ere collected, however, and Loutri,
furious at the success of the heroes of Kalevala, sent against them a
bear, destructive as the boar of Calydon. But Waeinaemoeinen despatched
the monster, and the body was brought home with the bear-dance, and
the hymn of the bear. 'Oh, Otso,' cry the singers, 'be not angry that
we come near thee. The bear, the honey-footed bear, was born in lands
between sun and moon, and he died not by men's hands, but of his own
will.' The Finnish savants are probably right, who find here a trace
of the beast-worship which in many lands has placed the bear among the
number of the stars. Propitiation of the bear is practised by Red
Indians, by the Ainos of Japan, and (in the case of the 'native bear')
by Australians. The Red Indians have a myth to prove that the bear is
immortal, does not die, but, after his apparent death, rises again in
another body. There is no trace, however, that the Finns claimed, like
the Danes, descent from the bear. The Lapps, a people of confused
belief, worshipped him along with Thor, Christ, the sun, and the
serpent.[180]

But another cult, an alien creed, is approaching Kalevala. There is no
part of the poem more strange than the closing canto, which tells in
the wildest language, and through the most exaggerated forms of savage
imagination, the tale of the introduction of Christianity. Marjatta
was a maiden, 'as pure as the dew is, as holy as stars are that live
without stain.' As she fed her flocks, and listened to the singing of
the golden cuckoo, a berry fell into her bosom. After many days she
bore a child, and the people despised and rejected her, and she was
thrust forth, and her babe was born in a stable, and cradled in the
manger. Who should baptise the babe? The god of the wilderness
refused, and Waeinaemoeinen would have had the young child slain. Then
the infant rebuked the ancient Demigod, who fled in anger to the sea,
and with his magic song he built a magic barque, and he sat therein,
and took the helm in his hand. The tide bore him out to sea, and he
lifted his voice and sang: 'Times go by, and suns shall rise and set,
and then shall men have need of me, and shall look for the promise of
my coming that I may make a new sampo, and a new harp, and bring back
sunlight and moonshine, and the joy that is banished from the world.'
Then he crossed the waters, and gained the limits of the sea, and the
lower spaces of the sky.

Here the strange poem ends at its