high spirits, and began to sing a song, in which
he pictured himself as going on a voyage, and meeting three shiploads of
enchantresses, old and young, whose blandishments he resisted. But as he
approached the shores of Esthonia, the fresh sea-breeze dispelled the
mists that still clouded his memory, and the blood-stained sword and the
splashes of blood on his clothes bore witness of the murder he had
committed.

About midnight he approached the small island where the maiden had
fallen into the sea, and the whole sad scene arose again before his
imagination. And now he could hear the maiden singing a sad song beneath
the waves, lamenting her sad fate, and yet more the evil lot of her
brother, who had slain the son of his father's old friend.[46] The blood
from the sword reddened the cheeks of the maiden, and a long and
terrible penance lay before her brother.

For a while the hero sat lost in thought, bitterly lamenting the past;
but presently he roused himself, and proceeded on his voyage, singing a
lamentation for his mother beginning:

Where upgrows the weeping alder,
And the aspen of confusion,
And the pine-tree of distraction,
And the deep remorse of birch-tree?
Where I sorrow, springs the alder;
Where I tremble, sprouts the aspen;
Where I weep, the pine is verdant;
Where I suffer, sighs the birch-tree.

Next morning the Kalevide reached the shore, made fast the boat, and
went homewards; but as he passed Mount Iru, where the form of his mother
stood, his steps were arrested by the sweet singing of her unseen spirit
in the wind. She sang how the young eagle had soared from the nest in
youthful innocence, and had returned stained with crime. He knew now
that his mother was dead, and realised more fully the two crimes which
weighed upon his soul--the one committed thoughtlessly and without evil
intent, and the other without his knowledge, when he was not master of
himself. He hastened on, and when he reached home his brothers, who had
long mourned him as dead, received him with open arms.

In the evening the three brothers sat together and related their
adventures. The first sang how he had wandered in search of his mother
over vast regions, and through a great part of Courland, Poland,
Russia, Germany, and Norway, and had met on his wanderings maidens of
tin, copper, silver, and gold. But only the golden daughter of the Gold
King could speak, and she directed him along a path