Wainamoinen cannot fashion this mill himself, he must seek aid at home from Ilmarinen, the smith who forged ‘the iron vault of hollow heaven.’  As the hero returns to Kalevala, he meets the Lady of the Rainbow, seated on the arch of the sky, weaving the golden thread.  She promises to be his, if he will accomplish certain tasks, and in the course of those he wounds himself with an axe.  The wound can only be healed by one who knows the mystic words that hold the secret of the birth of iron.  The legend of this evil birth, how iron grew from the milk of a maiden, and was forged by the primeval smith, Ilmarinen, to be the bane of warlike men, is communicated by Wainamoinen to an old magician.  The wizard then solemnly curses the iron, as a living thing, and invokes the aid of the supreme God Ukko, thus bringing together in one prayer the extremes of early religion.  Then the hero is healed, and gives thanks to the Creator, ‘in whose hands is the end of a matter.’

Returning to Kalevala, Wainamoinen sends Ilmarinen to Pohjola to make the sampo, ‘a mill for corn one day, for salt the next, for money the next.’  The fatal treasure is concealed by Loutri, and is obviously to play the part of the fairy hoard in the ‘Nibelungen Lied.’

With the eleventh canto a new hero, Ahti, or Lemminkainen, and a new cycle of adventures, is abruptly introduced.  Lemminkainen is a profligate wanderer, with as many loves as Hercules.  The fact that he is regarded as a form of the sea-god makes it strange that his most noted achievement, the seduction of the whole female population of his island, should correspond with a like feat of Krishna’s.  ’Sixteen thousand and one hundred,’ says the Vishnu Purana, ’was the number of the maidens; and into so many forms did the son of Madhu multiply himself, so that every one of the damsels thought that he had wedded her in her single person.’  Krishna is the sun, of course, and the maidens are the dew-drops; {170} it is to be hoped that Lemminkainen’s connection with sea-water may save him from the solar hypothesis.  His first regular marriage is unhappy, and he is slain in trying to capture a bride from the people of Pohjola.  The black waters of the river of forgetfulness sweep him away, and his comb, which he left with his mother, bursts out bleeding—­a frequent incident in Russian and other fairy tales.  In many household tales, the hero, before setting out on a journey, erects a stick which will fall down when he is in distress, or death.  The natives of Australia use this form of divination in actual practice, tying round the stick some of the hair of the person whose fate is to be ascertained.  Then, like Demeter seeking Persephone, the mother questions all the beings of the world, and their answers show a wonderful poetic sympathy with the silent life of Nature.  ’The moon said, I have sorrows enough of my own, without thinking of thy child.  My lot is hard, my days are evil.  I am born