treated it harshly, and in the
evening killed it and burned the cradle in the fire. So Untamo was
afraid to give him any further employment about the house, but bade him
go out and cut down the forest on the mountain side. Then Kullervo went
to the smith and bade him make a huge axe of copper, and when it was
ready he spent one day in sharpening it and another in making the
handle, and then hastened off to the forest. There he chose the biggest
tree on all the mountain side and felled it at one blow. Six more huge
trees were cut down just as easily, but then Kullervo grew disgusted
with the work, and pronounced a curse over the whole mountain, and
stopped working.

So when Untamo came in the evening to see how he was getting on, and
found only seven trees felled, he saw that he must set Kullervo to some
other task. The next day, therefore, he took him into a field and bade
him build a fence round it. As soon as Untamo was gone, Kullervo set to
work, using whole trees and raising the fence higher than the clouds;
and when he had finished there was no gate to enter by, and the fence
was so high that no one could climb over it. When Untamo came and saw
what he had done, and that no one could now get into the field, he told
Kullervo that he was unfitted for such work, and must go and thresh the
rye and barley.

Then Kullervo made a flail and set to work. And he threshed so hard that
all the grain was beaten to powder and the straw was broken up into
useless pieces. But when Untamo saw this, he grew very angry, and cried
out that Kullervo was a wretched workman who spoiled whatever he
touched, and the next day he took him off and sold him to the blacksmith
Ilmarinen in distant Karjala. And the price Ilmarinen paid was three old
worn-out kettles, seven worthless sickles, and three old scythes and
hoes and axes, surely quite enough for such a fellow as Kullervo.

[Illustration]

KULLERVO AND ILMARINEN'S WIFE

As soon as the purchase was completed, Kullervo asked Ilmarinen and his
wife to give him some work for the next day. So they decided to make him
a shepherd. But the wife, once the Rainbow-maiden, did not like the new
servant, so she baked him a cheat-loaf--a very thick loaf, half of
barley, half of oatmeal, and with a great flint-stone in the centre, and
around the flint-stone was melted butter. Then she gave it to Kullervo
and told him not to eat it until he was out on the pasture-ground.

The next mornin