Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/36

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30
Magic Songs of the Finns.


iv.—The Origin of the Cat.

I know of course cat's origin—the incubation of "greybeard".
The cat was gotten on a stove has a girl's nose, a hare's head,
A tail of Hiisi's plait of hair, claws of a viper,
v. A tail of snake's venom,
Feet of cloudberries, the rest of its body is of the wolfs race.


v.—The Origin of the Dog.

(a.)

Whelp's genesis is from the wind, dog's origin from chilly wind.
v.a pup's from shining of the sun.
The old woman Louhiatar, mistress of Pohjola, the whore,
v. Untamola's[1] [Ulappala's[2]] blind one, the wholly blind of Väinölä[3]
Slept with her back to the wind—her side to the north-west.
The wind made her pregnant, chilly wind made her womb heavy.
Why is her womb heavy? She bore a dog in her womb,
A puppy dog below her spleen, an earthly creature in her liver
Of one month old, of two months old.
She at the end of three months' time
Began to throw her litter—to lighten her belly,
From her womb she threw a dog—a whelp from under her spleen.
Who carried the swaddling clothes—the pup's coarse swaddling bandages?
The furious Pineforest Crone carried the swaddling clothes,
Rocked [the pup] in her own linen, dandled it in her lap,
Caused the whelp to tread [the ground]—the "woolly tail" to mark the way.


  1. An alias of Pohjola, derived from uni, "sleep".
  2. "A remote, distant land; a wide, open, flat, barren district; a land behind the open sea", ulappa is another name for Pohjola.
  3. "Väinämöinen's home." In the old Kalevala, in a variant to ii, 89, 90, Untamoinen is the parallel word to Väinämöinen, and at xvi, 271, "the waters of the Viena" (the Dwina, falling into the White Sea), are parallel "to the open ulappa" (open sea). Väinä is the Finnish and Esthonian word for the other Dvina, falling into the Gulf of Riga.