huge cloud down on the foaming surge of certain rapids, that the boatman may not be observed and eaten up by witches or sorcerers (127 c). From always having water at command Ukko is invited to fling himself into a fire with water in his mouth and a water-hat on his neck; to throw water on burns and cause an icy blast to blow on the burnt skin to prevent suppuration (171 l). As god
of the air it is within his province to protect cattle; accordingly he is invoked to watch over the herds at pasture (123 b); or to make the summer beautiful, the marshes placable and the forest amiable; to hide the flock under a cloud and if a greedy bear comes prowling round to turn the cows temporarily into stumps and stones (123 i).
Hitherto Ukko has been asked to do nothing more that is compatible with the character of a god or spirit ruling over the air and the thunderbolts. But in the instances that follow Ukko is rather regarded as an all-powerful god that can grant any request, a mode of viewing him that may be attributed partly to the Scandinavian belief in an all-father, partly to the permeation of Christian doctrine. There is a gradual confusion perceptible between him and the Almighty which ended in complete amalgamation. Ukko, the god that rules over journeys and governs the clouds is invoked by the leader of a bridal party to come as quick as fire from the sky, and having the size of a huge forest fir to protect the procession against enemies (117 b); or to give away a maiden's hand and lead a man about to be betrothed (117 a). A prudent soldier going into battle implores the ancient father of the sky to give him fiery furs and a flaming shirt, and further to build a wall of six fathoms in each direction to protect him against the enemy's shot (162 b); or to bring him the swords of roc men of such sort that they will not glance off a bone, nor break against a skull (163 a). A suppliant begs him to build an iron fence reaching from the sky to the earth to shelter him and his people from sorcerers (176 m, n); or to let fall from the sky a copper horn, a golden shield which the petitioner can put on and guard himself with against the
arrows of sorcerers (176 o). The dear father in the sky is invoked to free a man from the effects of spells (165 b); or to watch jealous people, remove witches, and take care that the supplicant is not killed before his time (176 l). A hunter asks him for a straight and swift pair of snow-skates, on which he can scud rapidly to the heaths of the north where game is to be found (164). Ukko of the air is besought to stop a flow of blood with turf; failing that he is to thrust his thick thumb into the wound to serve as a stopper (177 g). Or as the white-headed one, he is asked to plough up a bit of turf to staunch the flow of blood, and then let skin grow over the wound during the night (177 h). As the Creator up above, Ukko is desired to boil water and honey to make a goodly salve. He is to take a bit of salmon, some butter, fat and a rasher of bacon, and make of the compound a potent ointment for healing fractures (181. d). Lastly, it was Ukko, the aerial god, the Creator on high, that by rubbing his hands against his left knee gave birth to three Luonnatars that they should become the mothers of iron (214 a). Here we find Ukko with the new epithet of Creator, an attribute that was not applied to him in purely heathen times.
Among the Voguls, Ostiaks, and some of the Votiaks, as we have already learnt, no sacrifices are made to the sky god, Num, Inmar, and there was no special worship of him. The same seems to have held true of the West Finns. Ukko is asked to assist, but nothing is offered or promised him in return and that was the old traditional standpoint. The idea of appealing to him at all is perhaps not earlier or not much earlier than the fourth period.
ILMARINEN.
As the name implies, Ilmarinen, the diminutive of Ilmari, was connected with the air and weather (Ilma). And there is reason, I think, to believe that he was the old air and sky god of the Finns before they ever came in contact with Europeans. Ilmari corresponds formally with the Votiak Inmar, whose name is now used to denote the monotheistic god of the Russians and of the Tatars, but in one district the word has its older meaning of the 'sky or heaven' as well, just as tängri signifies 'god and sky' among the Turkish tribes of the Altai. In other places in(m) is employed without the suffix -ar for 'God' and sky.' 1 Inm is therefore the equivalent of ilma, which, before the Lithuanian term taivas 'sky' was borrowed, included this meaning as well as 'air' and 'weather.' Then the Lapps at a comparatively recent period borrowed the name of Ilmarinen under the form of Ilmaris, and sometimes drew his portrait on their magic drums. But it is to be observed that they did not regard him as a smith, but as a god that could produce storms and bad weather. On a magic drum he takes the place usually occupied by the native wind god. 2 This conception of him agrees on the whole with Bishop Agricola's description in the middle of the sixteenth century. He terms him a god of the Tavastlanders who made calm and weather (ilma) and led travellers forward.
It would seem then that though Ilmarinen was best known as the wonderful smith, he was still regarded as an air and storm god as late as the middle of the sixteenth century. The transference from one character to another is not difficult to imagine. We may suppose that at some
time not earlier than the fourth or fifth century, when the Finns had become familiar with the smith's craft, the clang of the hammer on the anvil and the sparks flying from the hot iron struck some one as something like the rattling of thunder accompanied by flashes of lightning. So the air god, when thundering in the clouds and launching forth his fire, became gradually assimilated with a human smith working in his forge. In this way he acquired a new anthropomorphic character and eventually became more and more separated from his aspect of the thunder and storm spirit, which was continued under the newer appellation of Ukko the 'old man.'
The original character of Ilmarinen comes out when he, together with Väinämöinen and the aerial god, is invoked by an exorcist to come to crush a malady, personified as the evil spirit, Hiisi (15 a). Again, fire is said to have originated from a spark struck in the sky by Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen, which afterwards fell to the earth (226 e). And a riddle runs thus: 'Ilmarinen struck fire, Väinämöinen caused a flash? Answer. A flash of lightning.' 1 These two companions together with Lemminkäinen are mentioned as rowing in a red boat towards the north, Ilmarinen taking the bow oar and Väinämöinen steering (107 d). The story is recited as a charm by persons travelling by water and so has a certain mythological character, but otherwise it has only a slight bearing upon Ilmarinen as an air god.
In the remaining instances in which he is mentioned in the text he appears only in the character of a smith, though not as a man living on the earth at the time he is invoked. He is appealed to rather as a divinity. The weapons and instruments he is asked to forge are purely
imaginary and unreal. The exorcist uses his own instruments, but assumes by a figure of speech that they are the manufacture of the divine smith. This mere assumption imparted all the virtue of reality. As the everlasting hammerer he is implored to make little pincers with which a wizard can extract 'Lempo's arrow,' that is some physical ailment or disorder, from a man's body (149 b); or as the skilful hammerer, to forge a new sword, a dozen pikes and several spears for a soldier going to the wars (163 b). A best-man boasts that Ilmarinen himself shod the horse that was to carry him to woo the girls in Hiisi's castle (65). An exorcist threatens to place 'Tuoni's grub,' which generally means the tooth-worm, under the forge of Ilmarinen (21 c). Once upon a time the smith Ilmarinen was walking along a 'tinkling' road when he saw a variegated stone. He threw it into his forge fire, plied the bellows for three days, and ultimately saw the ore pouring out as copper, This he moulded into kettles (227 a). Again he finds iron sprouts in the tracks of a bear or a wolf, sets up his bellows, makes white iron, and forges it into axes, spears, etc., (214 a). In a couple of variants it is a god or else Väinämöinen that finds the iron sprouts, or seeds, and takes them to Ilmarinen to be forged into iron (214 b, e). On one occasion Pakkanen (sharp frost) attempted to freeze the smith Ilmari, but the latter plunged him into the fire till he swore that he would not do so again (93 a); in the Kalevala R. 30, 174 this fact is related of Ahti.
VÄINÄMÖINEN.
What part Väinämöinen played originally in the mythology of the Finns it is hard to determine. There is evidence,
however, that he was more than a personification and embodiment of magic wisdom and of song. He possessed these attributes certainly, especially in the later tradition, but various functions are attributed to him that cannot be explained by supposing him to have been an ideal wizard and nothing more. Writing in 1551, Bishop Agricola spells the name Äinimäinen, and simply records that he was a god of the Tavastlanders, who hammered out i.e. composed songs. From this, it would appear that about 350 years ago he was looked upon chiefly as the divinity of magic song, which would likewise include supernatural wisdom. In current ballads relating his adventures, he is generally a human hero endowed with wonderful magic power. He must either have been a real, historical wizard of whom were related wondrous stories, which gradually became so overlaid with fabulous matter that the hero of them became a completely mythical personage; or he was the spirit of some natural phenomenon that in course of time became anthropomorphized like Ilmarinen. I hold to the latter opinion, and suspect that he is the sky-god under a new appellation. The differentiation would come about in this way. The sky-god was also the Thunderer; thunder is the voice of the god speaking; but speaking can easily be turned, if the god is thought of as in a joyous mood, into singing. In fact one Čuvaš expression for thundering is Asl’ adi avdat 'the great father (or old man) is singing'; more common, however, are such phrases as 'the cock is crowing,' 'the cuckoo on the top of a golden post is cuckooing!' 1 The Creator's golden wattled cock mentioned in the Magic Songs (124) is perhaps a recollection of the old thunder-bird.
[paragraph continues] We have already seen that he and Ilmarinen gave fire to mankind, which seems to connect him with the sky-god. As the diviner as 'old as time' he is besought to utter incantations on behalf of an exorcist and to bring an iron-coloured dog to eat up the spells of sorcerers. Or he is to send some of the old folk that have long been dead and buried, to support and assist the exorcist. And he is to bring the fiery-edged sword of the air with which the supplicant will chase away corpses and frighten Hiisi's people (176 s). Here Väinämöinen is almost identified with the thunder-god, for the fiery-edged sword of the air in this passage can only mean a thunderbolt. In the next example he receives the same title of ukko, 'the old man.' As the old man, the diviner as old as time, Väinämöinen is begged to bring a scythe from Esthonia, a reaping-hook from hell with which the exorcist can facilitate a child-birth (166 f). We have seen above, that Ukko is desired to perform a similar function with his golden axe or his golden club. In the next example he appears rather as a god or spirit of vegetation or of trees, though he retains the stereotyped epithet of the 'diviner as old as time.' He is said in a variant to have put six or seven seeds into a martin-skin bag and then gone to sow the earth with trees (212 a). In one riddle he figures rather as the sun. 'Once upon a time Väinämöinen's milk-bowl upset upon a rock, its contents can never be picked up? Ans. Sunshine.' 1 On the other hand, in popular language the streamers that form on the sea after a storm are called 'the tracks of Väinämöinen's boat,' or 'the path of Väinämöinen,' as though he were regarded as a storm-god. In various parts of the parish of Sordavala there are sandy heaths where the surface
presents huge natural ridges and furrows, like the waves of the sea. These are termed the 'ploughing of the Väinämöinens,' the word being used in the plural. In this part of the country Väinämöinens, giants, Hiisis and Lapps all mean the same supernatural beings. 1 His name, too, is borne by two celestial bodies. Orion's belt is his scythe; the Pleiades are his bast-shoe. When he and his wife set to work to sweep the sea, to mop the waves with a broom (185 b), a figure of speech is used which seems to refer to a storm sweeping over it.
He was clearly regarded as a god of the healing art, which was mainly exercised by reciting incantations, but not always. He was therefore the special friend of the wizard or exorcist summoned to eject the evil spirits that cause disease. Accordingly his strength and assistance are very justifiably invoked by exorcists when they are about to set to work (2 b, 3 a). He is implored to help a well-beloved son (i.e. the exorcist) to be the comrade of a famous man, when the latter is about to divine a 'deep origin' or to battle with disease (157 a). A fisherman invokes Ahti, the god of the sea, to send a swarm of fish to listen to the music of Väinämöinen (120 a), which evidently means the charms and incantations sung by the fisherman himself, but attributed to the immortal singer. There is much virtue in what belongs to him. The Virgin Mary is requested to take Väinämöinen's belt and his yellow cloak with which to bind up a cut vein (177 b). A bee is told to fly to old Väinämöinen's residence and snatch from his belt a honeyed wing with which to stroke a sick man (181 j). An exorcist in raising steam to make a vapour bath, salutes the steam as 'Väinämöinen's sweat' (87 c), a figure of speech which
implies that it possessed highly remedial qualities. Kivutar (sickness and pain personified as a woman) is invoked to take a plume from the Creator's mouth or a feather from Väinämöinen's belt with which to sweep away pains and sores (128 c). A soldier bound for the wars prays for old Väinämöinen's cloak, for the mantle of the distant Lapp (99), an expression which only means a wizard in this instance. In the last five examples we note that cures or protection from danger were anticipated from the use of external means independent of Väinämöinen's power of magic song. In the next three instances he himself is expected to heal and protect from harm by purely physical agencies. Reliable old Väinämöinen, the diviner as old as time, is invited to raise his paddle [v. sword] from the sea and destroy the abscesses and scabs on a human body (146 d); or to clip wool from a stone, hair from a rock and make of it a shirt of war in which a soldier can fight in safety (162 e); or to take a bath-switch and a honied wing from his belt with which to sweep away to the land of Lapps the fearful pains of a sufferer (157 b). But it is purely as a magician that the reliable old diviner makes a boat from the fragments of an oak by singing a series of magic songs, one for each part of the boat (229). In another passage the outside chip of a gigantic oak, when struck with an axe, flew into the sea to serve as a boat for Väinämöinen, the singer, without further ado on his part (211 b).
He is also known as Väinö, and his daughter is coupled with Kivutar, the Pain-maiden, (10 c) because both were helpful in removing all sorts of pains and diseases. A soldier begs Väinö's girl, who wears golden ornaments on her temples, a copper petticoat, and a silver belt, to dash
water on the pan of a touch-hole to prevent his enemy's gun going off (162 f). Their home is Väinölä, which is collocated with Pohjola, Ulappala, Lapland or Turja (17 x, 26 b, 149 d, 154 e, 198 a), for the far north was pre-eminently the land of wizards, sorcerers, and magic. But it is as a warrior and the old son of Kaleva, not as a singer relying on the force of magic songs, that Väinämöinen sharpens his spears and arrows before going into battle (205 f) or when he tests his sword by striking it against an iron hill (202 b).
TAPIO AND THE DIVINITIES OF THE FOREST.
One of the most popular of Finnish gods was certainly Tapio. The hunter depended on him for game; not so much for consumption as for their valuable furs which could be sold or bartered. The sheep and cattle, of which every family had a few, were pastured in the forest and their welfare and safety from wild beasts was therefore largely contingent on the goodwill of the forest divinities. The chief of these was Tapio, the golden king of the forest with a mossy beard and who wears a hat of fir twigs; though also known as old Ukko with the rumpled beard; the feather-hatted lord of the woods. Sometimes he was simply called 'the Forest' (139 a, c) or Kuippana 'the long-necked,' 1 Kuitua, Kuittola, Nikki Näkki, or Hitsi Hätsi. The wild animals that belong to him are figuratively spoken of as his flocks and herds, his ewes and rams, or 'drooping
ears'; as his 'gold and silver,' and even as his 'sheaves of flax.' But in a riddle 'Tapio's bull' is a 'fir-tree.' 1
His wife has several appellations which depend partly on her frame of mind as it seemed to a suppliant hunter when invoking her. When kindly disposed she was Mielikki (the amiable) and was pictured as wearing rings and bracelets of gold; when unkind and deaf to his prayers she was Kuurikki (the deaf), was black and terrible in appearance, being horribly dressed in rags while the rings and bangles on her arms were mere withes (89 f). The name of Hiiletär (the charcoal wife) may have been assigned her for a similar reason as the last, though perhaps it was given her by charcoal-burners as she is not connected with wild animals in the one passage where she is mentioned (52 d). Hongas or Hongatar 'Fir's daughter' was a natural name for the wife of the king of the forest, who himself seems to be described as a 'hollow fir' with a fir-twig hat (139 k). This hollowness is also a feature in Teutonic folklore. In Sweden, Denmark, and Stiermark, the Forest-wife (Skogsnufva) or Elf-girl (Ellepige) or 'Wildfrau' is pictured in the popular imagination as being hollow behind like a hollow tree-stem or a dough-trough. 2 As Simanter she wears a tin sheath and a silver belt; the word perhaps is another form of Simatar (virgin honey wife), an epithet that would be given to show her sweet disposition. Mimerkki is dressed in the same way and was also of a conciliatory nature. When out of spirits and dejected she may have acquired the name of Nyrkitär. As directress of the droves (juoni) of forest cattle, the mistress of the forest receives the appellation of Juonetar.
[paragraph continues] As ermines, stoats, and other furry animals frequent stony places, it was natural enough to call the chief in charge of the 'money' by the name of their favourite haunts, Raunikko (full of stone heaps) (153 b). As Elina, she is invoked by a snarer of hares (118 a). And another name for her is Kuuritar.
Tapio does not seem to have had many sons, as only three are mentioned. Nyypetti is asked to act as herding-boy to a herd of cattle on the summer pasturage (123 f). Nyyrikki, so called, perhaps, from being slow in his movements, is pictured as wearing a blue cloak and a tall red hat, and on one occasion as having a white beard. Pinneys is desired not to hold back the wild animals from a hunter in search of them (139 r); for his name seems to imply that he was likely to keep a firm grip (pinne) on the paternal property.
