of all, this was the cruel destiny of Kullervo, the
irrevocable end of the son of the heroes--the death of the 'Man of
Misfortune.'"

You can see how very much unlike other Western poetry this poetry is. The
imagination indeed is of another race and another time than those to whose
literary productions we have become accustomed. But there is beauty here;
and the strangeness of it indicates a possible literary value by which any
literature may be more or less enriched. Many are the particular episodes
which rival the beauty and strangeness of the episode of Kullervo; and I
wish that we could have time to quote them. But I can only refer to them.
There is, for example, the legend of the invention of music, when the hero
Wainamoinen (supposed to represent the Spirit of the Wind, and the sound
of the name indicates the wailing of the wind) invents the first musical
instrument. In no other literature is there anything quite like this
except in the Greek story of Orpheus. Even as the trees bent down their
heads to listen to the song of Orpheus, and as the wild beasts became
tamed at the sound, and as the very stones of the road followed to the
steps of the musician, so is it in the "Kalevala." But the Finnish Orpheus
is the greater magician. To hear him, the sun and moon come nearer to the
earth, the waves of the sea stop short, bending their heads; the cataracts
of the rivers hang motionless and silent; the fish raise their heads above
the water. And when he plays a sad melody, all nature weeps with him, even
the trees and the stones and the little plants by the wayside. And his own
tears in falling become splendid pearls for the crowns of kings.

Then very wonderful too is the story of the eternal smith, Ilmarinen, who
forged the foundations of the world, forged the mountains, forged the blue
sky, so well forging them that nowhere can be seen the marks of the
pincer, the marks of the hammer, the heads of the nails. Working in his
smithy we see him all grime and black; upon his head there is one yard
deep of iron firing, upon his shoulders there is one fathom deep of
soot--the soot of the forge; for he seldom has time to bathe himself. But
when the notion takes him to get married, for the first time he bathes
himself, and dresses himself handsomely, then he becomes the most
beautiful of men. In order to win his wife he is obliged to perform
miracles of work; yet after he wins her she is killed by wild beasts. Then
he sets to