up on the place where breath is breathed, on the narrow muscles of the neck. Your family is from the mist,[1] your mother is from the mist, your father from the mist, your ancestor is from it, your five brothers are there, the six daughters of your godfather, your paternal uncle's seven children. Pray remove yourself to nameless meadows unknown by name.
XXXVII.—The Origin of the Tooth-Worm.
(a.)
You fidgety, globular being! the size of a seed of flax, looking like a flax-seed, that destroys the teeth, keeps cutting the jaw-bones, I know, indeed, your family, and all your up-bringing. A black [v. iron] man emerged from the sea, from the waves uprose a full-grown man, the height of a straightened thumb, the stature of a man's finger. A single hair comes wafted by the wind. A beard:grew from the hair, and on the beard was engendered a worm. Owing to this the low wretch came, the evil pagan removed into the beloved jaw-bones, the dearlycherished teeth, to devour and gnaw, to crunch, rasp, and play havoc with the jaws, and hack the teeth.
There now is your family, there is your likeness.
(b.)
A furious old quean [v. Väinämöinen's old wife], the stout woman Luonnotar [v. sturdy old Väinämöinen], set to work to sweep the sea, to mop the billows with a broom, wearing on her head a textile of sparks, with a cloak of foam over her shoulders. She swept a whole day, swept the next day, forthwith swept a third whole day. The refuse gathered in her broom, in her copper besom. She was anxious to remove it, so she raised the besom from the waves, made the copper handle twirl high above her
- ↑ Or, "from Sumu", regarding it as a place-name.