Tapio's daughters are more numerous. Tellervo tinkles in a gold and silver dress. Lumikki is so called because in charge of snow-white animals, such as the ermine, and she is besought to let them wander towards the trap of a hunter (118 b). Ristikko seems to receive her name from animals with a white cross (risti) on their breast which were under her special care. 'Flax-stalk' (päistär), as a figurative name for a long-backed and small furry animal like the ermine or the weasel, is the basis of the name Päistärys. She is requested to strew her 'flax-stalks' and 'cloaks' about, and let them run without suspicion into a petitioner's trap (153 c). Vitsäri (the whipper) is the lively woman who drives out game from Tapio's Hill. Tuulikki, the famous beauty of the woods, must have been compared in some sort of way with the wind (tuuli). Annikki is a diminutive of the Christian name Anni, 'Anne,' but it may
have been selected from suggesting the idea of a gift (anti) giver. Two other daughters were Tapiotar and Tyytikki. The tiny lassie Pihlajatar (Rowan), the lovely Katajatar (Juniper), and the short Tuometar (Birdcherry) are three tree-spirits, but also daughters of Tapio, whose office sometimes is to herd cattle.
The daughters-in-law of the forest are Mikitar—the daughter of Mikki (Michael), a word also used as an epithet for the fox—and Varvutar (Twig's daughter), who give game to the hunter (118 c). Miiritär, whose name seems to mean that she was a very small creature, is asked by a hunter to get up a tree and listen to his songs and tell him if they are suitable (139 d). Huijutar and Siilikki, from siili, 'a hedgehog,' take charge of the wasps that haunt the woods (113). Two other forest-spirits, who are not directly connected with Tapio, should be mentioned here. The chosen Kunnotar, or the golden Kärehetär is asked to leave off melting gold or silver as a trapper has already put some into her bowl (173 a). According to Ganander (p. 36), Käreitär was the patroness of foxes who brought them to the hunter's traps.
Tapio's abode is Tapiola or Metsola (Forest-home) or Havulinna (Brushwood Castle) or the famous village of the woods (17 l, 89 a). It was sometimes imagined that in the forest there were three forts or castles of wood, bone, and stone. In the first lived the forest lassies, in the second the mistresses and the master of the forest in the fort of stone (89 f). A mere prayer was not always enough to propitiate Tapio and his numerous family; he needed an offering. Accordingly a trapper asks them to take a fancy to his groats and salt, and in return to send quantities of animals into his traps (153 b). Kuippana,
the king of the forest, the brisk man of the woods, with a beard of tree-moss, or the liberal mistress of the forest, is desired to accept the hunter's tribute of salt and groats and send game into his traps (153 a). A hunter beseeches the grey-bearded old man of the forest and his wife, Mimerkki, to make an exchange of gold. The hunter's is Swedish gold obtained by fighting in the wars, while Tapio's, as we have seen, consists in his wild animals with precious furs (173 b, c).
The bear, as a forest animal, was naturally enough nursed by Hongatar and rocked by Tuometar at the foot of a stunted fir (193 b). And the woodland sprites, Mielikki, Annikki, and Tellervo, are requested by a bear-hunter to muzzle their 'dogs' (i.e. bears) till he can approach them (121). In order to obtain the game he covets, the hunter is ready to adopt any device. He is willing to go as Tapio's man-servant, or even as the boy who picks up the arrows, if Tapio will only be propitious (139 a). Or he asks the forest to marry his (the hunter's) men to the pleasant daughters of the woods, to the downy-breasted little chicks (139 c). If Tapio happens to be asleep he desires Annikki of the fair complexion, who wears a down-like shirt, to awake the king of the forest, or to wake up the forest-mistress by playing a tune in her ear (139 n). On one occasion he invites the forest to play the zither (kantele), so that the wild animals shall lend an ear and be attracted towards himself (139 b). He invokes the old man of the knoll with a golden breast and who wears a hat of twigs, Mielikki, Tellervo, and Nyyrikki with the tall red cap, to show him the direction he ought to take by setting up posts and landmarks (139 e). He implores old Ukko with the rumpled beard, the 'hollow fir' with
a fir-twig hat, to beat the wilderness and make the trees resound with thuds in order to drive out the game for him (139 k). Or Tuulikki, the delightful forest-girl, is invited to chase out the animals from the slopes of the Forest Fort, and to make a fence with her hands on each side of them to keep them on the right track. If obstacles intervene she is to remove them (139 o). He beseeches the famous beauty Tuulikki, Pihlajatar, short Tuometar, and kindly Hongatar to chase wild animals in front of him, and if none are near to fetch them from Lapland (139 p). He desires the forest-youth with a golden hat and the forest-mistress Juonetar to send the best of their flock to his trapping places (139 t). If the animals are sluggish he implores the lively Vitsäri and Tellervo to take from Tapio's Hill a whip of rowan, or a cattle-scourge of juniper, with which to drive out the game (139 q). Lastly, he prays Mielikki to send plenty of animals so near him that he can knock them over with a stick, or seize them with his hands. If that is out of the question she is to support his bow or steady his gun, and thus enable him to shoot a squirrel and pay his tax (144 b).
The wild animals are represented as being kept in a magazine or storehouse. So Mielikki, the famous 'golden buckle of the woods,' is invoked to take the golden key at her side, to open Tapio's storehouse, and let the 'silver' and 'gold' escape towards a hunter dressed in white (139 f). Or Mielikki, the mother with the lovely face, is asked to open the honeyed chest and let loose a file of animals in front of a hunter. Should she be disinclined to do this herself, she is to send one of her servants (139 g). The queen of the forest, Kuuritar, is requested to open her money magazine and let out the animals for a hunter to
catch in his traps (139 h). Annikki, the girl with honeyed mouth, is asked to open the storehouse door and throw out the hunter's share on the bough of a tree. Then she is to spin a thread along which an arrow can travel straight to the brow of a little squirrel (144 a). The forest mistress, Simanter, is begged to make a din in the copper hills, and to let the mountain storehouse be opened for the 'mountain cattle' to run out and enter the hunter's traps (151 c). Annikki, who keeps the keys, and Eva, the little serving-maid, are desired to open the magazine and let out the animals (139 n). In one instance, Tapio is humorously represented as carrying the game about with him on his own person. The good and splendid old man, the golden forest king, is implored to take his best and fattest ewes and rams from out of his shirt or his waistcoat, and to poke his 'sheaves of flax' into the traps of the supplicating hunter (151 b).
In a lesser degree Tapio, as lord of wild beasts, or one of his people, was implored to watch over flocks and herds grazing in the woods, and protect them from the attacks of bears. Thus Mielikki and Tuonetar are requested to anoint a bear's paws with wort and its teeth with honey that it may not hurt the cattle (122 b). The king of the forest, Kuitua, and the benevolent Hongas are solicited to restrain their 'dog' (i.e. a bear) from injuring the herds (122 b, 123 c). The forest king, Kuippana, is supplicated to control his 'bastard son' (i.e. a bear), and to stick a mushroom up its nose to prevent its getting scent of the pasturing kine (122 c). The good mistress, Hongatar, and the observant Tapiotar are urged to keep a bear in check and prevent it doing harm (122 d). The forest Nikki Näkki [v. Hitsi Hätsi], the golden king of the woods, and
the kindly mistress are invoked to take care of the herds grazing in the forest (123 g). In the capacity of herd-girls the tiny lassie Pihlajatar and the lovely Katajatar are desired to cut a branch from the back of Tapio's Hill, and with it drive the cattle from the woods back to their own home (123 l).
Although evil might come from Metsola (17 l), its usual epithet is the delightful Metsola, and it was full of honey. A bee is asked to fetch honey from Metsola, luscious stuff from Tapiola from which an ointment may be made (181 f). And Vuotar, the maker of salves, concocted them a whole summer in Metsola, for delightful honey is there from which she made the unguents (232 f).
HIISI
Originally Hiisi was a spirit of the forest that dwelt in wooded hills. In the middle of the sixteenth century Bishop Agricola describes him as a Karelian god 'who allowed profit to be made out of the beasts of the forest.' But the Bishop also used the word in the plural (hijet) to translate 'high places' in the passage: 'And the high places of Isaac shall be desolate' (Amos vii. 9); and 'groves' in the passage: 'I will cut off the groves out of the midst of thee' (Micah v. 14). When the Bishop wrote, the word was therefore applicable to a 'sacred grove' where sacrifices were made. The corresponding word in Esthonian, hīz´, is also used in the sense of a sacred grove or thicket, which is usually on elevated ground. In several passages in the Magic Songs, Hiisi is found as a parallel word to 'hill, mountain,' showing that the two words are in a certain measure synonymous (9 b, 14 i, 65, 187).
[paragraph continues] He is often represented as dwelling in or being connected with a hill. Thus a treasure-seeker invokes a kinsman of Hiisi, the ruler (haltia) of the mountain, to show him where to go (111). A best-man boasts that he has wooed the girls of Hiisi's fort, the cousins of Rakko Vuori (65). And the origin of the horse is said to be from Hiisi, that of the splendid foal from the mountain (187). The recollection that Hiisi was a forest divinity is retained in the following examples. Hiisi's little boy, that rides a good two-year-old, is told to take a golden spur from a golden chest, and with it to tickle and prick the flanks of wild animals to make them run in the direction of the hunter (139 a). In order to quicken the pace of the sluggish animals of the forest another hunter desires that Hiisi's hottest coals may be placed under their hind feet (151 c). And to the hare is given the nickname of 'the bandy-legged of Hiisi (67 b).
That Hiisi in the popular mind was intimately associated with trees and forest is shewn by various riddles in which 'Hiisi's elk' or his 'elk with one hundred horns' is a 'pine tree,' and 'Hiisi's land' is the 'forest.' And though in three others 'the neighing of Hiisi's horse in Hiisi's land' stands for 'thunder,' 1 we must not connect him in any way with the thunder-god. The noise made by wind rushing through trees, thought of as horses, had sufficient resemblance to the whinnying of a horse and to thunder, to invite a concocter of conundrums to regard them as identical. So too Hiisi's elk, horse, and ox, mentioned in the Magic Songs, seem to have been originally playful names for a large coniferous tree, though the terms were sometimes employed with only a faint or more usually complete want of perception of their proper signification.
[paragraph continues] The original animal assigned to Hiisi must have been the elk, reindeer, or ox; the horse is manifestly a later substitution. For instance, Hiisi's ox, that ascends the Hill of Pain, has one hundred horns on his forehead and one thousand nipples on its breast, each full of ointments (109 i); here the branches and multitudinous small projections on a resinous pine-tree seem to form the basis of the imagery. Hiisi's chestnut horse with a fire [coloured] forelock and an iron [coloured] mane is so tall that it must be bridled from the top of a house and saddled standing on a fence. On its croup is a lake from which sorcerers drink, and it does not sweat (9 b) or slip on the ice-like path of the air (9 a, 65). Several points in this description appear to be reminiscences of a dendrous prototype; the chestnut or reddish brown colour, the extraordinary height and the quality of not sweating, while the lake on the croup suggests the idea that the tree was partly hollow like Tapio. A pond of water on the croup is, however, characteristic of other horses (14 h, 52 d) besides Hiisi's, and in modern songs has become a commonplace epithet for a wonderful horse. Again, in Hiitola there is an ox [v. elk] with one hundred horns, with a mouth one hundred fathoms wide, and a throat like three cataracts that can extract the arrows of a sorcerer (37 c). Here the mouth and awful throat are amplifications of the singing exorcist, while the meaning of an elk with one hundred horns is found in the riddles. In the next example the imagination of the singer has carried him so far that only in describing the back does he remain faithful to the prototype. The head of Hiisi's horse is said to be of stone, its shanks of copper, its back of tarry wood, its feet of iron, and its muzzle of fire (9 a). In a
still later example, as I suppose, Hiisi's elk or reindeer is invoked to drive away the snakes and adders that drink the ale of the mistress of the house (91), where nothing is remembered but the fact that he owns such animals.
In course of time Hiisi acquired a very bad character, and in modern times he is more or less synonymous with the devil. The date of this change is to be placed, I imagine, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when Christianity began to spread. That the missionaries fixed upon him specially is an indication that he was held in great estimation by the heathen Finns, and that his worship in the sacred groves was a special thorn in the sides of the preachers of the new religion. Sacrifices to Hiisi would be placed under a ban, and the native converts would gradually come to think of him as a very evil spirit, hardly distinguishable from the devil himself. In the Magic Songs he is sometimes called the humpback from the home of gods (1 c, 128 h, 166 g). The spirit of disease, or sickness of any kind, is addressed as 'Hiisi!' (5 b, 8 b, 22, 56) or as 'hound of Hiisi!' (8 d). A tumour is his toadstool; a snake is Hiisi's scourge or Piru's whip; a spell-sent injury is his cancerous sore (154 b); toothache is his son or his cat (114 a, c); a stye in the eye is Hiisi's blemish (46 a); and rash owes its origin to a water-Hiisi (206 b). As a bird of ill-omen the body, legs and guts of the raven are made of Hiisi's glove, spinning-staff, and belt appendages (200 b). The snake originated from his saliva (203 a); or he gave life to the spittle of Syöjätär and made it into a black snake (203 c). The tremulous aspen is his harlot son (212 i). And nightmares are termed 'Hiisi's corpses.'
As diseases and maladies were often thought of as the
bolts, spears, arrows, or jagged spikes of a sorcerer or of some evil spirit like Hiisi, Lempo and Piru, this armoury of weapons had to be forged somewhere. Accordingly, Hiisi's home, Hiitola, is provided with a smithy where such instruments are manufactured. There Piru, Äijö's son, forges bolts and jagged spikes to launch into some wretched man's body, and even there an exorcist can give an order for pincers for extracting them again (37 a). In a charm against pleurisy it is related that Hiisi's little girl saw the chips of a huge oak floating on the sea and carried them home. In reply to her brothers’ question she says that sorcerer's arrows might be made of them. Hiisi overheard this, and sent his son to the smithy to make them into spears and arrows (211 b). In a variant Hiisi's iron-toothed dog sees an oak-chip floating on the water, snaps it up and brings it to Hiisi's daughter who thought that arrows for a sorcerer might be made of it if taken to a smith (211 a). Once when the people of Hiitola celebrated a wedding and held a drinking-bout, they killed a horse and sprinkled the blood at the back of the forge of Hiitola (210 c). The idea of a smithy of course suggested coals and soot. So a man wishing to ward off a jealous eye expresses a hope that it may be filled with Hiisi's slag and soot or flow like butter into Hiisi's bin of coals (3 b). From his coals and fire comes the whooping-cough (23). An exorcist consigns the toothache into Hiisi's coals, into the fire of the evil power (114 b). A jealous person adjures Hiisi to poke his pole for stirring coals between two lovers in order to separate them (134). And a hunter desires that Hiisi's hottest coals may be put under the hind feet of reluctant wild animals to hasten their movement towards himself (151 c).
This association of Hiisi with fire and coals made the transition easy to identify Hiitola with Hell and Hiisi with Piru and the Evil Power. And in the following examples it is rather as an infernal power, perhaps in despair of other assistance, that he is invoked as a helper, just as the devil was invoked by witches and sorcerers in other parts of Europe in the Middle Ages. The old man and old wife of Hiisi, the fiery-bearded of Hell, is requested to bring people from the hill to hold down a horse about to be castrated (158 a). An exorcist invokes the aid of the terrific heroes of Hiitola, the tall men of Pirula, to extract 'arrows' (37 c). Fiery Hiisi is desired to come from fiery Hell with his three sons and two daughters and to press his shaggy glove against a torn vein; failing that he is to tear a collop from his fleshy thigh to plug the hole with (177 k). Hiisi, the Pirulainen (devil's son), is asked to remove his 'sting' or 'goad' from a human skin and plunge it instead into the hard bones of a bear (149 g). As the humpback he is invited to come from Hiitola, from the home of gods with his sons and servant girls to destroy an evil. He is to bring a scythe from Hell and give it to an exorcist who will then cut out the evil that causes the sick man pain (128 h). Again the humpbacked of Hiitola is asked to come in a golden sleigh in which is a golden axe and with it to remove obstructions and facilitate a child-birth (166 g). A man wishes that the bloody cloak of Hiitola, that Hiisi's gory rug, needing five men to lift, may be bound across the eyes of an envious person (3 d). Hiisi or Lempo is requested by a soothsayer to lend his linen cap, his broad-brimmed hat, into which to throw the alder slips used for divining (59 c). Hiisi is invoked to close a dog's mouth with his tall hat, or Lempo is to do so with his broad-brimmed
hat (126 c). A man wishing to pass a dog unobserved desires that the bloody cloak of Hiitola or Lempo's gory rug may envelop its head and ears so that it shall neither see nor hear (72 a). A man hoping to render an enemy's gun useless desires that the hide of an elk from Hiisi's land may take possession of the gun, may twist the touch-hole pan, and smash the 'egg,' i.e. the bullet, so that it shall do him no harm (150). Probably to account for something bad in the nature of copper, its origin is derived from Hilahatar, Hiisi's girl, Hiisi's old wife, or Hiisi's mare having staled on a rock. The stale dried up and became copper ore (227 b).
