This pretty story needs no explanation; the moral is simply “Never marry for money.”

Then there is the story of Lemminkainen (this personality suggested the Pau-puk-keewis of Longfellow)—­the joyous, reckless, handsome, mischievous pleasure-lover,—­always falling into trouble, because he will not follow his mother’s advice, but always loved by her in spite of his follies.  The mother of Lemminkainen is a more wonderful person than the mother of Kullervo.  Her son has been murdered, thrown into a river—­the deepest of all rivers, the river of the dead, the river of hell.  And his mother goes out to find him.  She asks the trees in the forest to tell her where her son is, and she obliges them to answer.  But they do not know.  She asks the grass, the plants, the animals, the birds; she obliges even the road upon which he walked to talk to her, she talks to the stars and the moon and the sun.  Only the sun knows, because he sees everything and he answers, “Your son is dead, torn to pieces; he has been thrown into the river of Tuoni, the river of hell, the river of the dead.”  But the mother does not despair.  Umarinen, the eternal smith, must make for her a rake of brass with teeth long enough to reach into the world of the dead, into the bottom of the abyss; and out of the abyss she brings up the parts of the torn body of her son; she puts them together; she sings over them a magic song; she brings her son to life again, and takes him home.  But for a long time he is not able to remember, because he has been dead.  After a long time he gets back his memory—­only to get into new mischief out of which his mother must help him afresh.

The names of the three heroes quoted to you represent also the names of three great stories, out of the many stories contained in the epics.  But in this epic, as in the Indian epics (I mean the Sanskrit epic), there is much more than stories.  There are also chapters of moral instruction of a very curious kind—­chapters about conduct, the conduct of the parents, the conduct of the children, the conduct of the husband, the conduct of the bride.  The instructions to the bride are contained in the twenty-third Rune; there are altogether fifty Runes in the book.  This appears to me likely to interest you, for it is written in relation to a family system not at all like the family system of the rest of Europe.  I think you will find in it not a little that may remind you of Chinese teaching on the same subject—­the conduct of the daughter-in-law.  But there are of course many differences, and the most pleasing difference is the tone of great tenderness in which the instructions are given.  Let us quote some of them: