to nurse an infant, but he dug out the eyes of the child, killed it, and burned its cradle.  Ordered to fence the fields, he built a fence from earth to heaven, using entire pine-trees for fencing materials, and interweaving their branches with venomous serpents.  Ordered to tend the herds in the woodlands, he changed the cattle to wolves and bears, and drove them home to destroy his mistress because she had baked a stone in the centre of his oat-loaf, causing him to break his knife, the only keepsake of his people.

Regarding the heroes of the Kalevala, much discussion has arisen as to their place in Finnish mythology.  The Finns proper regard the chief heroes of the Suomi epic, Wainamoinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkainen, as descendants of the Celestial Virgin, Ilmatar, impregnated by the winds when Ilma (air), Light, and Water were the only material existences.  In harmony with this conception we find in the Kalevala, a description of the birth of Wainamoinen, or Vaino, as he is sometimes called in the original, a word probably akin to the Magyar Ven, old.  The Esthonians regard these heroes as sons of the Great Spirit, begotten before the earth was created, and dwelling with their Supreme Ruler in Jumala.

The poetry of a people with such an elaborate mythology and with such a keen and appreciative sense of nature and of her various phenomena, was certain, sooner or later, to attract the attention of scholars.  And, in fact, as early as the seventeenth century, we meet men of literary tastes who tried to collect and interpret the various national songs of the Finns.  Among these were Palmskold and Peter Bang.  They collected portions of the national poetry, consisting chiefly of wizard-incantations, and all kinds of pagan folk-lore.  Gabriel Maxenius, however, was the first to publish a work on Finnish national poetry, which brought to light the beauties of the Kalevala.  It appeared in 1733, and bore the title:  De Effectibus Naturalibus.  The book contains a quaint collection of Finnish poems in lyric forms, chiefly incantations; but the author was entirely at a loss how to account for them, or how to appreciate them.  He failed to see their intimate connection with the religious worship of the Finns in paganism.

The next to study the Finnish poetry and language was Daniel Juslenius, a celebrated bishop, and a highly-gifted scholar.  In a dissertation, published as early as 1700, entitled, Aboa vetus et nova, he discussed the origin and nature of the Finnish language; and in another work of his, printed in 1745, he treated of Finnish incantations, displaying withal a thorough understanding of the Finnish folk-lore, and of the importance of the Finnish language and national poetry.  With great care he began to collect the songs of Suomi, but this precious collection was unfortunately burned.