His daughter Hippa, and his cat Kipinatar, are requested to tear and torture a thief till he restores the stolen property (174). His maiden Hiki-tyttö is implored by an operator to sharpen a knife with sweat (hiki), so that he may excise a tumour without hurt to the patient (135). But his girl Hiki-tukka (sweaty hair) steals milk, and takes it to Mana or to Tuonela (88 a).
Though originally Hiisi had nothing to do with water, an evil water-spirit could be called a water-Hiisi. As we have seen before, a water-Hiisi was the cause of rash (206 b). An exorcist asks whether a certain malady has come from the homes of Nixies (lumme-koira, 'dog with ears like a water-lily leaf'), from the dens of water-Hiisis (5 b). And the daughter of Tuoni (Death), when in the pangs of labour, rushes into the sea, into the den of a water-Hiisi (216 b).
It is not quite certain whether the word Hiisi can be identified formally with the Lapp Sieite, Seita (p. 163). Whether they have the same origin or not, they have several points in common. The position of the seita was
often on high ground like Hiisi's Hill, and consisted of a tree-stump, post, or small pile of stones, which in a treeless district might be taken to represent the stump of a tree. The fresh twigs and leaves spread under them, and renewed annually, might also be taken to mean the seita was originally a tree-spirit. The same may be said of the birch or fir twigs, changed every spring, that sometimes represent the Votiak voršud; and of the fagot of twigs, also replaced by a new fagot once a year, in which the kuda vodiž or house-spirit of the Čeremis had his habitation. Before becoming a forest-spirit, Hiisi no doubt was a tree-spirit. Judging from the Lappish, Čeremisian, and Votiak analogies, it is probable that at one time he was a very favourite divinity of the protohistoric West Finns, and in some measure a family or clan god, like the Seitas and the Stor Junkares of the Lapps, who give liberally of the wild animals of the boundless forests, or, as they expressed it in later days, of his 'forest gold and silver.'
LEMPO.
Though there is no direct trace of it in the Magic Songs, Lempo seems to have been originally a forest-spirit of a malignant kind. For among the Vepsas living between Lakes Ladoga and Onega the Lempos are still regarded as evil spirits of the forest, in stature as tall as trees, who do their best to lead travellers astray. As the Vepsish form of the word, lemboi, means not only 'devil' but also 'fire, flame,' 1 it is possible that Lempo was at one time a personification of an ignis fatuus, or Will o’ the Wisp, a phenomenon that in Finnish is generally termed virva,
virva-tuli. In many respects he is synonymous, or nearly so, with Hiisi, Piru, and Evil in general. Disease is addressed as 'Lempo' (5 c); a tumour is Lempo's lump (28 b, 129 a), or his whorl, his ball (201); a hornet is his cat or Hiisi's bird (214 a); stitch and pleurisy are termed the arrows of Piru, the leaf-headed spears of Lempo (37 b), or it is his arrow, his bloody knife (149 b); toothache is Lempo's dog or Hiisi's cat (114 a). Piru made arrows, Lempo leaf-headed spears from the boughs of a fiery oak, from the splinters of an evil tree, and then shot them into a human body (211 c). Lempo, Piru the limping fellow, is asked to extract his arrows, made perhaps from an evil oak, and shoot them down the throat of a raven, which will carry them to Lempo's family and place of birth, never to be seen again (149 f). For the raven is also Lempo's bird, and its breast-bone, tail and guts were made of his spinning-wheel, sail, and needle-case (200 a). If a knife slips in the hand of an operator, it is the work of Lempo, though he is made to suffer for it by being cut in two with a knife made by himself even though sitting at the time on his mother's knee (31, 55 a, b). Homma, the most brisk of kings, is invoked to take a piece of flesh from Lempo's thigh, from the groin of the evil spirit, and with it plug a severed vein (177 j).
WATER-SPIRITS—AHTI, VELLAMO, ETC.
Living so much as they did either on the sea or near large lakes the Finns had often occasion to invoke the aid of the chief water-spirit, Ahti, or of his wife Vellamo. Thus a man travelling by water implores Ahti and Vellamo to tranquillise the waves and the force of the water (107 b).
[paragraph continues] When descending dangerous rapids a boatman prays the golden king of the water, the gracious Ahti of the waves, to come and steer with his sword, so that the boat may keep clear of rocks (127 b). Litvetti or Livetti, the king of the waters beneath the stream, is invoked to make the rocks that lie in the rapids as soft as moss (127 a). If, when journeying by water, the oars are too short, the rowers feeble, and the coxswain is as helpless as a babe, Ahti is besought to give better oars. And if the waves run too high, he and his sons are to still them (178 a). The old woman below the waves, that lives near foam, is asked to ascend to the surface to collect the foam and take charge of the foam-capped waves in front of a sailing boat (178 c). But danger at sea, or on a lake or river, did not arise solely from storms and rapids; peril was to be anticipated from spells and witchcraft. Hence a man beseeches Ahti, the master of the water, to give him his oars and a boat before the petitioner ventures to cruise over waters inhabited by witches, and also to allow the boat to glide smoothly along (178 b). Melatar (Oar-wife), the gracious woman, is asked for her steering oar (mela) to steer with, while passing along spell-bound streams (127 a).
Help in other ways was also to be obtained from water-spirits. An exorcist implores the blue-capped mistress of the waters to rise from the waves to strengthen and support a weak, unsupported man. She is to raise men from the sea and land-locked lakes, bowmen from streams, and swordsmen from wells, to help the petitioner against his enemies (176 q). Another exorcist invokes the men of the sea, the heroes of inland lakes, the 'scaly cloaks' from the gravel, the 'sandy shirts' from the pool, who are as tall as pillars of cloud or as huge forest firs, and a thousand
armed men to follow him and overthrow his enemies (176 u).
As lord of the waters Ahti and his wife ruled over the fish, and were therefore invoked by fishermen. Thus foam-mantled Ahti of the sea, the reedy-bearded old man, is requested to put on his gift-giving clothes and draw a crowd of fish to listen to Väinämöinen's music (120 a), by which we have to understand the magic songs of the fisherman. Another man desires Ahti, the master of the waves, the ruler of a hundred caves, to send fish into his net (120 b). Or a fisherman implores the damp-bearded, golden king of the water, who wears a slouching hat, to come and fish with him as a sure means of getting plenty (120 d). The old wife of the sea with a reedy breast is besought to send perch to tug the lines set by the petitioner (120 e). Another fisherman asks the assistance of Vellamo, who has a reedy breast and wears a shirt of reeds, and he will give her in return a beautiful linen shirt spun by the daughters of the Moon and Sun (120 c). Lastly, the beautiful old wife Juolehetar, the benevolent mistress of the water, is implored to send shoals of fish in the direction of the fisherman's nets (120 f).
On one occasion it is related that when Sharp Frost tried to freeze the sea, the warship of Ahti remained unaffected. It then tried to freeze the god, who however knew a trick or two, for he shore moss and fluff from a stone, made it into socks and mitts, and so was able to hold Sharp Frost and prevent his getting away (93 b).
EARTH SPIRITS, SÄMPSÄ PELLERVOINEN.
The earth spirits were not very prominent personalities in the mythology of the Finns and are not often invoked.
[paragraph continues] When this happens it is sometimes to obtain the assistance of the dead, who had been buried in the earth, but whose spirits still continue to live. So Earth's daughter, the girl of dry land (manue), is asked to listen to the golden words of an exorcist and to raise from the earth 100 men without swords and 1000 men with swords to help him against wizards and sorcerers (176 h). The old crone beneath the earth (manner), the boy of the lowest depths of the earth, is invoked to extract the arrows of a sorcerer with her fingers or her back teeth. If that is of no avail she is to raise her men from the earth, her heroes from the hard dry land (mantu), (149 c). The old man of the earth is invited to rise from out the earth, the son of the field from out the headrig, or from the side of a church with 100 planks, to help a man to work, to make a fence, or to row over the water (176 i). A wayfarer implores the old wife of dry land (mantu) and the primeval master (peri-isäntä) to rise from the earth to aid a well-beloved son and to be his comrade while travelling (138). Before lying down to sleep a man salutes the earth, the dry land (manner), and the master of the dry land (137).
As the earth also causes trees, herbage and seed to grow, we find it stated that grass is made to sprout by Pelermoinen, to grow from the earth by the soil, mantu (45 d). A tree is the creation of God, a shoot made to sprout by earth's daughter, Maatar (87 c). A sower beseeches the old wife below the ground (manner), the earth's mistress, the old wife of the soil (mantu) to cause herbage to grow; for the earth never fails if the food-mothers (einetten emät) so desire (130 c). Skin eruptions (maahinen) were popularly supposed to result from the anger of an insulted earth-elf (maahinen), who revenged himself by sending a
rash on his insulter. An exorcist declares that a rash is from the earth by birth and arises from the anger of the earth or of water. Its legs are even shorter than those of a worm or snake. If it has come from the earth, fire or water, it is to return there (206 a). Again, a rash (maahinen) took its origin from a water-Hiisi, who was rowing in a boat, reached the land like a strawberry, i.e. unobtrusively, bashfully, and fell down like a lump of wheaten dough, i.e. helplessly and clumsily (206 b).
The earth's mistress, Manuhutar, is said to have made a dog's head from a grassy knoll, its legs from stakes, its nose of wind, etc. (198 b).
Among the earth-spirits must be included, as a later development after the introduction of agriculture, Pellervoinen or Pellermoinen—a diminutive of pelto 'a ploughed field,' who is solely associated with the growth of vegetation. Thus grass is made to grow from the earth by Mantu (the soil), and to sprout or become bushy by Pellermoinen (45 b). The Fir, the useless boy, was brought forth by Syöjätär, was formed from the earth by Maajatar, was made bushy by Pellervoinen and nailed down, i.e. fast rooted, by Naservoinen or Natulainen (212 g). Bent-grass is said to have sprung from a pearl that fell from the Lord, from the hand of Jesus on the unploughed edge of Pellervoinen, on the edge of Osmo's field (220).
In the remaining examples he appears rather as a spirit of vegetation who performs his functions by sowing the ground. Thus Pellervoinen, the boy or son of the field, Sampsa the tiny little boy, sowed swamps and firm land and succeeded in getting other trees to grow, but not the oak. At last, after the lapse of a week it struck root, was drawn upwards by Jesus and made to grow by the soil
[paragraph continues] (224 e). Again, Sampsa, the boy Pellervoinen, put six or seven grains or seeds into a martin-skin bag and went to sow the land. He sowed firm land, swamps, sandy clearings run to waste, and stony places. All sorts of different trees grew up, each adapted to the soil on which it was sown (212 a). The same is told in different words of Semmer, the limping or stooping boy—an epithet that probably has reference to the action of sowing—who is evidently Sampsa or Pellervoinen under a different name (212 b).
In an interesting song, collected in Ingria by the late Mr. V. Porkka, Sämpsä Pellervoinen appears very clearly as the spirit of vegetation that sleeps all winter, but is awoke in summer by the genial warmth. I give it here in a slightly curtailed form:—
'Why do our oats and rye not grow at all in the clearings and in the vales, on the hillock of Sämpsä, on the hill of Pellervo?
'Sämpsä is asleep in bed with seven crosses on his back with ten finger rings at his side. His shins are visible in the bed, his red stockings in the straw.
'There is no one to awake Sämpsä, to cause Pellervo to rise.
'The manly Winter-lad jumped up to awake Sämpsä, to cause Pellervo to rise.
'He took a horse of the Wind, a young horse of Ahava and began to drive with the Wind, to dash forwards with Ahava.
'He drove up to Sämpsä's bed: "Get up, Sämpsä, from your bed to excite the rye, to hurry the growing corn."
'Sämpsä forthwith replied: "I shan't get up for you. I shall get up for another man. You did wrong to come,
did worse when you returned. You blew the leaves off the trees, the catkins off the grass, and blood from the maidens."
'Who summoned Sämpsä to appear, who cause Pellervo to rise?
'The manly Summer-lad jumped up, etc.
'He took a horse, etc.
'He drove up, etc.
'Sämpsä forthwith replied: "I shall get up for you, but not for another man. You did well to come, better when you went away. You blew leaves upon the trees, catkins upon the grass, and blood into the maidens."' 1
LUONTO (NATURE)—LUONNOTAR.
The word for nature (luonto), like luoja 'Creator,' is a derivative of luo 'to make a beginning,' 'to throw up or off,' 'to create.' And by 'nature' we have to understand, not external nature, but, the force behind it, a female personification of the energy of nature. An abstract idea of this kind is far from original and no great age can be assigned to the passages in which luonto or Luonnotar 'the daughter of nature' occur. As personifications of a creative energy the birch-tree is said to have been created by three Luonnotars (212 h). And Ukko, the aerial god, the Creator on high, after rubbing his palms against his left knee, produced three Luonnotars to be mothers of iron, which they afterwards milked from their breasts (214 a). The daughter of nature (luonto), Udutar, and the sharp maiden Terhetär sifted mist in a sieve at the end of a misty promontory, thereby giving origin to fevers and
pleurisy (211 d). The three sisters have a home given them in the sky in a story in which the bear is said to have been born on the horns of the moon, on the back of the seven stars, beside the maidens of the air, near Nature's daughters (193 b). But the original idea underlying their name is quite lost in the narrative in which three Luonnotars walking by the sea observe the spittle of Syöjätär on the shore and wonder what would become of it if the Creator gave it life. Eventually Hiisi—not the sisters—turns it into a snake (203 c).
The recuperative power of nature would naturally occur to exorcists and wizards when healing the sick, and in a more objective form would be appealed to for assistance. Old mother Kave (the woman), the daughter of nature (luonto), the oldest of womankind, the first mother of individuals, is therefore invoked to come and see pains and remove them (128 g). Almost in the same terms she is implored to help an exorcist (1 c). And under the same title she is invited to allay the pains of child-birth because she formerly freed the moon from imprisonment in a cell, and the sun from a rock (166 d). But the original idea is on the wane in a charm for relieving pain, in which it is related that three Luonnotars sit where three roads meet and gather pains into a speckled chest or a copper box, and feel annoyed if pains are not brought to them (10 b). And the old idea of her functions is missing where the woman (kave), the old wife Luonnotar, the darling and beautiful, is asked to point out the path to a bridal procession (117 a). Or when she is invited to bewitch sorcerers and crush witches; to weave a cloth of gold and silver, and make a defensive shirt under which an exorcist can live safely with the help of the good God (176 e). In
the next two examples Nature can scarcely be separated from God the Creator and seems only another term for him. A soldier in time of war implores the Creator, Nature (luonto), the God on high, to save men armed with swords, and crews with their freights from the murderous waves of men (162 c). And to avert danger from spells a man beseeches the Creator, Nature, the God on high, to save him from the spells of villagers with words (i.e. counter-spells) framed by the Creator and prescribed by the Holy Ghost (165 a).
She appears in a very different character when described in two instances as the furious old wife, the portly woman Luonnotar, who began to sweep the sea, to mop the waves with a broom, with a cloth of sparks on her head and with a cloak of foam over her shoulders. Eventually some of the sweepings stick in her teeth and become the origin of toothache (185 b, c). In a variant, as we have seen above, the same is told of Väinämöinen and his wife. Perhaps in both instances we should rather read Louhiatar, the mistress of Pohjola, as the events related would be in harmony with her character.
In another group of instances the wife or daughter of Nature appears as the personification of the warm, genial, growing weather that accompanies a southerly wind and receives the appellations of Suvetar 'the wife or daughter of summer, or of the south wind,' and Etelätär 'the wife or daughter of the south (wind).' She is invoked in this capacity by the husbandman and the owner of herds. Thus Etelätär the youthful, the boisterous and jolly girl, is asked to cause a honeyed cloud in the sky and to rain honey and water down on the growing corn (130 b). Suvetar and Etelätär, the old wife of nature, is implored to bring her horn from
the sky or from the depths of the earth and then blow it, so that lakes of milk and streams of butter may issue forth. By blowing she is to beflower knolls, make beautiful the sandy heaths and turn swamps into honey on which the supplicant can feed his herds (123 e). Excellent Suvetar, Nature's old wife Etelätär, is besought to bore holes in the fields and cause liquid honey to flow on each side of the pasturage; she is further to sink a splendid well from which the herd can drink and then give rivers of milk (132 a). The sane personalities are requested to feed the cows from the moist hillocks and verdant knolls that they may yield abundance of milk. If the milk has been carried away she is to blow a horn that came from the sky and let the milk run back through the horn (132 b). The distinguished Suvetar, Nature's old wife Etelätär, is desired to feed and tend a herd of swine when it is sent into the woods (161). In the last example the original conception of Nature is quite obliterated though she still remains beneficent. The distinguished woman Suvetar, Nature's old wife Etelätär, that watches herds, is invoked to clean out the byre and to bring good luck. She is then to make a golden comb or a silver brush and attach it to the doorpost for the cattle to rub against (123 a).
