It was after reading this story that Longfellow imagined his story of the
Strong Man Kwasind. Kullervo is born so strong that as an infant he breaks
his cradle to pieces, and as a boy he can not do any work, for all the
tools and instruments break in his grasp. Therefore he gives a great deal
of trouble at home and has to go out into the world to seek his fortune.
In the world, of course, he has just the same trouble; for nobody will
employ him very long. However, the story of Kullervo's feats of strength,
though interesting, need not now concern us. The great charm of this
composition is in the description of a mother's love which it contains.
Kullervo brought misfortune everywhere simply by his strength and by his
great passions--at last committing a terrible crime, causing the death of
his own sister, whom he does not recognize. He goes back home in
desperation and remorse; and there everybody regards him with horror,
except only his mother. She alone tries to console him; she alone tells
him that repentance may bring him rest. He then proposes to go away and
amend his wrong-doing in solitude. But first he bids them all goodbye, and
the episode is characteristic.

Kullervo, the son of Kalervo, gets him ready to depart; he goes to his old
father and says: "Farewell now, O my dear father. Wilt thou regret me
bitterly, when thou shalt learn that I am dead?--that I have disappeared
from among the multitude of the living?--that I no longer am one of the
members of thy family?" The father answered: "No, certainly I will not
regret thee when I shall hear that thou art dead. Another son perchance
will be born to me--a son who will grow up better and wiser than thou."

Kullervo, son of Kalervo, answered: "And I also will not be sorry if I
hear that thou art dead. Without any trouble I can find me such a father
as thou--a stone-hearted father, a clay-mouthed father, a berry-eyed
father, a straw-bearded father, a father whose feet are made of the roots
of the willow tree, a father whose flesh is decaying wood." Why does
Kullervo use these extraordinary terms? It is a reference to magic--out of
stone and clay and straw, a phantom man can be made, and Kullervo means to
say that his father is no more to him than a phantom father, an unreal
father, a father who has no fatherly feeling. His brothers and sisters all
questioned in turn if they will be sorry to hear that he is dead, make the
same cruel answer; and he replies to them wit