nen's mother anointed him with this magic balm, speaking a
magic spell as she rubbed him with it, and immediately he awoke, and his
first words were: 'Truly I have been sleeping long, but yet my sleep was
a sweet one, for I knew neither joy nor sorrow.'

When his mother asked how he had gone thither and who it was that had
harmed him, he told her all--how Louhi had sent him for the swan, and
how old Nasshut, the blind Northland shepherd, had sent the serpent
against him and killed him, for he did not know the charm to cure the
sting of serpents. Then his mother upbraided him for his ignorance, and
told him how the serpent was born from the marrow of the duck and the
brain of swallows, mixed with Suojatar's saliva, and she told him too
what the spell was to use against them. Thus his mother brought him back
to life and health, and he was wiser and handsomer than ever, but still
he was downhearted.

His mother asked him the reason of this, and he replied that he was
still thinking of Louhi's daughter and longing for her as his bride, but
that first he must shoot the wild swan. But his mother answered: 'Do
not think of the wild swan, nor yet of Louhi's daughters. Return with me
to Kalevala to thy home, and thank and praise thy Maker, Ukko, that he
hath saved thee, for I alone could never have saved thee from dismal
Manala.'

So Lemminkainen hastened home with his mother,--back again to his
pleasant home in Kalevala.

* * * * *

Every one expressed satisfaction that Lemminkainen had been restored to
life--'for, you see,' said Mimi, 'though he was really a bad man, he did
so many wonderful things that you just can't help wishing for him not to
be killed.'

But now it had grown quite late, nearly nine o'clock, and so they all
ate their supper and then Erik and Father Mikko sat smoking and talking
while Mother Stina and the little ones went into the other room to
bed,--for Erik had actually two rooms in his house,--and it isn't every
Finnish country cabin that has that, you know. They talked of their
country, for that was the dearest subject to both of them,--they were
intelligent men for their class,--and when Father Mikko told how the
Russian Tsar was taking their liberties away from them, and was
beginning to break all his oaths and promises and would no doubt end up
by making them as badly off as the people on the south side of the
Finnish Gulf--when Father Mikko related all this, Erik