Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/52

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44
Magic Songs of the Finns.

cocted salves beside a variegated stone, near a thick flag-stone, nine fathoms in circumference and seven fathoms wide. These are the efficacious salves, the reliable charmed remedies with which I anoint the sick and heal a person that is hurt.


(c.)

An ointment made of every sort of thing becomes powerful by the ordinance of the Father and Creator, by the permission of God. On the earth there are many sorts of herbs, there are efficacious plants which a helpless man takes, a destitute person plucks to use as salves for the sick, as embrocation for wounds.

Where are ointments prepared, where are honeyed unguents rightly confected to serve as liniment upon a sore, as a remedy for hurts? Ointments are prepared, honeyed unguents are rightly confected above the nine heavens, behind the stars in the sky, near the moon, in a crack in the sun, on the shoulder of the Great Bear. Thence may the ointment trickle down, may a drop of honey drip from under the mouth of gracious God, from under the beard of the Blessed. It is an efficacious salve for every kind of injury, for the fearful traces left by fire, for places wholly burnt by Panu (fire), for frost-bites caused by bitter frost, for places touched by cruel wind; it is a salve to put on the grievous wounds caused by iron, on injuries produced by steel, upon the stabs of Piru's pike, upon the mark left by Keito's spear.


(d.)

A blue 'cloud' looms, a (rain)bow is visible afar off, comes forth from the south, opens up towards [v. from] the north-west. A little girl is upon the 'cloud', a maiden on the bow's edge; she smooths her hair, brushes her locks. From her the milk appears, from her breast it overflows. It flowed down upon the ground upon a honey-