“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.  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.”