to wander companionless in the night, to shine in the season of frost, to watch through the endless winter, to fade when summer comes as king.’  The sun is kinder, and reveals the place of the hero’s body.  The mother collects the scattered limbs, the birds bring healing balm from the heights of heaven, and after a hymn to the goddess of man’s blood, Lemminkainen is made sound and well, as the scattered ’fragments of no more a man’ were united by the spell of Medea, like those of Osiris by Isis, or of the fair countess by the demon blacksmith in the Russian Marchen, or of the Carib hero mentioned by Mr. McLennan, {171} or of the ox in the South African household tale.

With the sixteenth canto we return to Wainamoinen, who, like all epic heroes, visits the place of the dead, Tuonela.  The maidens who play the part of Charon are with difficulty induced to ferry over a man bearing no mark of death by fire or sword or water.  Once among the dead, Wainamoinen refuses—­being wiser than Psyche or Persephone—­to taste of drink.  This ‘taboo’ is found in Japanese, Melanesian, and Red Indian accounts of the homes of the dead.  Thus the hero is able to return and behold the stars.  Arrived in the upper world, he warns men to ’beware of perverting innocence, of leading astray the pure of heart; they that do these things shall be punished eternally in the depths of Tuoni.  There is a place prepared for evil-doers, a bed of stones burning, rocks of fire, worms and serpents.’  This speech throws but little light on the question of how far a doctrine of rewards and punishments enters into primitive ideas of a future state.  The ‘Kalevala,’ as we possess it, is necessarily, though faintly, tinged with Christianity; and the peculiar vices which are here threatened with punishment are not those which would have been most likely to occur to the early heathen singers of this runot.

Wainamoinen and Ilmarinen now go together to Pohjola, but the fickle maiden of the land prefers the young forger of the sampo to his elder and imperturbable companion.  Like a northern Medea, or like the Master-maid in Dr. Dasent’s ‘Tales from the Norse,’ or like the hero of the Algonquin tale and the Samoan ballad, she aids her alien lover to accomplish the tasks assigned to him.  He ploughs with a plough of gold the adder-close, or field of serpents; he bridles the wolf and the bear of the lower world, and catches the pike that swim in the waters of forgetfulness.  After this, the parents cannot refuse their consent, the wedding-feast is prepared, and all the world, except the seduisant Lemminkainen, is bidden to the banquet.  The narrative now brings in the ballads that are sung at a Finnish marriage.