y the wayside,
and gathered in the depths of the copses; blown from the
branches of the forest, and culled among the plumes of the
pine-trees. These lays came to me as I followed the flocks,
in a land of meadows honey-sweet and of golden hills.... The
cold has spoken to me, and the rain has told me her runes;
the winds of heaven, the waves of the sea, have spoken and
sung to me; the wild birds have taught me, the music of many
waters has been my master.'

The metre in which the epic is chanted resembles, to an English ear,
that of Mr. Longfellow's 'Hiawatha'--there is assonance rather than
rhyme; and a very musical effect is produced by the liquid character
of the language, and by the frequent alliterations.

This rough outline of the main characteristics of the 'Kalevala' we
shall now try to fill up with an abstract of its contents. The poem is
longer than the _Iliad_, and much of interest must necessarily be
omitted; but it is only through such an abstract that any idea can be
given of the sort of unity which does prevail amid the most utter
discrepancy.

In the first place, what is to be understood by the word 'Kalevala'?
The affix _la_ signifies 'abode.' Thus, 'Tuonela' is 'the abode of
Tuoni,' the god of the lower world; and as 'kaleva' means 'heroic,'
'magnificent,' 'Kalevala' is 'The Home of Heroes.' The poem is the
record of the adventures of the people of Kalevala--of their strife
with the men of Pohjola, the place of the world's end. We may fancy
two old Runoias, or singers, clasping hands on one of the first nights
of the Finnish winter, and beginning (what probably has never been
accomplished) the attempt to work through the 'Kalevala' before the
return of summer. They commence _ab ovo_, or, rather, before the egg.
First is chanted the birth of Waeinaemoeinen, the benefactor and teacher
of men. He is the son of Luonnotar, the daughter of Nature, who
answers to the first woman of the Iroquois cosmogony. Beneath the
breath and touch of wind and tide, she conceived a child; but nine
ages of man passed before his birth, while the mother floated on 'the
formless and the multiform waters.' Then Ukko, the supreme God, sent
an eagle, which laid her eggs in the maiden's bosom, and from these
eggs grew earth and sky, sun and moon, star and cloud. Then was
Waeinaemoeinen born on the waters, and reached a barren land, and gazed
on the new heavens and the new earth. There he sowed the