nd waters.

'These songs,' says the prelude, 'were found by 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
Wainamoinen, 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 Wainamoinen born on the waters, and reached a barren
land, and gazed o