s
All should do the work before them,
What was that which came to meet me,
What unlooked-for horror met me?
'Twas the Plague I there encountered,
Crafty Plague, the people's murderer,
Of the sevenfold war-plagues direst;
With his nose he sniffed around him,
And his nostrils snuffed the vapour,
Seeking thus to probe the matter,
And the letter to discover;
He had smelt the war already,
And the scent of blood had lured him
And he went to call his comrades.
After this my horse I halted,
Yoked him with a yoke of iron,
Fettered him with Kalev's fetters,
That he stood as rooted firmly,
From the spot to move unable,
While I pondered and considered,
Deeply in my heart reflecting
If the profit of my journey
Were not lost in greater evil
For the war brings wounds and bloodshed,
And the war has throat of serpent.
Wherefore then should I the battle,
Whence springs only pain and murder,
Forth to peaceful homesteads carry?
Let a message so accursed
In the ocean-depths be sunken,
There to sleep in endless slumber,
Lost among the spawn of fishes,
There to rest in deepest caverns,
Rather than that I should take it,
Till it spreads among the hamlets.
Thereupon I took the mandate
Which I carried in my wallet,
And amid the depths I sunk it,
Underneath the waves of ocean,
Till the waves to foam had torn it,
And to mud had quite reduced it,
While the fishes fled before it.
Thus was hushed the sound of warfare,
Thus was lost the news of battle.

[Footnote 79: _Kalevipoeg_, Canto 9, lines 769-925. Neus, _Ehstnische
Volkslieder_, pp. 305-311. The manner in which the gathering symbols of
the horrors of war, each more terrible than the last, are successively
brought upon the scene in this poem is very fine.]

THE BLUE BIRD[80] (I.).

Siuru, bird and Taara's daughter,
Siuru, bird of azure plumage,
With the shining silken feathers,
Was not reared by care of father,
Nor the nursing of her mother,
Nor affection of her sisters,
Nor protection of her brothers;
For the bird was wholly nestless,
Like a swallow needing shelter,
Where her down could grow to feathers
And her wing-plumes could develop;
Yet did Ukko wisely order,
And the aged Father's wisdom
Gave his daughter wind-like pinions,