with whom he began to jest; but soon their conversation became
more serious, and the Kalevide ordered him to wait for the expected
messengers, while he himself should proceed to Lake Peipus, where he had
important business.

As the Kalevide proceeded on his journey, he passed a well in a lonely
place, where the Air-Maiden,[58] the fair daughter of the Thunder-God,
sat bewailing the loss of her ring, which had dropped into it.[59] When
the hero saw the blue-eyed, golden-haired maiden in tears, he asked the
cause of her trouble, and when he heard it he plunged into the well to
look for the ring. A party of young sorcerers quickly gathered round,
thinking that the mouse was in the trap, and they flung a great
millstone after him. But he searched in the mud and water for some time,
and presently sprang out of the water with the millstone on his finger,
which he offered to the maiden, saying that he had not been able to find
anything else in the mud, and that she would not need a larger
finger-ring.

[Footnote 52: The Esthonian demons are often represented as contemptible
creatures, very easily outwitted. Later in the present canto the
personage in question is distinctly called a water-demon.]

[Footnote 53: A common proverb in Esthonian tales. We also find it in
Italian, in almost the same words.]

[Footnote 54: The money is sometimes called roubles, and sometimes
thalers.]

[Footnote 55: Visits to Hades or Hell (Porgu) are common in the
_Kalevipoeg_ and in the popular tales, some of which we shall afterwards
notice.]

[Footnote 56: The term "Lett," which the Kalevide himself afterwards
applies to the demon, seems to be used in contempt; otherwise the
passage in the text might have been taken as equivalent to our
old-fashioned expression, "It's all Greek to me."]

[Footnote 57: Usually the devil's mother (or grandmother) is represented
as a white mare. Compare Canto 14 of the _Kalevipoeg_, and also the
story of the Grateful Prince.]

[Footnote 58: This Air-Maiden, who seems to be only a mischievous
sprite, must not be confounded with Ilmatar, the creatrix of the world
in the first Runo of the _Kalevala_.]

[Footnote 59: Finn, the Irish hero, was once entrapped by a sorceress on
a similar pretext into plunging into an enchanted lake, which changed
him into an old man. (See Joyce's _Old Celtic Romances_, "The Chase of
Slieve Cullin.") The story is also related in one of Kenealy's
ballads.]

CANTO XI

TH