“O pain, mount upon the winged steed of stone, and fly to the mountains covered with iron. For he is too robust to be devoured by disease, to be consumed by pains.
“Go, O diseases, to where the virgin of pains has her hearth, where the daughter of Wäinämöinen cooks pains,—go to the hill of pains.
“These are the white dogs, who formerly hurled torments, who groaned in their sufferings.”
Another incantation against the plague was discovered by Ganander, and is given by Lenormant:—
“O scourge, depart; plague, take thy flight, far from the bare flesh.
“I will give thee a horse, with which to escape, whose shoes shall not slide on ice;” and so on.
The Jewish ceremony expelled the scapegoat to the desert; the Accadian banished the disease-demons to the desert of sand; the Finnish magician sent his disease-demons to Lapland.
The goddess Suonetar was the healer and renewer of flesh:—
“She is beautiful, the goddess of veins, Suonetar, the beneficent goddess! She knits the veins wonderfully with her beautiful spindle, her metal distaff, her iron wheel.
“Come to me, I invoke thy help; come to me, I call thee. Bring in thy bosom a bundle of flesh, a ball of veins to tie the extremity of the veins.”[34]