MAIDENS OF THE AIR, OF SPRINGS, ETC
The Maidens of the air, of springs, dells, swamps, etc., are beneficent beings, and were often invoked for extinguishing fire and cooling burns. The four anonymous maidens first mentioned are perhaps the Luonnotars. Four maidens, three celebrated daughters, were formerly mowing grass on
a misty cape in a foggy island and making it into hay. After spreading it out a fiery Tursas from Turjaland came and burnt it to ashes. It happened opportunely that they were short of ash and in need of lie to wash the head of the sun's son, but before they could collect the ash a north-easter whisked it away to the banks of a holy stream and from it a splendid oak sprang up (224 a). In another version the four maidens, a triplet of brides, are making hay when a boy from Pohjola or an eagle from Turja came and burnt the hay, put the ash into his wallet and carried it to Lapland where it was sown in black mud and from it sprang a huge oak (224 b). Again, four maidens find a sapling oak and plant it in an island formed where three rivers had flowed from a tear shed by a Kyytöläinen (224 c).
In a charm against injuries from fire, Ismo, one of the daughters of the air, is asked to come with the speed of thought and pour herself out like foam upon her son's evil work and throw water from her apron on the burns (140 b). Nunnus or Munnus of the daughters of the air is requested to bring frost and ice, as there is frost enough in the air, to freeze the fingers of an exorcist and allow him to handle fire unhurt (172 d). After Ukko had struck fire in the sky and put it into a golden bag he gave it to an Air-maiden to rock, who carelessly let it fall to the earth (226 a). A holy maiden on a cloud, a woman (kapo) on the rim of a rainbow with a golden box under her arm and a golden wing in her hand, wiped away the pain caused by burns and salved the injuries of fire (52 e). A maiden standing by a little pond in a drop of water in a cloud carries slush and ice in her arms with which she extinguished fire and cooled the burns it had caused (52 f). Again, in order to extinguish
fire an exorcist says he will raise up Sumutar (daughter of Mist), the portly woman, from the swamp and she will repair the injury done (52 b). In the next example the character of the Air-maiden changes, though she still belongs to cloud-land. A little girl, a woman (kapo), appeared on the edge of a rainbow and while smoothing her hair the milk in her breast overflowed, fell on a honey-dropping meadow, and from it salves and ointments are obtained (232 d). In the next two examples her function is entirely different. A maiden lives in the air, on the edge of a little cloud, with a skein of veins on her lap and a roll of skin under her arm. She let them fall on the earth and from them bits of skin are taken to place on wounds from the tooth of a wolf or the claws of a bear (25). A maiden from above the air, from the middle of the sky, is desired to come in a copper boat and row with honeyed oars round a wound caused by iron; to row in a boat made of veins through the bones and joints; to lengthen short veins, shorten those that are too long and arrange them in their proper places. Then with a needle and silk thread she is to stitch up the ends of the veins (140 b). These last two Air-maidens cannot be very different from Suonetar, where the beauteous woman of veins (suoni), the beautiful Suonetar, who spins veins from a golden tuft on a copper spinning-rock and weaves a cloth of veins, is invoked to approach and tie up the ends of broken veins (140 c).
An exorcist requests a maiden to rise from a dell, from inside a frosty spring, with her clothes all over frost and rime in order to gag Fire's mouth and weigh down the head of Panu (171 f). A dear, clean-faced girl is desired to rise from a dell, from the corner of a swamp, and bring
some cooling stuff to lay upon a burn (171 g). A frosty maiden, an icy girl crouching at the mouth of a frosty spring with a golden ladle in her hand is invoked to throw water upon burns (171 b). In a charm to excite love a grey-eyed maiden is besought to rise from a spring and help a darling wife. She is to fetch water from the spring of Love that the wife may wash her baby, her little bullfinch, and make it very beautiful so as to be admired by every one (133 e). In a charm to fortify water and give it virtue a slender-fingered maiden is invoked to rise from a spring or from the gravel and to fetch energetic serviceable water from Jordan in which Christ was baptized (179). Lastly, a maiden from a dell, from the humid earth, or a warm maiden from a spring, a 'blue socks' from a swamp, a swarthy girl with shaven head and skinless teats was holding a copper box containing a golden comb. One of the teeth of the comb fell out and from it sprang a splendid oak the head of which seized the sky and its branches held the clouds (224 d).
The Mist- and Fog-Maidens differ considerably from their sisters of the air. The Mist- and Fog-Maiden and the Air-maiden Auteretar is asked to sift down mist and fog to prevent an enemy seeing either to attack or to escape (180 b). The Maid of Mist and Fog is invited to clip wool from a rock and make a shirt of mist, a copper cloak, which an exorcist can wear day and night as a protection against sorcerers and Lapps (168 f). With the epithets of 'leaf bud,' 'ship-borne yarn,' i.e. dressed in fine linen, she is invoked to scatter fog from a sieve before the wild animals of the forest, when they approach a hunter, so that he may have time to get his bow ready (139 s).
Fire is the offspring of Höyhenes of the Panutars (Fire's daughter), of Lemmes of the Lentohatars, who gave birth to her child in the sea. She could not hold or touch it and from that she knew it must be fire (226 d). Höyhenes of the Panutars is invoked with Nunnus mentioned above to bring frost and ice to freeze an exorcist and allow him to handle fire without hurt (172 d). Panutar, the best of girls, is asked to come and quench a fire by putting it into her clothes and keeping it safe there (172 c). An anonymous Maid of Fire is desired to extinguish Fire and repair Panu's work. She is to bring frost, ice, and iron hail to apply upon the burns. If that is not enough she is to poke a heifer's hide into Fire's mouth or throw it over Panu's head (171 k).
The Maid of Pain and Sickness, Kivutar, in spite of her name, is always invoked as a kindly, benevolent personality. Kivutar has a kettle, the daughter of Väinö a pot, in which she boils pains on the Hill of Pain and then flings them into a hole nine fathoms deep, so that they cannot possibly escape (10 c). The vehement maid of Kipula, sitting on a speckled stone, spins pains on a copper spindle, winds them into a ball and hurls them into the sea (10 c). The good mistress Kivutar, the distinguished Vammotar (daughter of Wounds), is asked to take a feather, and sweep away wounds, to put them into her glove, which she is then to throw down on the Hill of Pain, on which is a big stone. Then she is to break the stone, to poke the glove inside and roll it into the depths of the sea (128 c). The lovely old wife of Pains, the good mistress Kivutar is requested to come and see the sufferings in a human body and make them cease. She is to wrap them up in a bundle and throw them into a mountain
cleft, into a blue stone, into a liver-coloured chink, where they will never be heard of again (128 e). Kirsti, the maid of Pains, sits on a stone of pain where three rivers flow, grinding the stone of pain, twirling the hill of pain. She is asked to gather the pains into a hole of a blue or speckled stone and then roll them into the water (128 a). An exorcist wishes that certain pains may be shot into the cup of Kivutar, into the box of Vammotar, into the bed of Vaivatar (daughter of Suffering), or down on the pillow of Päivätär (17 z). The Maid of Swellings, Kullatar, the active girl, the packer-up, is desired to pack up her packages, to remove her needless and monstrous things and take them to an apple or an oak tree (129 b). The beautiful old mother of Pains, the great mistress of the Hill of Pain, the old maker of Salves, that makes the best of magic cures, is requested to try if certain ointments are good and if so to bring them and anoint a sick man's wounds (181 e). It is only when we come to origins that the old wife or daughter of pain and sickness is regarded as an evil spirit. Inflammatory wounds result from the fire that fell from a fiery horn which Kivutar, the old wife of Pain, was carrying (10 d). The daughter of Pain, the daughter of Death, fell asleep on a meadow, was made pregnant by an east wind and gave birth to a snake (203 d). And the daughter of Pain and Tuoni's son are the parents of snails (184).
POHJOLA.
The word Pohjola means 'the home of the north (pohja),' though the term is quite vague, indeterminate, and without geographical significance. Another and older meaning of
pohja is 'the bottom or lower end of anything,' for instance, of a cask, sack, or haystack. Pohjola is described as murky, and with a speckled lid, where there is neither sun nor moon; the gate of the north is immense, the pass of the atmosphere (ilma) is hingeless (17 m). In dark Pohjola, in strong Sarentola, there is a fiery river throwing off sparks, and this is drunk by a dry-throated man of Pohjola (52 k). But there is an eternal bridge across the river of Pohjola for a traveller to reach that gloomy place. It is formed by a gigantic oak felled by a little man who emerged from the sea (211 a).
Though this dark, gloomy land of the north is quite mythical and unreal, it was a fact that the farther north a hunter penetrated, the more likely he would be to find game, for there the country was wild and uninhabited. From this point of view Pohjola would naturally be associated with wild animals and regarded much in the same way as Tapiola and Metsola. So a hunter desires that the scent of game may reach the nose of his dog from gloomy Pohjola, from under the window of Tapio (125). Another hunter requests Laaus, the master of Pohjola, to give him a bird to take home, for if so he will be thanked (136 c). Annikki, the daughter of Tapio, is asked to twist a red thread on her rosy cheek and draw it across the stream of Pohjola for wild animals to run along and so reach the hunter (139 n). The open-handed wife of Pohja, Laaus, master of Pohjola, Sinisirkki, maid of Pohja, the son and daughter of Pohja, and others, are desired by a hunter to frighten away the animals sleeping in the forest that they may come in great quantities in his direction (139 s). Raunikko, that regulates the 'money,' Louhi, mistress of Pohjola, is requested to rattle her hand that is full of
[paragraph continues] 'money' and to send plenty animals to a trapper (153 b), A bear-hunter implores Louhi, mistress of Pohjola, to thrust out her woolly fist, her hairy palm, in front of him (121). If Jokiatar has no otters to give a trapper, she is to get some from Lake Imatra, or from a river of Pohjola (155).
The women of Pohjola have also to do with dogs, especially sporting-dogs. Louhi, mistress of Pohjola, the distinguished Penitar, 'Puppy's daughter,' is desired to remove impediments from her son, i.e. from the hunter's dog (125). Another hunter implores Raani, mistress of Pohjola, to prevent his dog giving tongue at the wrong time (126 a). And the best maiden in Pohjola smeared the teeth of a dog with sweet stuff, and thereby rendered it tame, useful, and not liable to bite (198 a) It was possibly, however, that from bad qualities in a dog its origin is attributed to the old woman Louhiatar, the harlot mistress of Pohjola, having slept with her back to the wind, become pregnant thereby, and eventually giving birth to a pup (198 a). For under the name of Loveatar, the harlot mistress of Pohjola also gave birth to a wolf (222 c). Perhaps from her connection with animals the blind whore of Pohjola, the wholly blind of Ulappala, is invoked to let fall some of her milk on the wound caused by the operation of castration (158 b).
As the north is by nature a cold region, Sharp Frost, after narrowly escaping destruction in the forge of Ilmari the smith, very naturally moved off to Pohjola, to strong Sarentola (93 b). And cold can sometimes be turned to good account. A boy is desired to come from Pohjola, from the cold village, and bring ice with him to cool burns (171 1). The Virgin Mary is requested to go to
murky Pohjola, to a snowy mountain top, and bring with her ice and snow to apply upon a burn (171 h). Porotyttö, a maid of Pohjola, who had burnt herself, cooled and healed the injury with slush taken from the mouth of a stallion of Pohjola that had on its croup a pool of slush (52 d). The crone of the north, with crooked jaw and scanty teeth, is asked to bring slush and ice to lay upon injuries from fire (171 h). And it was a girl from Pohjola, from the middle of an icy spring, that stood godmother to Fire, as she alone could hold him (226 c).
In other ways, too, assistance was obtainable in Pohjola. A boy from there, with iron knees, is invoked to crush and shoot down the tooth-worm that produces toothache (114 a). The blind old wife of Pohjola, the blind hag of Ulappala, is asked to extract spears and arrows, i.e. pleurisy from a naked skin. Failing her, an old man in the land of the north, who has strong nails and iron teeth, is requested to draw out the spears and arrows and then break them (149 d). A boy from Pohjola, from the real land of Lapps, is invited to poke his fleshy thumb down the barrel of a gun to prevent the bullet being discharged against the petitioner (150). An exorcist, that feels himself weak, asks the help of a boy from Pohjola, of a tall man from Pimentola, to prevent his being overwhelmed with shame when near sorcerers (176 j). Or an old woman is invited to come from Pohjola with a basket containing a dish, in which is a golden feather, to anoint wounds (159 b). Lastly, Louhi, mistress of Pohjola, is implored lay an exorcist to help him (1 c). But in this, as in the examples immediately preceding, it is possible that these helpful personages were invoked for the same reason that Hiisi was sometimes appealed to; because they were strong, and, though of an
evil disposition, might be appeased and mellowed by suitable offerings.
Pohjola had also a bad aspect, for all sorts of evils could come from it. What is said of Tuonela, 'the home of Death,' in one version, may be told of Pohjola in a variant (216 b). The powerful Louhiatar, mistress of Pohjola, was made pregnant by a violent east wind and gave birth to Boil, Scab, Pleurisy, Gout, Gripes, Fits, Sudden Death, Rickets, a nameless boy, and a daughter Tuuletar (216 a). Raani, the swarthy old wife of Pohja, was got with child by a wind, was confined in an outhouse of Pohjola, and gave birth to Tuuletar, Viimatar, and Pakkanen, 'Sharp Frost' (210 b). The cold-throated old wife of Pohja, after sleeping a long time in the cold, rubbed her hands together so hard that blood was produced, and from it originated rust in corn (217). A furious old crone [v. the strong woman Louhiatar] ate iron groats, pounded by Tuoni's girl, became heavy with child and brought forth a numerous progeny consisting of all sorts of maladies and injuries (216 d). And when the huge Pain-maiden, Äkähätär, whose hair-plait reached to her heels and whose breasts hung down to her knees—like those of a Swedish Skogsnufva, of a Danish sea-woman, or of a Wildfräulein of the Eifel 1—was about to be confined she goes to Pohjola, to a bathhouse in Sariola, where she was delivered of Wind, Fire, Sharp Frost, Snow-fall, Atrophy, Worms, Cancer, Heart-eater, Gout, and Pleurisy (216 c).
LAPLAND, TURJA.
Though Lapland is a real country the term is generally used in quite a vague sense as the dark, northern land of
sorcery and magic, in a pre-eminent degree. And the word Lapp is often only another term for a wizard or sorcerer. Turja also has a place on the map. It is the eastern portion of the Kola Peninsula, the Tarje of the Russian Lapps. In the narrative, recorded by King Alfred of Ohthere's voyage of discovery in the ninth century to the White Sea and the mouth of the Dvina, mention is made of the Ter-Finnas or Lapps of the Tarje district.
From their remote northern situation, Lapland and Turja were both thought of as abounding in game and sometimes as densely wooded. If game is not to be found near at hand, a hunter desires the forest divinities to bring some from Lapland's gloomy wooded wilds, from near Lake Imantra, or from the boundary of the Turja Fells (139 p). The origin of the reindeer is to be found in Lapland, and the old crone of the north is requested to send plenty of game from the north, from Lapland's level tracts, into the traps of a supplicating hunter (148).
More usually help was expected from these countries because their inhabitants were associated in the popular mind with the practice of magic arts. It is related that an old man from Turja, a little man from Pimentola (home of darkness), came with a roll of skin, a skein of sinews, some spare flesh and a ladle of blood, and repaired the injured portions of a wounded man (32 a). A maiden from Turja, from Lapland, sails in a red boat all over icicles and with a kettle full of ice, which she is asked to give to a person that has been burnt or scalded (52 h). An eagle dwells in Turja, in Lapland, with a beak of steel and iron claws; with one wing it grazed the water, with the other the sky; its beak is like five sickles. It is invoked to devour the pain from which a man is suffering
[paragraph continues] (128 i). An eagle from Turja with five talons like sickles, with eyes at the tips of its wings, is besought to come and extract Keito's spears from the body of a sick man (149 e). Again, in the north-east, in Turja, dwells a famous eagle. Under its wings are a hundred men, at the tip of its tail a thousand men all girt with swords. It is invoked to remove injury caused by spells (154 e). A fiery-throated Lapp, that has drunk up rivers of fire, is invited to come to sip blood and stop a flow of blood. He is to fetch a stopper from the Fells or a nail from Pohjola to serve as a plug; then he is to make a copper or tin pipe and draw back the blood to its proper place, to the lungs and heart (177 i). Only once is Turja connected with violence or outrage; that is when a fiery Tursas, a Lapp, came from Turja and burnt some hay that four celebrated maidens were in process of making (224 a).
