Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/343

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Magic Songs of the Finns.
337

Therefrom grew a lovely birch, a verdant sapling raised itself,
A sprout drawn upwards by the soil, rocked by Tuuletar.[1]
Its top strove towards the sky, its boughs spread outwards into space.


xxi.—The Origin of Flax.

(a.)

Much land was burnt up formerly, much land, much swamp,
In a summer bad for fires, a luckless conflagration year.
A spot remained unburnt upon the greatest reach of swamp,
On a wild mountain top, in the space between two stumps,
Under a triple-rooted birch.
They dug up the stump's root, a seed of flax was found there,
In the storage place of 'Tuoni's grub'[2] in the 'earthworm's'[2] place of custody.
An old boat was burnt
Near 'fiery' rapids, at a 'fiery' rapids' turning-point.
A pile of ash arose, a heap of dry ashes
From the burning of the wooden craft, from the ignition of the boat.
Into it the flax was sown, was sown, was ploughed,
On a single summer night.
Then from it sprang a sprout, endlessly high the flax grew
On a single summer night.

(b.)

The sisters Sotkotar,[3] sisters-in-law, nimble women,
v.eternal sisters-in-law,
Discovered 'Tuoni's grub', the earth 'worm',
Between a pair of stumps, beneath a triple-rooted birch.
'Tuoni's grub' was burnt, the earth 'worm' was roasted,
The loathsome was scorched, was baked to ashes
Before the gate of Pohjola, on Lapland's chip-strewn plain;
v. At the root of an unrotted stump;


  1. Wind's daughter.
  2. 2.0 2.1 'Tuoni's grub' and 'worm of the earth' are both epithets of the snake; see above, xi (a.), Folk-Lore, p. 38.
  3. From sotka, 'a duck' (Fuligula clangula). They are mentioned in the Kalevala, xli, 143.