ay perhaps be found both useful and interesting, as opening up an
almost new subject to English readers.

Besides Reinthal's translation, there are two condensed abstracts of the
poem in German, one by C. C. Israel, in prose, published in 1873, and
the other by Julius Grosse, in hexameters, published in 1875.

But while the _Kalevala_ has been translated into six or seven
languages, and into several of them two or three times, extremely little
has been published on the _Kalevipoeg_ outside of Esthonia and Finland.

The metre is the eight-syllable trochaic, which is the commonest metre
used by the Esthonians and Finns. In the _Kalevipoeg_ the verse usually
flows continuously, while in the _Kalevala_ it is arranged in distichs,
almost every second line being a repetition of the first in other words;
nor is the _Kalevipoeg_ quite so full of alliteration as the _Kalevala_.

Longfellow adapted this metre in his _Hiawatha_ from Schiefner's German
translation of the _Kalevala_, and as it was then a novelty in English,
it was set down at the time as Longfellow's own invention, and was much
ridiculed. A similar metre, however, was used before the appearance of
_Hiawatha_ in some parts of Kenealy's _Goethe_, which was published in
1850, and subsequently condensed and completed under the title of "A New
Pantomime." I quote a passage from this wonderful but eccentric poem
(_Goethe_, p. 301) to show the manner in which Kenealy has used it in
the lighter parts of his work; but in some of the darker passages it
shows itself as a versatile metre of great power in English:--

"We have come, enchanting ladyes,
To sojourn awhile, and revel
In these bowers, far outshining
The six heavens of Mohammed,
Or the sunbright spheres of Vishnu,
Or the Gardens of Adonis,
Or the viewless bowers of Irim,
Or the fine Mosaic mythus,
Or the fair Elysian flower-land,
Or the clashing halls of Odin,
Or the cyclop-orbs of Brahma,
Or the marble realms of Siva,
Or the grandly proud Walhalla."

I do not find this metre used in either of the two cognate poems,
_Faust_ and _Festus_.

To return to the _Kalevipoeg_, the poem consists of twenty cantos and
about 19,000 verses. Some of the legends are found also in the
_Kalevala_, and the giant-hero whose life and adventures form its
subject is evidently the same as the Kullervo of the _Kalevala_, as will
be seen in our notes on various passages in the po