“O young bride, O my young sister, O my well beloved and beautiful young flower, listen to the words which I am going to speak to you, harken to the lesson which I am going to teach you.  You are going now very far away from us, O beautiful flower!—­you are going to take a long journey, O my wild-strawberry fruit! you are about to fly away from us, O most delicate down! you are about to leave us forever, O velvet tissue—­far away from this habitation you must go, far away from this beautiful house, to enter another house, to enter into a strange family.  And in that strange house your position will be very different.  There you will have to walk about with care, to conduct yourself with prudence, to conduct yourself with thoughtfulness.  There you will not be able, as in the house of your father, as in the dwelling of your mother, to run about where you please, to run singing through the valleys, to warhle out your songs upon the roadway.

“New habits you must now learn, and forget all the old.  You must abandon the love of your father and content yourself with the love of your father-in-law; you must bow very low, you must learn to be generous in the use of courteous words.  You must give up old habits and form new ones; you must resign the love of your mother and content yourself with the love of your step-mother:  lower must you bow, and you must learn to be lavish in the use of kindly words.

“New habits you must learn and forget the old:  you must leave behind you the friendship of your brother, and content yourself with the friendship of your brother-in-law; you must bow lower than you do now; you must learn to be lavish of kindly words.

“New habits you must acquire and forget the old ones; you must leave behind you the friendship of your sister, and be satisfied with the friendship of your sister-in-law; you must learn to make humble reverence, to bow low, to be generous in kindly words.

“If the old man in the corner be to you even like a wolf, if the old woman in her corner be to you even as a she-bear in the house, if the brother-in-law be to you even as a serpent upon the threshold, if the sister-in-law be to you even as a sharp nail, none the less you must show them each and all exactly the same respect and the same obedience that you have been accustomed to display to your father, to display to your mother, under the roof of your childhood home.”

Then follows a really terrible list of the duties that she must perform every day from early morning until late at night; to mention them all would take too long.  I quote only a few, enough to show that the position of a Finnish wife was by no means an easy one.