Through Finland in Carts

by Mrs. Alec-Tweedie

For once we really started at the hour named, and at four o'clock, with a crack of the whip, our ponies galloped out of the yard of the most delightful majatalo we had ever slept in. On we drove through the early hours of the morning, everything looking fresh and bright, the birds singing, the rabbits running across the road. As we passed fields where the peasants were gathering in their hay, or ploughing with an old-fashioned hand-plough, such as was used in Bible days and is still common in Morocco, we wondered what Finnish peasants would think of all our modern inventions for saving labour, especially that wonderful machine where the wheat goes in at the top and comes out corn at one end, chaff in the middle, and straw, bound ready for sale, at the other. We drove on till nine o'clock, by which time we were all ready for another meal. Jogging along country roads aids digestion, and by nine we had forgotten we had ever eaten any breakfast at all. We had really arranged to spend some hours at our next halting-place, in fact not to leave until the cool of the evening, so as to rest both our horses and ourselves, and be saved the glare and the heat. But tired as our animals seemed, and weary though we were, that station proved impossible. We had to stay for a couple of hours, for it would have been cruel to ask the ponies to leave sooner, but we were indeed thankful that we had not arranged to spend the night in such an awful hole. To relate the horror of that majatalo would be too fearful a task. Suffice it to say everything was filthy, and we felt sick at heart when drinking milk and coffee at the place. Worse still, our white bread had come to an end, and we had to eat some of the native rye bread. The housewife and all the women in the house being terrible even to look upon, it seemed perfectly awful to eat bread that they had made, but yet we were so hungry. Reader, pity our plight.

Though the sun was blazing, we dare not sit inside, for the little tufts of hair tied round the legs of the tables a foot and a half from the floor found here practical use. These fur protectors are often used in Suomi to keep insects from crawling up the legs of the table, but, in this case, when we bent down to look at the bit of ba-lamb's fur so tied, we saw to our horror that it was full of animal life. Calling the attention of one of our Finnish friends to this fact, he told us that there was a saying that none of these creepy things would come across filbunke, and that a friend of his, travelling in these Northern parts, had on one occasion been so pestered that he fetched a wooden mug of filbunke, and with a wooden spoon made a ring on the floor with the soured milk, inside which he sat in peace, the crawling things remaining on the outside of his charmed circle.

"And," he added, laughing, "we will go and fetch filbunke, if you like, and then you can all sit inside rings of your own."

"No," we replied, "instead of doing that, let us get away from here as quickly as possible."

Out we sallied, therefore, to ask the coachman how soon he could be ready to drive on to Kajana.

How typical. There was one of the lads, aged thirteen, lying on his back, flat out on the wooden steps of the house, smoking hard at a native pipe; his felt hat was pulled down over his eyes, his top boots were standing beside him, and over them hung the rags he used for stockings.

"Go on," he said. "Oh! we cannot go on till this afternoon, it's too hot."

"But," remonstrated Grandpapa, "it is not so very far to Kajana, and the ladies are anxious to get to the end of their journey."

"Quite impossible," he replied, "the horses must rest."

Wherein he certainly was right; the poor brutes had come well, and, after all, whatever the horrors and inconveniences may be to oneself, one cannot drive dumb animals to death, so, therefore, at that majatalo we stayed, weary and hungry prisoners for hours. Only think of it!