PERSONIFICATIONS OF DEATH—KALMA, TUONI, MANA.
Though Kalma may sometimes be taken as a proper name, it signifies 'a grave, the smell of a corpse, a corpse,' and a cemetery or collection of graves is a kalmisto. In the sense of grave the word may belong to the end of the second period, for the Mordvin kalma also means a 'grave,' and there is a verb kalman, 'I bury.' As a proper name, then, Kalma is a mere abstraction or personification of the grave, and therefore of no great antiquity. Tuoni originally meant the 'deceased,' and is the same as the Lapp duodna, 'miserable.' From Tuonela, 'the place of the dead or miserable,' was afterwards formed by analogy a personal name, Tuoni. Mana was also formed by analogy from Manala, 'the place of the dead under ground,' which
is shortened from maan ala, 'under ground, below the ground.' Lönnrot seems to have been the first to use it in the nominative as a proper name. 1
The abode of Death was under ground, and a river is sometimes mentioned in connection with it. Some chips of an awful oak, felled by a boy from Pohjola, drifted into the black river of Tuoni, into the subterranean waters of Manala (211 c). An old witch rolls fire up into a ball and hurls it along through the earth and soil (manue) into the river of Tuonela, into the depths of Manala (226 b). But a man must not go there without being killed by disease or removed by ordinary death (149 b). The huts of Manala are eternal (5 a).
Disease in general, sometimes toothache in particular, is termed 'Tuoni's hound' (13, 15 a, 21 b), or his 'grub,' or the 'worm of Manala' (21 c). But a snake is also the 'worm of Manala,' or 'Tuoni's grub,' or a 'grub the colour of Tuoni' (29 a), while a real grub or caterpillar is 'Tuoni's rag.' Injuries from spells are 'the bit of death (surma),' 'the chains of Manala,' or 'Tuoni's reins' (154 c). Disease or sickness sometimes comes from the house of the spectral host (kalmalaiset) (5 a), from the armpit of a spectral form (kalmalainen), from Kalma's heath (5 h), or it rushes forth from a grave (kalma) (17 c). A place of burial is 'Kalma's heath (5 b), 'Kalma's sleeping-chambers,' 'the huts of the manalaiset' (17 b). Ukko is invoked to fix Tuoni's lock on the jaws of a bear, or to thrust a stone of Manala down its throat (123 i). When milk had been taken by means of spells from some owner of cows it was said to have gone to Tuonela or to Mana (132 c).
Although the personifications of death were naturally dreaded as evil beings, they were also invoked to remove harm. Tuoni's short girl is requested to take her cur, the toothache, from a sufferer's jaws, and to press her injuries down into Hiisi's coals (114 b). And Tuoni's girl, the Maid of Pains or Sickness, collected pains with gloved hands and boiled them in a small kettle that no one should receive hurt from them in future (to d). Tuoni's girl Kipu-tyttö, 'the Pain-maiden,' the huge Akähätär, is asked to winnow and sift torments, and to make stones suffer instead of human beings (128 d). An exorcist requests Tuoni's red-cheeked boy to twist a red cord against his left thigh that the petitioner may tie up a severed vein with it. If he is unsuccessful Tuoni's son is to perform the operation for him (140 d). Again Tuoni's son, wearing a red hat, with eyes askew and crooked-jawed, is invited to knock down sorcerers, to shoot them in the belly, to gouge out the eyes of the envious and drag a gory rug over their eyes (176 k). And a son asks his dead mother to rise from the earth, from the cemetery, and to bring him from Tuoni's land a fur coat, which he will put on to protect himself against sorcerers and witches (176 b).
When the origin of anything possessed of evil qualities is related, its parentage, or origin, is sometimes ascribed to the evil spirits of the lower world. The blind daughter of Tuonela, the hideous child of Manala, was made pregnant by a wind, was with child for nine years, and subsequently gave birth to Wolf, Snake, Cancer, Ringworm, Thrush, Cripple, Toothworm, Heart-eater, and Woman's Enemy (216 b). Once when Tuoni's iron-toothed old wife, the crooked-fingered and crumpled-jawed, was spinning,
some blood spirted from the distaff and turned into a snake (203 f). Iron is capable of doing harm, because when Hölmä came from Tuonela, the son of Manala from under the earth, he found purple melic grass growing on a swamp, and took it to Ilmarinen, who forged it into iron implements (214 f). Probably because nets are deadly to fish the origin of nets is assigned to Tuoni's three-fingered girl, to a three-fingered crone of Lapland, who span a net of one hundred fathoms in a summer's night (230 c). Again, because flax can be turned to bad uses, a huge flax plant is said to have grown up from a flax seed found in the storage place of Tuoni's grub, and sown in the ashes of an incinerated boat (204 a).
SUN, MOON, GREAT BEAR.
The heavenly bodies received some attention from the Finns, and were personified; but there is not much in the Magic Songs to suggest that the sun and moon were held in any special honour, or were regarded as very powerful personalities, though Agricola mentions that the Finns in his time served the sun, moon, and stars. There is a vague reference in the text to a share being offered to the moon, sun, and Great Bear, while nothing is given to the disease called thrush (44). And the sun is asked to rise in proper time, to give gifts, health, success in hunting and fishing (110). This, of course, may be due to losses of traditional material incurred during the lapse of centuries; for there are passages in the songs that seem to be fragments of older nature myths that have otherwise disappeared, but were formerly current. For instance, it is twice mentioned that after the son of the sun (paivä)
had been enclosed in a rock, in an iron mountain, and the moon shut up in an enclosure, in an iron barn by Kuume, by a Pirulainen, they were released by a woman (kave), by Päivätär (8 d, 42 b). In another passage the release is effected by the daughter of nature (166 d), and it is quoted as a precedent why another release of a different nature—the delivery of a child—should take place. The exorcist in this as in the two other instances must therefore be appealing to a well-known myth, though he has only occasion to refer to a small portion of it. In a much more modern version it is vaguely stated that the Creator formerly freed moons, released suns, and with a curse sent Satan away to hills of steel, to rocks of iron (42 a). None of these passages seem to refer to an eclipse, or to the waning of the moon, for the Finns express that by kuu syödään, 'the moon is being eaten.' And Agricola mentions that 'animals (kapeet) ate the moon,' by which expression one or both of these phenomena must be intended. As Finnish poetical art requires the two lines in each pair to be synonymous, or nearly so, it is quite possible that though two different heavenly bodies are named, only one is intended. It is, therefore, not improbable that the sun alone is referred to, and its relative concealment in winter is the natural phenomenon really hinted at. But when it is related that half the sun and a third of the earth were darkened and concealed by a gigantic oak (211 a), or that the sun and moon were hidden by the growth of a lovely oak (211 b), it is not at all certain that we are in presence of a nature myth. Evidently the same tree is intended in a variant, in which no mention is made of its extreme height, or of its obscuring the heavenly bodies (211 c). So all this may simply be
due to the lively personal imagination of individual singers, and not be in the least mythical. No more so than in a lyrical Lettish ballad, where a girl says:—'I would not enter a village where oaks grow on the ploughed fields; the oak has thick foliage, you don't see when the sun rises.' 1
In her character of the 'releaser,' Päivätär, the doughty maiden, together with other powers, is invoked by an exorcist to effect deliverance and to release a sufferer from the effects of spell-sent sickness (1 c). As givers of light the sun, moon, and the great bear (otava) are not unnaturally requested to guide a child from the womb into the open air that it may see and rejoice at the sun, moon, and stars (166 h). And Otavatar, the maid of night, the steady watcher during the night, is desired to watch over the petitioner's property, to notice if anything is stolen, and if so to have it returned (175).
Their primitive character is less evident when Kuutar and Päivätär are implored by a hunter to bake a suet cake, a honeyed bannock, with which he may propitiate the forest (139 b). Indeed, the appeal to Kuutar may have been suggested by a play of words, for kuu means both 'moon' and 'suet,' and in offering a suet cake, it would be only a playful figment of the imagination to aver that it was baked by the moon's daughter. Or when a fisherman promises to give Vellamo a linen shirt, woven by Kuutar and spun by Päivätär, as an inducement to her to give him a good haul of fish (120 c). It is less easy to understand why in a charm against wasps the same pair are desired to conceal their children, i.e. wasps, and not to follow the wish of a sorcerer, or be made jealous
by jealous people (113). Once when Päivätär was bewailing her gold, and Kuutar her silver, a tear trickled from her eyes and rolled into a dell. From it sprang a lovely oak (205 c).
In what appears to be a song of late date, Fire (Panu) is said to be the offspring of the Sun (Auringo), and to have been made in the centre of the sky, on the shoulder (i.e. close to, near) of the Great Bear (226 f). Elsewhere Panu is the son of Aurinkoinen and Auringatar, and lives under forge-fires (172 b). Three or four famous maidens are credited with washing with lie the head of the son of the sun (päivä) (224 a).
ELVES, BROWNIES.
There is a class of beings occasionally mentioned in the Magic Songs for whom the Finns seem to have had no special name, but who may be grouped under the comprehensive title of Elves or Brownies. Though they are always pictured as emerging from the sea they do not appear to be water-sprites. The stone boots and hat they sometimes wear belong rather to earth- or stone-elves, and the power of suddenly assuming a gigantic height is a characteristic of the Russian Lieši or forest-spirits, who change their stature according to circumstances. 1 Perhaps the fact that one of them is summoned to fell a gigantic tree, being the only person capable of doing so, points in the same direction.
Once when a huge oak hid the sun and moon from shining and obstructed the course of the stars, a man was sought for from all parts to fell it, but none was to
be found. At last there emerged from the sea a [v.v. small, black, old, iron] man, a quarter of an ell high, as tall as a woman's span, who could stand under a sieve. His hair reached to his heels, his beard to his knees. He wore a hat, boots, sleeves and a belt, all of them of iron, and he also had an iron axe and shaft. He sharpens his axe for a long time on five or six whetstones. By this time he had become huge; his head touched the clouds and his beard shone like a leafy grove upon a slope. Then in three blows he felled the gigantic oak (211 b). In another version a swarthy or black man rises from the sea, who is as tall as a straightened thumb, three fingers high [v. the height of an ox's hoof]. He carries on his shoulder an ornamented axe with a decorated shaft; on his head he wears a tall stone hat, on his feet stone boots. With three blows of his axe he fells the gigantic oak (211 a). From the sea rose a wee man, scarcely a quarter ell in height and carrying an axe. With it he fells the oak that sprang from a tear shed by Päivätär or Kuutar (205 c). Once a huge ox was bred up in Finland. With its head it roared in Tavastland, it wagged its tail in Tornio. A swallow took a day to fly from its withers to the end of its tail, and in a month a squirrel could not run from one horn to the other. No one could be found to slaughter it, till a swarthy man emerged from the sea, who was but a quarter of an ell high, the height of a woman's span. He overturned and killed the ox, from the carcase of which ointments and salves were obtained (232 g). On the other hand, a small man rose from the sea, only three fingers high, wearing an icy hat and gloves, who knew how to recite 'the ravages of fire,' and by doing so healed burns (52 j).
The origin of toothache is twice attributed to the Brownie. A black or swarthy (v. iron) man the length of a thumb, rose from the sea; from his beard a worm grew which became a tooth-worm (185 a). A wee man, axe in hand, emerged from the sea. He came across an oak which he felled. In doing so a chip stuck in his teeth and became a tooth-worm (185 f).
GIANTS—TURSAS, TURILAS.
Like elves, giants play but a small part in the Magic Songs. Tursas as a proper name is derived by Thomsen from O. N. thurs 'a giant.' But the word has also a meaning in Finnish. According to Lönnrot it signifies 'tumid, swollen'; according to Renvall 'a snout or muzzle,' as that of a horse, an ox, or a pig. In a couple of riddles tursas and turilas are both used with reference to a pig routing up the earth with its snout. 1 In the middle of the sixteenth century Martin uses turillas in the sense of 'a dog that bites animals.' 2
Once upon a time a lovely girl rose from a damp dell, who gave no heed to suitors. So a giant (turilas), a sea-Tursas in shirt-sleeves sent a nightmare upon her, and while she slept ravished her. He then took his departure (215). On another occasion there came from Turja a Lapp, named the fiery Tursas, who burnt the hay that had been cut by three celebrated maidens (224 a). From these two brief references it would seem that giants were destructive rather than stupid, the character they have assumed in later Scandinavian folklore. And the action of the first mentioned is quite in accordance with the
lustful nature assigned to many half-brutish forest-spirits in European folklore.
The somewhat similar name of Turisas is ascribed by Agricola to a god of the Tavastlanders who gave victory in war.
RAHKOI.
According to Agricola Rahkoi was a god of the Tavastlanders who darkened the moon, but the Rahko of the Magic Songs seems to be a different person. In a couple of charms against nightmare Rahko, who wears iron boots and makes a 'stony hill revolve,' is desired to put the nightmare under a beam, an iron roof, a tongueless bell (35, 145). Almost in the same terms he is mentioned in two riddles, but in a way that throws little light upon the subject. 'Rahko in iron boots makes a stony hill revolve, it bows to the rapids?' Ans. 'A mill-wheel, a mill-sail.' Or 'Iron-booted Rahko hurries over a stony hill, he treads on a gravelly one?' Ans. 'A, plough—a poker.' 1 The 'stony hill' of the text seems to mean a mill-stone, and the exorcist probably wishes Rahko to put the nightmare under the stone of his mill which is termed a tongueless 'bell' from the clatter it makes. As rahk means 'gravel, hard limestone' in Esthonian, it seems likely that Rahko was a stone-haltia.
PERKELE, PIRU.
Perkele < Perkene is from the Lith. Perkunas, 'the god of thunder,' and Piru from the Russ. Perùn 'a thunderbolt,
lightning,' but formerly 'the thunder-god.' The Mordvins at an early period have also borrowed the word under the form Purgene, and use it in its old sense. But in the Magic Songs Perkele, Piru only signifies an evil spirit and answers more particularly to the biblical and modern devil. There is not the slightest trace of the older meaning; and in estimating the approximate period to which the Magic Songs in the main belong, this complete change of front cannot be overlooked. It may also be observed that the Letts have retained the old tradition of Pērkons and still regard him as beneficent, though capable of doing harm when asked to do so. A couple of stanzas of a modern Lettish ballad run thus:—
Pērkons crosses the sea,
He hurts not the bloom of the bird cherry tree
Nor the work of the husbandman.
O Pērkons, rumble and thunder,
Split the bridge o'er the Daugava,
That no Poles or Lithuanians
Shall enter my fatherland. 1
Perkele, often coupled with Piru, Hiisi or Juutas, is a name given to the fearful spirit of disease that an exorcist is summoned to combat and exorcise (1 a, 5 b, 13, 17 m, 154 d). In a charm to silence a dog, Perkele is invoked to do so (126). In a variant Hiisi is invited to rise from Hell, Perkele from Pimentola to crush or devour the violent pain a wretched man is suffering (128 h). Here he is desired to perform a benevolent action, perhaps from the old feeling that seems to have prevailed among the Finns that no spirit was by nature entirely good or entirely
bad even though bad on the whole. But Tuoni's girl is invoked to fling toothache into an iron baking-pan or at the end of Piru's tongs or among Hiisi's coals (114 b). And in the 'origins' Piru is regarded as a source of evil. Piru made arrows in a steel mountain, in a smithy without a door and windowless. He made the heads of steel, the shafts of oak, and plumed them with swallow's plumes bound on with locks of Hiisi's girl, and poisoned with the venom of a snake. He then shot his arrows and the third recoiled against a steel mountain and entered a human being (211 a). The alder buckthorn was made from the hair of a Pirulainen's beard and the rowan is the creation of Piru (212 i).
GOD, THE CREATOR.
We have already seen in Chapter iv. that the term 'god,' F. Jumala, originally meant the 'sky, the sky-spirit,' and that in course of time it came to mean 'god' in a general sense, applicable to a variety of deities. Thus Ahti is termed a god (93 b). Hiisi is the humpback from the home of gods (1 c). An exorcist exclaims: 'may help from the gods arrive, from the nourishing mother aid' (102 a). In a charm to be used when heating a vapour-bath it is said that the gods above and the earth-mothers down below use hot baths (87 a). The Virgin Mary is implored to restore health before the rising of the sun, the dawning of the god of dawn (169 a). And the lord of horses, Tahvanus [v.v. Timanter, Rukotiivo] is called a god that cleans out mangers (115 b).
