how the poem
opens, when the poet begins to talk about what he is going to sing:

"Anciently my father sang me these words in hewing the handle of his ax;
anciently my mother taught me these words as she turned her spindle. In
that time I was only a child, a little child at the breast,--a useless
little being creeping upon the floor at the feet of its nurse, its cheek
bedaubed with milk. And there are other words which I drew from the spring
of knowledge, which I found by the wayside, which I snatched from the
heart of the thickets, which I detached from the branches of the trees,
which I gathered at the edges of the pastures--when, In my infancy, I used
to go to guard the flocks, in the midst of the honey-streaming meadows,
upon the gold-shining hills, behind the black Murikki, behind the spotted
Kimmo, my favourite cows.

"Also the cold sang the songs, the rain sang me verses, the winds of
heaven, the waves of the sea made me hear their poems, the birds
instructed me with their melodies, the long-haired trees invited me to
their concerts. And all the songs I gathered together, I rolled them up in
a skin, I carried them away in my beautiful little holiday sledge, I
deposited them in the bottom of a chest of brass, upon the highest shelf
of my treasure house."

Now when a poem opens that way we may be sure that there are great things
in it; and some of these great things we shall read about presently. The
"Kalevala" is full of wonderful stories, But in the above quotation, I
want you to see how multiple it is, and yet it is beautiful. Now there is
a very interesting thing yet to tell you about this parallelism. Such
poems as those of the "Kalevala" have always to be sung not by one singer
but by two. The two singers straddle a bench facing each other and hold
each other's hands. Then they sing alternately, each chanting one line,
rocking back and forward, pulling each other to and fro as they sing--so
that it is like the motion of rowing. One chants a line and pulls
backward, then the other chants the next line and pulls in the opposite
direction. Not to be able to answer at once would be considered a great
disgrace; and every singer has to be able to improvise as well as to sing.
And that is the signification of the following verse:

"Put thy hand to my hand--place thy fingers between my fingers--that we
may sing of the things which are."

The most beautiful story in this wonderful book is the story of Kullervo.