“So soon as the cock crows in the morning you must be quick to rise; you must keep your ears awake to hear the cry of the cock.  And if there be no cock, or the cock does not crow, then let the moon be as a cock for you, let the constellation of the great Bear tell you when it is time to rise.  Then you must quickly make the fire, skilfully removing the ashes, without sprinkling them upon the floor.  Then quickly go to the stable, clean the stable, take food to the cattle, feed all the animals on the farm.  For already the cow of your mother-in-law will be lowing for food; the horse of your father-in-law will be whinnying; the milch cow of your sister-in-law will be straining at her tether; the calf of your brother-in-law will be bleating; for all will be waiting for her whose duty it is to give them hay, whose duty it is to give them food.”

Like instructions are given about feeding the younger animals and the fowls and the little pigs.  But she must not forget the children of the house at the same time: 

“When you have fed the animals and cleaned the stables come back quickly, quickly as a snow-storm.  For in the chamber the little child has awakened and has begun to cry in his cradle.  He cannot speak, poor little one; he cannot tell you, if he be hungry or if he be cold, or if anything extraordinary has happened to him, before someone that he knows has come to care for him, before he hears the voice of his own mother.”

After enumerating and inculcating in the same manner all the duties of the day, the conduct to be observed toward every member of the family—­father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister, and brother-in-law, and the children of them—­we find a very minute code of conduct set forth in regard to neighbours and acquaintances.  The young wife is especially warned against gossip, against listening to any stories about what happens in other people’s houses, and against telling anybody what goes on within her own.  One piece of advice is memorable.  If the young wife is asked whether she is well fed, she should reply always that she has the best of everything which a house can afford, this even if she should have been left without any proper nourishment for several days.  Evidently the condition of submission to which Finnish women were reduced by custom was something much less merciful than has ever been known in Eastern countries.  Only a very generous nature could bear such discipline; and we have many glimpses in the poem of charming natures of this kind.

You have seen that merely as a collection of wonderful stories the Kalevala is of extraordinary interest, that it is also of interest as describing the social ethics of a little known people—­finally that it is of interest, of very remarkable interest, merely as natural poetry—­poetry treating of wild nature, especially rivers and forests and mountains, of the life of the fisher and hunter and wood-cutter.  Indeed, so far as this kind of poetry is concerned,