vala" was not known to exist. During the first half of the century,
Finnish scholars in the University of Helsingfors (where there is now a
great and flourishing university) began to take literary interest in the
popular songs of Finland. For years the people had been singing
extraordinary songs full of a strange beauty and weirdness quite unlike
any other popular songs of Europe; and for centuries professional singers
had been wandering about the country teaching these songs to the
accompaniment of a kind of _biwa_ called Kantela. The scholars of the
University began to collect these songs from the mouths of the peasants
and musicians--at first with great difficulty, afterwards with much
success. The difficulty was a very curious one. In Finland the ancient
pagan religion had really never died; the songs of the peasants were full
of allusions to the old faith and the old gods, and the orthodox church
had often attempted in vain to prevent the singing of these songs, because
they were not Christian. So the peasants at first thought that the
scholars who wanted to copy the songs were government spies or church
spies who wanted evidence to justify punishments. When the fears of the
people had been removed and when they came to understand that the
questioners were only scholars interested in literary beauty, all the
secret stores of songs were generously opened, and an immense collection
of oral literature was amassed in the University at Helsingfors.

The greatest of the scholars engaged in the subsequent work of arranging
and classifying was Doctor Loennrot. While examining the manuscript of
these poems he was struck by the fact that, put together in a particular
order, they naturally made one great continuous story or epic. Was it
possible that the Finnish people had had during all these centuries an
epic unknown to the world of literature? Many persons would have ridiculed
the idea. But Loennrot followed up that idea, and after some years' study
he disengaged from all that mass of song something in the shape of a
wonderful epic, the epic of the "Kalevala." Loennrot was probably, almost
certainly, the only one who had even understood the idea of an epic of
this kind. The peasants did not know. They only had the fragments of the
whole; parts of the poem existed in one province, parts in another; no
Finnish musician had ever known the whole. The whole may have been made
first by Loennrot. At all events he was the Homer of t