As a rule, however, the word god, especially when qualified by the terms Creator, Almighty, seems to refer to the
[paragraph continues] Christian God. Whenever this is so the exorcism is not older than the middle of the twelfth century, unless the term is a substitution for an older heathen name, as undoubtedly is sometimes the case. A fragment of some lost legend appears to be preserved in a charm against hæmorrhage where it says: when countries were upheaved, when hard dry land was lifted up from beneath the sea, our great Creator then made an incision in his flesh, in his left foot (55 f). This perhaps includes a reminiscence of Väinämöinen who cut his left knee when making a boat and who also was said to have taken part in the creation of the world. When a hunter exclaims: 'Why is the great Creator wroth, the giver of game enraged, that he never gives at all' (89 c), he is probably thinking of Tapio, though the name of the forest god is replaced by that of the Creator. Or, when another hunter beseeches dearest God, the ruler of the earth, to give him abundance of wild animals, mentioning at the same time that he does not prostrate himself merely to be given stumps of trees; he must have animals (139 m). Again, when God the Creator is invoked to watch over a herd at pasture (123 d), it is quite possible that new names have been worked into an older incantation.
Some of the songs in which the name of God is employed appear to belong to the transition period between heathendom and Christianity. For His name is invoked in a way that clearly shows the exorcist was no professional theologian. The aerial God, the spirit Lord Jesus, is desired to harness his colt, to take a seat in his ornamented sleigh, and drive through bones and loosened veins in order to join them together, and where a bone was broken to fasten in another (140 a). God the father,
[paragraph continues] Jesus the Lord of air, that knows how to throw a bullet and to recite a charm for stopping bullets, is invited to let water fall on the touch-hole of an enemy's gun so that it will not flash and go off (150). God the Creator is desired to recite a charm to heal a sick man, and to assuage his pain with formulas that are holy and well arranged (157 d). In a charm for making a healing vapour- bath, God, the father of the air, is asked to enter the steam, to restore health to the sick person and give him repose. But he is to do it secretly, without being heard by a worthless wretch, and without the knowledge of the village people (169 c). God the Creator is prayed to give luck and contentment. He is to build round the supplicant's property an iron fence, a stone castle, reaching from the earth to the sky (143). God is called the oldest of spell-reciters, and the Creator the oldest of wizards (106). The Creator is desired to come and exorcise, God to come and speak, and aid a man in overthrowing his enemies and envious persons (176 d). And the Creator's cock with golden wattles is implored to come and speak on a man's behalf, but it is also to stop the judge's ears, to bribe the jurymen, and bind silk across the sheriff's eyes (124). Why the Creator has a cock with golden wattles is explained perhaps by a riddle. 'One cock is an iron cock, the second a copper cock, the third a golden cock. The iron cock split the ground, the copper cock cut the sea, the golden one divided the sky?' Answer—'A plough, a ship, the sun.' 1 Though it may be a reminiscence of the thunder-bird, as mentioned above.
At a later period in order to staunch blood an exorcist could say: 'May the word of God become a bar, may
trust in the Maker be a plug. If blood should flow in rapid drops, may the Creator hold it fast, may God seize hold of it (55 e). But when he continues: 'Let some of kindly Jesus’ flesh, a bit from the side of the Lord be a plug for the fearful hole, a dam for the evil gap,' he is only adapting an older heathen formula to the new terminology. So, too, when the Lord is asked to fling his gloves down as a stopper on the fearful hole from which 'the milk' is flowing, the idea was not a new one. But the end of the charm certainly belongs to the new faith. 'May the Maker's lock be a lock, may the Lord's word be a bar, that the "milk" to the ground shan't flow nor the guiltless blood upon the dirt, despite the nature of God, against the intention of the Blest' (177 f). An exorcist declares he can do nothing without the grace and help of God the Creator (1 a, 42 b). He throws himself on his God, who abandons not the good and virtuous (5 a). He declares that the arrows of a sorcerer can be extracted by virtue of the word of God, by the spirit of the Lord's decree (37 c). The breath that he exhales is the breath of the Lord, the warmth that he emits is that of the Creator, the water he employs is the blood of Jesus (102 a). And he asks, Is a man to be put to death without God's mercy, without the true Creator's leave? (42 a). A diviner begins: 'I crave from the Creator leave, assistance from the Lord I beg. Tell the divining gear, O God. Divining gear! declare to me whence the calamity has come' (59 a). And he finishes: 'If the divining gear speaks truth, its reputation is enhanced, the divining gear is raised aloft to the knees of the holy God' (59 b). A charm to quiet a child begins: 'Lull the child to sleep, O God, cause it to slumber, Mary dear' (79). On going to bed one may repeat a lorica like
the following: 'May the Earth be a good defence, the Omnipotent a guard, may the Creator lock the door, may a saint draw to the bolt, may Jesus be a shield, Mary a sword' (137). In preparing a bandage an exorcist says: 'Let the Maker's silk be a ligature, the cloak of the Lord be a covering, let the word of God be a bolt, the furs of the Lord be a coverlet; may the Creator's mercy grant, may God's word bring about that the wound shall not inflame' (159 a). The Creator, Nature, God that dwells above, is invoked to save a person from incantations and spells by means of words framed by the Creator prescribed by the Holy Ghost (165 a). Fire is said to have been created by God, to be born of Jesus’ word and rocked by the Virgin Mary (226 c). And as salves are said to be prepared behind the stars, they are desired to trickle down from the mouth of the gracious God or from the beard of the Blessed One (232 c).
JESUS, MARY.
The names of Christ and of Jesus are often mentioned, but never together. Jesus is desired to consecrate the flocks and watch the herds of the petitioner when they are sent out to graze (123 b). Christ is said to have christened Tapio's son, Pinneys, in the middle of the forest field to tend the animals of the forest (139 r). Jesus is asked to send a good barley year that the people of Bothnia and Savolax may have plenty of good ale to drink (182). Jesus is invoked to wash a small child clean with water made by the Creator and ordained by the 'Holy Birth,' a term used in Karelia for Christ (168). Or he is to wash a girl clean from the harm caused by evil gossip and bad
reports (133 a, b). The water an exorcist uses for healing purposes is feigned to be taken from Jordan, in which Christ was baptized (106, 228 c). Or it is the washing water of Jesus, the tears of the Son of God, brought from Jordan by the Virgin Mary (228 d). A maiden from a spring is requested to bring serviceable water from Jordan, in which Christ was baptized (179). An exorcist declares that he uses the guiltless blood of Jesus, the sweet milk of Mary, which had come rippling down from the sky, as an ointment for wounds (109 a). As lord of the air, the God that dwells in the sky, Jesus is desired to come and see his son who is sick, and to spit some of his spittle on him as an ointment and thus to restore him to health (157 e). Jesus is besought to take anxious care of a child created by himself, to build a wall of stone, an iron enclosure, behind which a soldier can shelter himself against the weapons of an enemy (162 d). He is implored to help a man in danger, who addresses him: 'Lord Jesus, do not cast me off, do not abandon me, good God, to the magic spells of whores,' but 'bring him a fiery sword with which he will slash the wicked men and crush the foul persons at a blow' (176 c). Once when Jesus was travelling over a red sea in a red sloop with red sails, a red ointment trickled from the sails and yards and formed the best of salves for every kind of injury (109 b). Jesus and Mary are asked to taste and see whether certain salves are the magic remedies of the Almighty with which the Creator was salved, the Omnipotent was healed when pierced and tortured by a devil (181 i). Once when Jesus and Mary were driving to church the horse fell and sprained its leg, which was healed by Jesus (34 a). A cow-house snake bit Christ's horse, killed the foal of the
[paragraph continues] Almighty, through the bony floor of the stall (205 e). If a snake will not remove its venom from a bite, an exorcist will loudly shout to his father, to Jesus, and to his mother Mary (29 d). Once when Jesus was walking along a road with Peter he encountered a Cancer. He asked the Cancer where it was going, and on learning that it was bent on visiting a village to bewitch people's bones and make their flesh putrify, he ordered it under a thick flat stone, to shriek and yell where the sun and moon never shine (39 b).
The ordinary epithets of the Virgin Mary are the dear mother, the compassionate, or the holy handmaid of the sky, the holy little serving-maid. In some instances she merely replaces the Air, Spring, or other maidens of an older period. The Virgin Mary, the pure mother, beautiful of shape, wandering along the edge of the air with a skein of veins on her back, a can of blood under her arm, a longish piece of bone in her hand, and a lump of flesh on her shoulder, came and spliced a vein, poured in blood where some had leaked, fastened a bone that was loose, and added flesh where a bit had been removed (32 b). The Virgin Mary, the holy little serving-maid, sits on the surface of the sea, wearing a golden ring on which are six horns full of magic cures, with which she once salved the Creator and healed the best of Lords (109 d). Once the dear mother, the Virgin Mary, threw herself down to sleep on a turfy knoll. Milk exuded from her breasts, and became an ointment good to apply upon a wound (109 c). As the dear mother she is invoked to bring a golden cup and a honeyed wing, and then to prepare a healing vapour-bath (169 b). As the holy handmaid of the sky, she is asked to weave a gold or silver belt to serve as a bandage (159 a). As the kind, compassionate mother, she is desired
to go to gloomy Pohjola to fetch snow with which to quench fire (172 a). As the compassionate mother, or as the holy little serving-maid, she is asked to stop a flow of blood with her thumb, or with turf, or with a handful of flax, or with a slice of birch-bark, and then to sew up the wound with a needle and silk thread (177 a, b, c). The beloved and merciful mother, the Virgin Mary, is implored to come in her fleet shoes to seize pains, to remove plagues, etc.; then to throw them into the sea or to the wind (128 f). As the dear, compassionate mother, she is requested to give a soft fur coat as e. protection against bitter cold, and to throw fire into the socks and tatters of the suppliant so that he may not be nipt by the frost. The frost-bites she is to anoint with butter and fat (147 b). As the eternal mother of the earth, the benefactor of all time, she is to let water pour from a rock by means of her golden staff and wash a girl in it in order to remove the effects of spells and to make her irresistibly attractive to young men (133 d). The Virgin Mary, the dear mother, is desired to heal a sufferer by virtue of the word of God, through the mercy always of the Lord (169 a). She is invoked too to bring honey and water from the sky, or to take milk from her breasts and anoint a sick man; if that is insufficient, she is to anoint him with the blood of Jesus (181 a). Or she is to use the salves with which Jesus was salved, with which the Omnipotent was healed when tortured by Pilate (181 b). An operator beseeches the beloved and compassionate mother to let her skilful fingers be transformed into his, that he may snatch a bit of chaff out of a person's eye (160 a). Or she is to take from her golden box a golden hook, and with it fish out the chaff that irritates a man's eye (160 b). To get rid of an attack of gout it is
addressed with flattering words: 'Good Gout, thou lovely Gout, Mary's sweet Gout, depart!' (30). Before going to bed one may repeat at the end of other formulas: 'May Mary lull to sleep, may Jesus raise me up to thank my God, to give Jesus praise' (137). Dear Mary and good Peter are implored to give a man a small plot of ground gratis, on which he may build a new house (167). After gelding a horse the operator gives it water, and says: 'Now of this water drink, of Mary's washing-water sip' (96).
SAINTS.
In an ale-charm it is related that a little boat was being rowed on a little pond in a drop of water in a cloud. St. Andrew (Antti) pulled, little Peter steered, and Jesus sat in the middle. There they were occupied in combing Hiisi's elks, and the housewife reciting the charm invokes these animals to drive away the snakes that are drinking her ale (91). Christopher, the river chief, the golden king of rivers, together with Nokiatar [v. Jokiatar] is desired to send a whole host of otters into the traps of a trapper (133). St. Anni, the gracious maid, the beauteous maiden of the veins, span a red thread and bound it round the sprained or dislocated limb of man or beast (34 d). The dear mother St. Catharine is asked to come in her best attire and see the harm her creature, the ram, has done by butting some unfortunate fellow (141). Expert St. Stephen (Tapani) or Tahvanus, lord of horses, a god that cleans out mangers, is desired to watch carefully over horses sent out to grass (115 a, b). As the father and mother of a boy that has been gored by an ox, St. Säitäri
and the lovely Pullukka are invoked to take care that the lad does not die of the injury before his time (116).
Besides these references to saints there are allusions to biblical subjects and persons as well as to ecclesiastic ceremonies, which it is well to record. Man is made of a cake of mould to which the Lord gave breath and life (191.) Kalma is asked if he is of the stock of Adam and Eve (24). The Creator cursed the snake to crawl on its belly along the ground (29 a). He cursed Satan and made him enter hills of steel, rocks of iron (42 a). There is a vague mention of the temple of the Lord (102 a), and to stand still like the wall of Jerusalem, is used as a simile to express the utmost immobility (61). A hunter declares that he does not praise a stone or worship a boulder-stone, or hunt on holy days or exert himself on Sabbath days (89 d). Juhannes, the priest of God, concocted unguents for a year in a tiny kettle, and with them he stroked and healed the wound of the Lord while being tortured by Pilate (109 e). The same priest of God plucked herbs by the thousand, boiled them all summer and thus made useful salves (232 b). An old man in riding to church on an elk-like horse as fat as a seal, crosses the brook Kedron (34 b). A stone is described as being as high as a church (28 b, 99). In expelling an evil spirit, an exorcist says: 'now is the precious time of grace, the solemn festival of God, the priests are going to the Mass, proceeding to the preaching-house' (8 c). Another exorcist asks the evil spirit of disease if it has been torn from the base of a cross, has been conjured up from women's graves (5 b).
To an evil spirit an exorciser exclaims: 'If thou should injure a Christian man, destroy a man that is baptized, christening perhance will injure thee, thee will a baptism
destroy' (16 b). And he banishes another spirit to priest-less places, to unchristian lands 07 w). He tells an evil spirit of disease to cease injuring a Christian man, destroying one that is baptized (22, 36 b, 39 a). Ukko is asked to let rain fall in Russia, in Karelia, where a woman has a child of two months, that has not been baptized for want of water (156). The bear was christened by the king of Himmerkki (i.e. the kingdom of heaven) himself, while the Virgin Mary not only carried him to baptism, but also stood godmother (193 a). Juhannes, the priest of God, the holy knight, was desired by Louhiatar to christen her children, but as he absolutely declined to do so, she profanely did it herself (210 a). But it was Juhannes, the best of priests that christened Fire and gave him the name of Panu (226 c). Raani, the old wife of Pohjola, asked God the Creator to baptize and name her children, but as he never came, she, too, did it herself (210 b). Tuoni's girl also baptized her children as the two priests and the sacristans, whom she had asked to perform the ceremony, firmly declined the invitation (216 b). After searching in ten villages, the mother of Rickets, being unable to find any one to baptize him does it herself on a water-girt stone, but in filthy water (215). Sharp Frost was christened by his mother at a bubbling stream in the centre of a golden cliff (219 a). Or, according to another version in a silver stream, in a golden spring (210 c).
KALEVA.
There is so little to be learned from the text about Kaleva, that we may suppose either that the tradition about him was dying out, or that his importance has been
exaggerated. In the last century, he is described by Lencqvist as a giant, the father of twelve sons, all the names of whom were not remembered, though Hiisi, Soini, Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen were among the number. Their great height, according to popular imagination, is the notion that underlies a couple of riddles. 'Two sons of Kaleva reside in the bath-house, their heads are washed in the yard.' 'The sons of Kaleva are in the bath-house, their heads are washed in the yard.' Ans. 'The rafters of the roof,' the projecting ends of which are well soused by falling rain. 1
In the middle of the sixteenth century, Agricola regarded the sons of Kaleva as benevolent divinities of the Tavastlanders, who mowed meadows and suchlike. In this they resemble the Selige Fräulein of the Tyrol who mow grass and cut corn for upland farmers and are comparable with the gigantic Fanggen or Wild Women of the Tyrol, who are willing to enter man's service and to perform work for him. 2 An anonymous author who wrote in 1778 tells us 'the good Kaleva covered fields with verdant grass and filled the barns of country people with new hay.' And sheet-lightning, which in folk-belief is often considered beneficial to growing corn, is termed in the south of Finland 'the sword of Kaleva.' He seems, therefore, in one aspect at least to have favoured the growth of vegetation, before helping to cut it down. Several passages in the Magic Songs, in which he is coupled, and therefore more or less identified with Osmo, favour this view. Hops were planted at the side of Kaleva's well, on the headland of Osmo's field and grew flourishingly. An old man sowed Osmo's barley in Osmo's new field and splendidly it grew
in Osmo's new field, in the clearing of Kaleva's son (209 a). The origin of bent-grass is said to be from a pearl that fell from the Lord, from Jesus’ hand, on the edge of Osmo's field, on Pellervoinen's unploughed edge (220). Osmotar is described as the brewer of ale, who took barley, hops and water, and began making beer. In the course of the narrative she is aided by Kalevatar (209 a). On the other hand, when Jesus and Mary were driving to church, they crossed the heath of Kaleva, the unploughed edge of Osmo's field (34 a). In the parish of Ilamants in Finnish Karelia a 'field of Kaleva' (Kalevan pelto) means a place where nothing grows.
