“How much will you give me if I send you back to your own country?” she asked. “Come, let us make a bargain.”
“How much will I give?” answered he. “I have nothing here that is my own, but I promise to send you many rich treasures. I will send you gold, I will send you silver.” [[9]]
“But you claim to be a mighty wizard,” said Dame Louhi. “Show us some of your work in magic.”
“Never was there a greater magician than I,” returned the Minstrel boastfully. “You have but to name some wonderful act and forthwith I will perform it. But first, I must have your promise to send me home. My heart is so full of the thought.”
“Very well, then,” answered the gray woman. “If you will make the magic Sampo for me, I promise to send you home at once. It must be the real, the wonderful Sampo; I will have nothing else.”
“The Sampo! What is that?”
“Do you ask me what is the Sampo? Minstrels from the earliest times have sung of its power, and all the wizards of the North have tried their spells, hoping to make something equally precious and potent. And do you, a minstrel and a wizard, ask what it is?”
The Minstrel was cunning, and he answered: “In my own country we call it by another name. If you will describe it I will tell you what that name is and also some strange things which no other minstrel knows.” [[10]]
The Mistress was off her guard. “The Sampo,” she said, “is the mill of fortune which wise men, since the beginning of things, have sought to invent. It is the magic mill which grinds out all sorts of treasures and gives wealth and power to its possessor. One has only to whisper his wishes to it and they will all come true.”[2]
“Ah!” answered the Minstrel. “In our country we call it the Stone of the Wise Men.”