sea a tiny dwarf, who,
when he stepped on land, grew suddenly into a giant, with hands of iron,
a copper-coloured face, a hat of flint upon his head, and sandstone
shoes upon his feet. As soon as this sea-spirit saw the ox, he rushed at
it and killed it with one blow of his golden sword. Thus was the meat
provided for the feast.

The banquet-hall was so large that when a dog barked at one door no one
could hear him at the opposite side, and when a cock crowed on the roof
no one on the ground could hear him. Louhi went in thither, to see that
all was being put in readiness, but while she was there she said aloud
as if to herself: 'Whence will I get the liquor for my guests, for I
know nothing of the secret of beer-brewing?'

An old man was sitting beside the fire, and he answered her: 'Beer comes
from barley, hops, and water. The seed of the hops were scattered
loosely over the earth, and from them arose the graceful hop-vine,
climbing over everything. The barley was planted in the land of
Kalevala, and it grew and flourished there.

'Then the hops, clinging to the trees, began to hum, and the barley and
the water in the wells to sing, saying: "Let us join our forces
together, that we may live united, for that is far better than to be
separated as we now are." So the ancient maiden Osmotar took six golden
grains of barley, seven hops, and seven cups of water, and set them in a
caldron on the fire. There she let them steep and boil during the warm
summer days, and at length poured off the liquor into tubs made of
birch-wood. Now she pondered long how she should make the liquor ferment
and cause it to foam and sparkle.

'Then Osmotar called one of the Kalevala maidens and bade her step into
the birchen tub. The maiden did so, and on looking around she saw a
splinter of wood lying on the bottom. She picked it up, thinking it was
worthless, but nevertheless she took it to Osmotar. Osmotar rubbed her
hands upon her knees and turned the bit of wood into a white squirrel.
As soon as she had made the squirrel, she sent it off to Tapio's
kingdom, to the great forest, and commanded it to bring her cones from
the magic fir-trees and young shoots from the magic pines. And the
squirrel hurried off and travelled through the forest until it came to
Tapio's home. There it found three magic pine-trees growing, and three
fir-trees beside them, and having taken the young shoots and the cones
and stowed them in its pouch, it came back a