In the text, the sons of Kaleva are Väinämöinen [v. Kullervo] in his capacity of a warrior, and Suoviitta (Swamp-cloak). In giving the origin of water, it is said that Vesiviitta (Water-cloak) the son of Vaitta, (or) Suoviitta, the son of Kaleva, dug water from a rock, let water gush from a mountain, with a golden staff (228 a). In a variant, that Vesiviitto, son of Väitö, (or) the offspring of Sinervätär [v. Suoviitta, son of Kaleva], slept a while in a mountain, grew for a long time in a rock while bringing forth water, though at last it spirted forth to be the death of fire (228 b). In a charm to quench fire Vesiviitta, the son of a mountain, the lovely offspring of a rock [v. Suoviitta, the son of Kaleva], that has slept for a year in the mountain, is asked to tether himself to the glowing ash and to cast himself down on Fire, so as to render him powerless for doing harm (171 m). In the last example Kaleva is coupled with God. Iron swears his solemn oath in the presence of the well-known God on the shoe of Kaleva, not to harm his brother (40 c).
WIZARDS, SORCERERS, ETC.
The Finns possess a considerable number of words and epithets for wizard, sorcerer, witch, seer, ecstatic and the like. Some of these are native words like noita 'a sorcerer,' tieto-mies or tietäjä 'the knower,' loitsija 'the reciter of a magic song (loitsu), arpoja 'a diviner,' näkijä 'a seer,' myrrys-mies or into-mies 'an ecstatic,' lumoja 'a stupefier,' lukija 'a reciter,' katselija 'an observer,' laulu-mies 'a song-man,' ampuja 'an archer,' kukkaro-mies a bag-man.' Others are of foreign origin like mahti-mies or mahtaja < Goth. mahts or Sw. magt 'might,' taikuri 'he that uses taika '< Goth. taikns 'a token, a wonder,' velho 'a witch,' is probably an early Slav loan, while a latter one is poppa-mies 'priest-man' from the Rus. pop. Though between these appellations no hard and fast line can be drawn, dividing them into good and bad categories, yet on the whole, injurious or black magic would generally be the work of the noita, the ampuja, the velho, and the kukkaro-mies. Beneficial or white magic, like the great bulk of the Magic Songs, was used for ejecting evil spirits of disease, etc., and would be practised by a loitsija, a tietäjä, a lukija, or a laulu-mies; in some instances by a lumoja, näkijä or an arpoja. Yet we have an example of an exorcist terming himself a noita and a Lapp (12 b). As a rule there is nothing in a Magic Song to show what sort of wizard the reciter of it might be; so as his function is to drive away disease, I shall term him the exorcist.
The sorcerer (noita), the fortune-teller (arpoja), is said to have been born behind the limits of the north, on the flat land of the Lapps, on a bed of fir boughs, on a pillow of stone (207). The sorcerer has a nose like an eagle's
beak (2 d) and wears a tall hat (14 c, e), as the Lapps do still. Sorcerers, when they exercise their arts, are naked and without a stitch of clothes (14 b). They are said to drink water from a pool in the croup of Hiisi's horse, and in drinking to make it hiss (9 b, 14 h). The offensive weapons of the sorcerer, the wizard (tietäjä) and the 'archer,' are knives of iron, pointed iron and shooting instruments (2 a, b, 14 c, 37 a, b). Sorcerers and wizards use arrows, and witches (velho) have knives of steel (176 o). But these expressions are not usually to be understood literally; they imply sickness, disease, or any injury caused by the spells of a sorcerer at the instigation of some jealous neighbour; though, sometimes, a sorcerer no doubt would drive a knife or a nail into the footprint of an enemy to do him harm, and there is a vague allusion to roasting and melting an image (46), into which pins or nails would first be stuck. The arrows of a sorcerer are said to be made of the wood of a tall fir growing on the Hill of Pain, and he is quite indifferent where he shoots them (208 a). Or they were made from chips of a huge oak that were taken to a smithy by a scoundrel, who made the arrows to be stitch and pleurisy in men, sudden sickness in a horse and elf-shots (F. jagged spikes) in kine (211 a). Or from the chips of a fiery oak they were made into arrows by Hiisi's son (211 b). Wizards, sorcerers, witches, and diviners, are to be found at every gate, at every fence, along every road, in damp dells, near water, and in fact everywhere (2 c, d).
A cursing spell may be repeated in a whining or a mumbling voice and is said to be bitten off with the teeth (46), just as one might bite off a length of thread from a clew held in the mouth. Words, i.e. spells or
[paragraph continues] Magic Songs, are brought from the north, from Lapland (28 a).
An exorcist requires a fluent mouth, a ready tongue and pliant fingers (1 a). In order to make him into a wizard, a skilful man and a singer, an exorcist was washed naked three times one summer night on the nether stone of a handmill by his mother (14 e), probably to harden and strengthen him, the stone itself being hard and strong. Another boasts that he is the son of a Northerner (Pohjolainen), was rocked by a girl of Turja, and was cradled by a Lapp (14 f). The vaunt of another is that he is the youngest son of a sorcerer, the 'calf' of an old diviner (14 d). He can repeat a spell learnt from his father to obtain a favourable wind (107 a). He depends on his father's strength of mind and armaments (12 b, 14 b). But he also inherits power from his mother. An exorcist's mother could bring back stolen milk from Mana, from Tuonela, from sorcerers, etc., and what she did he can do likewise (88 c). Another brags that Sharp Frost has no effect on him or on any of his family and kin. In fact he kills Frost and takes from it clothing with which to protect himself (93 d).. If he has need of Magic Songs he will go and learn them from the old wife of Pohjola and also how to use an eagle's claws (28 a). At a later date an exorcist wishes the Creator, whose words and phrases are holy and well-arranged, to speak for him (157 d). And God is asked to save a person from the effect of village spells and incantations with words framed by the Creator and prescribed by the Holy Ghost (165 a). By his song an exorcist boasts he can split the shoulders of a witch or of a sorcerer, by his lay can bisect his jawbone and feed him on snakes and toads (14 a). By singing
he can bring a pigskin over the eyes of sorcerers and a dogskin over their ears (14 c). By means of his song he turns the best singers into the worst and puts strong gloves and shoes on their hands and feet (14 e), meaning that they are now bound and helpless. He sings sorcerers, wizards, witches and 'archers' with their 'knives, arrows, etc.' into the mighty Rutja or Turja Rapids (14 c). By the power of his song a wolf is bitted or a bear is chained (16 b). He boasts that he can milk adders, handle snakes, can arm one thousand men in one night, can bit wolves and shackle bears (14 f). As a comrade he has one of Hiisis's people, who is of great strength and will give him hardness of body (14 i). Elsewhere he brags that he has a sandy skin, a hide of iron slag, a body made of steel, or one taken from the branches of a fir (14 c). In fact, from his possessing a sandy skin, an iron-coloured hide, it is useless for a wasp to try to sting him (79 a). One exorcist describes how skilful he is at surgical operations (31); another vaunts that he is a man without his like and a famous son (176 v).
But the exorcist is not always in a boasting mood, and does not rely solely upon bounce. Sometimes he is far from being over-confident (1 a, 38 a). In his diffidence he refers to himself as an unfortunate lad, as a poor boy, (28 a). He lays great stress on the difficulty of the task of ejecting evil spirits of disease (1 a, b, d, 3 a, 15 a, 65, 75). He asks how he is to proceed (1 a, 13, 15 a, 37 c etc.), how he is to protect himself (2 a). He pleads complete ignorance of the cause of an illness or accident (5 a, 6, c, 23). And if he is not afraid it is because he has put on a shirt of defence (2 c) or something of the sort (12 b, 14 6). In the latest period he can do nothing
without the grace and aid of God the true Creator. Or he speaks with the Lord's good breath and washes the sick man with the blood and tears of Jesus (101). He acts with the Creator's leave and by the mercy of the Lord (1 a, 42 b).
DISEASE.
The disease an exorcist has to drive away is either sent by God the Creator—an idea evidently of late date—or is caused by the spells of a sorcerer for reward (5 a), which is undoubtedly the older belief. When an illness is effected by the spells of an enemy it is said to be the result of human art (17 g, h, j, k) and is thus distinguished from a natural malady. Disease in general is pictured as a huge and hideous devil (1 a) or as a bogie, rienä (1 c). It is termed a Hiisi, a devil (5 b, 8 b, 13, 15 a), a filthy Lempo (5 c), an uninvited shape, muoto (8 c), a hound of Hiisi, a monster of the earth (8 d). An exorcist is quite astonished that a mouthless, eyeless, toothless, tongueless creature like Rickets can see to suck or to eat (41).
Sometimes an illness may have been ordered to attack a man by its father, mother, brothers or sisters (11). On the other hand it is invited to approach and recognise the evil it has done, on pain of a report being made to its mother, who would be greatly vexed thereby (6 a). For, after seeing the harm it has wrought, it is capable of feeling ashamed (6 b, 8 d), and of repairing and making amends for it (6 b, 36 a). An exorcist may even treat it as he would a boy and threaten to flog it with rowan shoots and tips of fir (16 a). The person who sends an illness or disease by means of spells is called its master or
mistress, and so the malady may be told to go home and break the head of its master or mistress (17 g). Or to injure in some terrible way the individual that sent it, such as by 'giving her veins a sudden squeeze, making her blood-pipes pipe a tune' (17 h). A sickness may also come from a grave or from the spirits of the departed (17 b, c). From this may be inferred that the Finns sacrificed to the manes of their ancestors, who were occasionally dissatisfied and then avenged themselves by sending disease etc., on their descendants. Ailments are also brought by wind and water (17 v). Once upon a time three attacks of sickness came along a swamp, along firm ground and by water. The first had a neck like a pole, the second a neck like an arch, the third was the worst attack, but is not further described (14 h). Or three attacks of sickness came along a swamp, along a winter- road and along springs of water, but on this occasion the worst had come along the swamp (20 b).
Though pain, disease and sickness of any kind were generally thought of as evil spirits with human propensities, yet they can be wound up into a ball and thrown into the sea (10 a). An exorcist puts them into his wallet and takes them to three Luonnotars who collect them in a copper box (10 b). And Kivutar, the maid of pains and sicknesses, boils these in a little kettle on the top of the Hill of Pain (10 c, d).
Inducements to depart.
When an exorcist did not feel quite strong enough to drive away a disease by force he sometimes parleyed with it, tried the arts of persuasion and offered a substantial inducement to it to retire to some other place. If it will
only go he will provide it with a splendid horse (9 a, b) and he urges that the road is good and there is moonlight to travel by (8 b). But as it was regarded as a ravenous, flesh-eating monster an appeal is generally made to its grosser appetites. It is invited to go to a cemetery where there is plenty bread of sifted flour, plenty elbows and much fat flesh (17 c); to Pohjola, where there is a sea beach to scamper along, both cooked and raw flesh, the boneless meat of an elk, a fat ox or of a reindeer already slaughtered and only waiting to be eaten (17 m); to the North, as blazes have been cut on the trees making it easy to find the way, and once there it will find a good bed, plenty to eat and drink, boneless flesh, blood to drink, elk, reindeer, and bear's meat and to crown all a pig stye to sleep in (17 n); to battlefields, where it is easy to visit relatives, to eat raw flesh and drink warm blood in abundance (17 o); in front of a cannon, where there is blood to drink and flesh to eat, that never grows less (17 p); to the sea, to be gently swayed by it, where there is plenty fish and roast meat for a hungry fellow to eat (17 y). To Metsola, to the stone heap of a bear, to eat a bear or a horse (27 b). To Lapland, where it is nice and cold and where it can eat reindeer meat without trouble (36 b). To go home, where a bitch has littered two pups, the heart's core of which Colic is welcome to devour (58). To Hell, where a horse has died, the foot of which Small-Pox can bite (27 b). To Metsola where there is a butter bed, a milky sleeping-place, a bacony resting-place and a soft pillow (17 l).
Occasionally an appeal is made to the finer feelings. A disease ought to go home because his family is alarmed and vexed at his absence and his son is lying sick (17 i):
[paragraph continues] Or a Pain ought to go into the sea where all his relatives, his brothers and sisters, his nephews and nieces reside (45 a). If there is any vanity in him, he may go to the stars 'to flame like a fire, to sparkle like a spark' (17 q).
The principle of offering an inducement to pursue a certain line of action is extended by exorcists or other reciters of Magic Songs to birds and animals as well as to spirits of disease. A raven, instead of injuring snares, is advised to fly to Pohjola, to Lapland, where there is elk meat and boneless flesh for a hungry fellow to devour (94). Instead of attacking cows, a bear is advised to mature his claws and strengthen the muscle of his forearm by shaking a rotten tree, by throwing down trees and twisting bushes (69 c). Or he should retire into the forest where there is always a bed ready for a bear (69 d). An ermine is recommended to enter a trap because the bait is made with cunning skill, tastes salty and is honey to the mind (73). A game bird should not fly away at the sight of a hunter's snares or it will certainly be killed by a hawk (83 a). A cabbage grub is advised to go into the sea where there is plenty sea-sand and water to eat and drink (66 b). A bug ought to withdraw into the crevices of a wail where there is plenty of fat, instead of biting the tarry back of a man (85). An attempt is even made to persuade Ukko, the god of the sky, to send rain to some other place on the ground that a mother is there with a child of two months old that has seen no water and is still unbaptized (156).
Places whither Diseases are conjured.
The exorcist conjured the spirits of disease to all sorts of localities, and at times gave the reins to his fancy in imagining
out-of-the-way places. And once there they cannot escape unless the exorcist comes himself to set them free (18 a, b), a most unlikely event. He banishes them to their own country (9 a, 17 g, h); to Metsola (17 l); to deep gloomy forests whence no man returns (50); to the north (17 n, 36 a); to a snowy mountain peak (17 s); to the Hill of Pain (9 b); to the top of a copper hill, into the rift in an iron mountain (17 r); below the earth, under a copper mountain (x. b); to Manala's eternal huts (43); to Sariola, to unploughed land, to a nameless meadow (17 a); to damp dells and swamps (17 a, t); to the sky (17 q, 36 b); into a variegated stone (17 u); into stones that feel no pain, to swamps, deserted clearings, into moving gravel and sand (17 t); to priestless places, to unchristened lands (17 w); into the hole of an ermine (17 a); into a nine-fathom deep hole in a stone lying in a spring in, a field (10 c); to the middle of the open sea (10 a); into the violent rapids of Ihari, Kalari, Vuoksi, Turja or Rutja (17 d, e, f, 43); down the mouth of Antero Vipunen (17 a); into the sleigh of a brindled cat, the cart of a black cock to be carried to gaol, or into the sleigh of a fox to be carried into the water (17 a); into the skin of a kindly seal to be carried out to sea (17 u); into the eye of a blue gwyniad, to the tail of a red salmon or into the mouth of an iron burbot (17 x); into the mouth of an iron stallion, of a wolf or a crow, under the tongue of a reindeer or under the tail of a black dog (17 a); to fiery rapids, to a holy stream, where there is a reef on which stands a bull with a burning mouth that will carry the disease to Tuonela (17 d); or into an apple or an oak tree (129 h), as is common enough in European folklore.
Instruments.
The belief in the power of magic song was great, but it did not preclude the use of instruments, either real or imaginary. If the voice of an exorcist is not strong enough, he takes a horn or a pipe and blows on it towards the sky in order to be better heard (1 d). He thrusts his herding-horn towards the sky and brings down milk from there (88 c). In order to claw Disease, the hideous thing, he uses the claws of a bear or of an eagle (14 h, 16 a, 20 b, 28 a), or the hands of a dead man (13 b, 16 a). To extract the 'arrows of a sorcerer' or 'Tuoni's grub,' he employs little tongs or pincers made expressly by a smith (15 6, 21 c, 37 a). He asks Ukko to drop into his hand pincers, the points and shafts of which are made of snakes, that he may draw out the 'arrows' and 'bloody needles' of a sorcerer (149 a). Smith Ilmarinen is desired to make tiny tongs and pincers for him that he may extract Lempo's arrow or his bloody knife from the body of a sufferer (149 b). In order to bite Colic, he goes for the teeth of a bear and squeezes the ailment with its paws (58). Before tackling Disease he puts on his viperous gloves, his snaky mitts, and smears his hands with the fat of snakes (16 b). He has a willow bough and an alder shaft with which he shoots down Tuoni's grub, or he grinds the animal with his pestle and mortar (21 c). To press down tumours he uses three stones taken from the river of Tuonela, or one as high as a church and as thick as a tower (28 a). He lops off tumours and excrescences with his axe (28 a), or uses a knife with a silver blade and a golden haft that fell into his hand from the sky (31). He requests Hiisi to bring a scythe from Esthonia or from Hell and lend it to him that he may cut out the disorder from which a patient is suffering
[paragraph continues] (128 h). Nightmares he places on his steelyard (35) that they may exhaust themselves in weighing it down.
