He told them how he had broken the mountains with his hammer, how he had conquered wild Iron and imprisoned him in his smithy, and how, from a single lump of metal, he had hammered out the sky and set it up as a lid to cover the land and the sea. “All these things,” said he, “were done by me—me, the prince of smiths, me, the skilfulest of men.”
Then all his listeners, wise men, herdsmen, fishermen, wild men, looked at him with awe and admiration. They drew up closer to the fire, they threw fresh logs into the flames, they turned their faces towards him and asked a thousand curious questions.
“Who painted the sky and gave it its blue and friendly color?” asked the wise men.
“I painted it—I, the first of smiths,” answered Ilmarinen. “And when I swept my brush across from east to west, some drops of blue fell into the sea and colored it also.”
“What are the stars that glitter so brightly above us when the nights are clear?” asked the herdsmen.
“They are the sparks from my forge,” was the answer. “I caught them and fixed them securely in their places; I welded them into the [[75]]vast sky-lid so they should never fall out nor fly away.”
“Where is the home of the Great Pike, the mightiest of all the creatures that swim in the water?” asked the fishermen.
“The Great Pike lurks in the hidden places of the deep sea,” said Ilmarinen; “for he knows that I have forged a hook of iron that will some day be the cause of his undoing.”
“Ah! ah! ah!” muttered the wild men. Their mouths were open and their eyes were staring at the rafters where hung long rows of smoked salmon, slabs of bacon, and dried herbs of magic power. “Ah! ah! ah! What shall we do when we are hungry and there are no nuts to be gathered, no roots to be digged, no small beasts to be captured, no food of any kind? Ah! ah! ah!”
“Forget to-day, think only of to-morrow—for then there will be plenty,” answered Ilmarinen. “Go back to your old haunts in the forest, and to-morrow I will send you so many nuts and roots and small beasts that you shall grow fat with the eating of them.”