Defensive Precautions.
Besides employing instruments, an exorcist has often to take measures to protect his person, but their description also must not be understood too literally. From his point of view the mere recitation of a magic formula, in which he describes himself as putting on armour, was tantamount to really doing so. He drew no hard and fast line between fact and figment; the simulation of performing a certain act was potentially equivalent to its performance in reality. For at one period it is very possible that he, like the Shamans of Siberia, actually donned a particular dress for the occasion, and during the operation repeated a charm, such as one of those termed 'Taking defensive measures.' In the first of these the exorcist says he will put on an iron shirt, an iron helmet, iron gloves, copper socks, and iron boots, so that neither the arrows of a sorcerer nor the knives of a witch can injure him (2 a). These instruments, as we have often remarked, are figurative expressions, not to be taken in their ordinary sense. Again, he wishes the fiery shirt of his father and mother may be brought from Tuonela and put on him to guard him against the 'shooting instruments' of an 'archer' (2 b). He asks his dead mother to rise from the grave and bring from Tuoni's land a fur coat, which he will don, to protect himself against sorcerers, witches, etc. (176 b). Old wife Kave, Nature's daughter, is invoked by him to weave a cloth of gold and silver and make a shirt of defence, a copper cloak, which he can wear as a protection against spells and witches (176 e). He himself clips wool and fluff from a stone, hair
from a rock, and makes of them a shirt of defence against sorcerers and witches (2 c). Or he asks the Maid of Mist and Fog to pluck wool from a rock and make a shirt of mist, a copper cloak, which he can wear day and night as a defence against sorcerers and Lapps (176 f). Ukko, the old father of the sky, is to build an iron fence, a steel screen, reaching from the sky to the earth, to shelter an exorcist and his people. It is to be interlaced with lizards and snakes, which will keep an eye on sorcerers and eat up spells, etc. (176 m, n). Ukko is further requested to let fall from the sky a pipe, a copper horn, a golden shield which the exorcist will use to prevent the arrows of a sorcerer from sticking into him (176 o). Lastly, he implores the Virgin Mary to give him her blue silk scarf to bind round his hand, that he may be able to quench a fire unhurt (172 a).
Helpers.
When an exorcist, or other reciter of magic songs, felt himself powerless and in need of assistance he had no lack of helpers. He received or hoped to obtain aid not only from the multitude of spiritual beings that seem to animate nature, but also from animals, birds, fish, insects, and trees. Sufficient examples of aid from the former class have already been given. Before enumerating instances that come under the latter headings, it is only necessary to add that help was to be expected from ancestors, from forests with their men, and from lakes with their armed men (13 a, 124); from a deceased mother (176 h); from horsemen and swordsmen in the sand, that have lain for long in the earth (1 b, 15 a).
An exorcist avers that he saddles snakes, and puts a bit
in the mouth of a bear and a wolf, that they may run alongside him and gobble up the spells sent by village people (14 g). He threatens to raise a ram with twisted horns, or an ox with horns, to butt at and push away a disease or ailment such as colic (16 a, 58). He wishes an iron-hoofed mare, reared in Karelia, to kick a Hiisi away (22). The powerful black Vento ox, or a wolf of Manala, a bear of Kalma's, is invoked to extract the arrow of a sorcerer (37 c). He threatens to set his father's voracious, hairy-nosed, black dog at Disease—a dog with fiery mouth, with teeth like rakes, and with an iron heart that ere now has devoured a thousand men (16 a). And Hiisi's elks and reindeer, after being combed by Jesus, St. Andrew, and St. Peter, are desired to drive away the snakes and adders that drink the mistress's ale (91).
According to his own account, an exorcist owns three eagles, with iron, copper, and silver claws respectively, that will eat up the pain caused by burns (52 b). An eagle from Turjaland, with five talons like sickles, with a burning mouth, and eyes at the tip of its wings, is invoked by him to extract Keito's spears from the body of a suffering man (149 e). A famous eagle with a beak like five scythes, a throat like three cataracts, with iron claws, and eyes at the ends of its wings, is invited to come from Turja, from Lapland, to devour the pain caused by burns (128 i). An eagle from Turja is asked to lend three feathers to serve as a bulwark to a boat when about to shoot rapids (107 c). In the north-east, in Turjaland, dwells a famous eagle, under its wings are a hundred men, above them another hundred, at the tip of its tail are a thousand men, all girt with swords. This wonderful bird is invoked by an exorcist to remove the harm caused by spells (154 e). An iron-crested cock is
desired to claw Dropsy, here spoken of as 'toads' and 'Hiisis' (56). An iron cock and hen are invited to rise from the ground to eat up burns and sip 'fire's broth,' another name for scalds and injuries from fire (171 d). A black cock and an iron hen are told to rise from the earth to help an exorcist by pecking out the eyes of jealous people and tearing the noses of sorcerers (176 t). The Creator's golden wattled cock is requested to come to speak on behalf of a defendant, to stop the judge's ears, to bribe the jurymen, and bind silk across the eyes of the sheriff (124). And a yellow wren is sent on an unsuccessful mission to Pohjola to fetch an old woman who could heal burns, though the errand was afterwards effected by a bee (52 g). Another bee is sent to a distant island to fetch honey for fermenting beer (142 a). And a spider is requested to spin a web to staunch a flow of blood (55 e). A golden burbot is to come from the mouth of a copper burbot to restore health and seize the pains from which a sick man is suffering, so that he may sleep in peace (102 b). In folklore-medicine it is a well-known remedy to catch a fish, convey to it symbolically the malady from which a patient is suffering, and then return it to the water. As this belief is also current in Finland, it seems likely that this song to restore health might have been sung during the performance of such an act.
An unfortunate mistress who has no one to herd her cows asks a willow, an alder, a rowan, and a bird-cherry tree, to do the work for her, and menaces them with dire punishment should they refuse (70 b). If a man cannot obtain the assistance he otherwise expected, he goes to a rock, to a boulder on a hill, for there is help in a hill, there are supplies in Hiisi's castle (65).
Precedents.
As will be seen below, when we come to examine the structure of the Magic Songs, there are a multitude of instances in which the exorcist or other reciter of charms tells a short story, the incidents of which have reference to what he wishes to do or to get. By implication this is used as a precedent why a similar event should happen again. But in seven instances a previous event is explicitly cited as a precedent and reason why something analogous should again occur. In a couple of charms against injuries from spells, after narrating how formerly the Creator freed moons and suns, released men with swords, horses with saddles, and priests with their parishioners, from mighty battle-fields, the exorcist adds: 'May He effect deliverance on this occasion, remove the harm wrought by magic, and dispel the spell-sent injury' (42 a). After describing how Kuume formerly had enclosed the moon in an iron barn, and the sun in a mountain of steel, and how Kapo had released them, the exorcist continues, 'So I too now release this man from the spell-brought harm of villagers, enchantments of the long-haired ones, charms spoken by the women-kind. Just as the son of the sun escaped when freed by Päivätär, so may this person too escape when freed by me' (42 b). An exorcist relates that formerly the solid gates of a castle moved, its iron hinges shook, the copper hills quaked, the earth was shaken out of joint and the sky riven into holes at the coming of the hour of God, when help from the Lord approached. So he asks the Disease—here spoken of as an uninvited shape, an evil one—why it does not move and withdraw before an hour has elapsed (8 c). After recounting how father Lempo
had received a cut, and mother Lempo and all the Lempos had cut themselves with their own knives, and stating that their veins were afterwards knotted up, the wizard summoned to stop the hæmorrhage exclaims, 'So why not this vein too? why is the blood not stopped, the deadly cataract not plugged?' (55 b.) A charm for making a vapour-bath to heal some malady begins with the statement that the gods above and the earth-matrons down below have baths that are heated up, new rooms that give forth whirls of smoke, and this is used as a reason for steam being given off on the present occasion, of such quality that it will serve as an ointment for injuries and an embrocation for wounds (87 a). A hunter after reciting his misfortunes asks, 'Why was the great Creator wroth, the giver of game enraged, that he never gives at all? He fed the tribe, gave the race to drink, he nourished the first ancestor, so why does he not feed me too with the great morsels of the tribe, or with the titbits of the race?' (89 c.) At the close of a brief charm to make bread rise, a despairing housewife cries to the yeast, 'The sun and moon have risen both, yet thou hast not begun to rise' (74).
Blessing and Cursing.
The exorcist did not often have recourse to blessing, though on one occasion he says: 'Whoever without envy looks, may Jesus bless him so that he shall honeyed eyes possess, shall wend his way with a honeyed mind' (3 a). He was stronger in curses. In a charm to guard against envy he says: 'Whoever looks with jealousy, may his eyes shed blood, let them run with rheum; into his eyes
may the lashes grow, as thick as a hatchet-haft, a bowstring long; may these pour blood along and across his cheeks' (3 a). 'Whoever looks with an envious glance, may the slag of Hiisi fill his eyes, the soot of Hiisi soil his face, may a fiery bung plug up his mouth, may Lempo's lock clinch fast his jaws, may his mouth get overgrown with moss, the root of his tongue be broken off, may his head dry into stone and skin grow on the top' (3 b). 'If envious persons look, if cock-eyed people pry, may a branch tear out their eyes; may a withered fir-tree grow, an iron-branched tree, before the envious person's house, throw out thick shoots, on which he shall fix his eyes, that unless set free he won't get free during the space of earthly time' (3 c). Or the exorcist wishes that the bloody cloak of Hiisi, that takes five men to lift, may be bound round the heads of jealous, envious, prying people, so that they may neither see nor hear (3 d). An exorcist hopes that for any one that repeats his private spells, 'the root of his tongue may be twisted round and his hair rubbed off' (4 a). 'Whoever hath bewitchment used, on him may death bewitchment use; may his tongue rot off, his mouth get overgrown with moss' (4 b). After consigning all sorts of necromancers and warlocks to the mighty Rutja Rapids, the exorcist wishes they may there fall asleep till the grass grows through their heads, shoulders, and tall hats (14 c). Or after banishing a spirit of disease to the violent Vuoksi Rapids he says: 'If thou raise thy head from there, or exalt thy snout, may Ukko pain thy head with sharply pointed needles or with iron hail' (17 f). 'May all the sorcerers in dells, through their own arrows, come to nought; those that use witchcraft—through their knives;
diviners—through their tools of steel; all other strong men through their strength' (2 d). 'May all the spells that sorcerers cast, all things that the seers see, return to their proper homes; may they cast their spells upon themselves, over their children sing their charms; may they destroy their families, may they dishonour kith and kin' (14 d). An exorcist addresses a poor frog in language like this: 'If thou raise thy head from there, may thy shins be smashed, thy thighs be rent, may thy marrow be withdrawn, from which an ointment will be cooked and unguents be prepared' (97). In a charm against bears: 'May the forest bear be choked with a honey ball in its mouth, so that its jaws won't open up, that its teeth won't come apart, that its tongue sha’n’t freely wag' (122 a).
Sometimes flattering words were used. The spirit of the grave is thus addressed: 'Kindly Kalma, lovely Kalma, Kalma of the fair complexion' (24). Gout or heartburn: 'Good Gout, thou lovely Gout, Mary's sweet Gout, depart!' (30.) The spirit of pain and sickness: 'Good mistress, Kivutar, distinguished woman, Vammotar' (128 c), or 'Lovely old wife of pains, good mistress Kivutar' (128 e). A hornet: 'O hornet, thou complaisant man, don't shoot thine arrows forth' (19 b). A snake: 'My sweetheart, my wee bird, my beauty, my wee duck:' (75.) An ermine: 'Furred beauty of the winter-time, dear little hen of fields run wild, flower dwelling at the root of firs' (73). In raising steam to make a vapour-bath: 'O welcome, welcome, my dear Steam, my darling Steam, my darling Warmth, thou steam of wood, dear water's warmth, old Väinämöinen's sweat!' (87 c.)
Offerings, Worship.
In former times, as the Finns did not expect to get benefits gratis, they made offerings of various kinds to their divinities to propitiate them, and sometimes to harmful spirits to induce them to desist. In later times the offerings were very small, and when a hunter speaks of the gold and silver that he is offering to the forest deity, it probably means that he has scraped a little silver off a silver coin, or at most has laid a small silver coin or two at the foot of a tree. A trapper tells Kunnotar and the golden woman Kärehetär, the divinity of foxes, to cease melting gold and silver, as he is putting bits of gold and silver into her bowl. The gold is as old as the moon, the silver as old as the sun, and was brought by his father from the wars when the speaker was a child (173 a). The mistress of Metsola and the Forest's golden king are asked by a hunter to enter upon an exchange of gold and silver. The 'gold' of Metsola is more coloured and darker, that of the hunter is more glistening (173 b). A hunter asks the master and mistress of Tapio's farm to make an exchange of gold and silver. His gold is as old as the moon, his silver as old as the sun, and is Swedish silver brought from Tornio after a battle (173 c). Another hunter requests the mistress of the Forest and its golden king to take his gold and silver, and to give theirs, as it will be for the benefit of Tapio's farm, and will give delight to Metsola (173 d). A disconsolate hunter laments that the Forest does not care for his silver or ask for his gold (89 c).
Sometimes the offerings were of food. A trapper implores Kuippana, the king of the forest, to take a fancy to and approve of his salt and groats, and to give instead
his 'sweet rye cakes' and 'groats,' i.e. game (153 a). Kuutar (Moon's daughter) and Päivätär (Sun's daughter) are requested by a hunter to bake a suet cake, a honeyed bannock, with which he may propitiate the Forest when he goes hunting (139 b). A trapper invites Tapio to take a fancy to his groats and salt (153 b). If Para brings good luck he is to get a calf as a reward (153 d). A man asks Water and Water's mistress to make him well, as he prays with chosen words, and gives blood and salt as offerings to appease and reconcile them (157 e). Chaff in the eye is invited to take a fancy to the sea in exchange for pleasant fat (45 b).
The references to worship are very rare, but they are worth noting. A hunter declares that he does not worship boulder stones, or praise a stone, or hunt on holy days and Sabbaths. Other men's offerings of gold, silver, and tin are not more glittering than his, and if they say a prayer he brings more solid offerings, and says the best of prayers to the donors that are best (89 d). Another hunter does not bow down to firs, but bows to the 'flowers' of a fir, i.e. to squirrels (72 b). A third hunter prays for 'hoofs and feet,' and will not give thanks for a stone or prostrate himself for stumps, or serve for willows (139 m).
A stone where festivities of some sort, no doubt partly of a religious nature, were held, is referred to in the expression 'Jesus’ stone of joy, the Creator's rock of sports' (203 b).
END OF VOL. I.
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press
Footnotes
278:1 Wichmann, (1) p. 5.
278:2 Friis, p. 37.
279:1 Arvoituksia, No. 245.
281:1 Zolotnitski, pp. 199, 200.
282:1 Arvoituksia, No. 2006.
283:1 Killinen, p. 88.
285:1 So it is explained in Renvall's Dict. who adds that it is the same as Kuikkana. It seems to mean something long and hollow for there is a riddle: 'Kuippana on the stove-bench? Ans. A dough-trough or tub,' Arvoituksia, No. 544.
286:1 Arvoituksia, No. 1745.
286:2 Mannhardt, (1) pp. 120–126; Hyltén-Cavallius, vol. i, p. x9.
293:1 Arvoituksia, No. 176, 257, 1586; 129–131.
299:1 Ujfalvy, pp. 81, 115.
306:1 Kuvalehti, 1894, p. 91.
318:1 Mannhardt, (1) pp. 88, 123, 128; Hyltén-Cavallius, vol. i. p. 14.
321:1 Kalevala, vol. ii. pp. 165, 171.
325:1 Sprogis, p. 32.
326:1 Mannhardt, (2) p. 145.
328:1 Arvoituksia, No. 1849, 1833.
328:2 Grotenfelt, p. 19.
329:1 Arvoituksia, No. 1508, 1509.
330:1 Sprogis, p. 316.
333:1 Arvoituksia, No. 2026.
342:1 Arvoituksia, No. 334, 1368.
342:2 Mannhardt, (1) pp. 107, 90.