Finnish Legends for English Children

by R. Eivind

'Thus was beer first brewed from hops and barley,' continued the old man, 'and the beer of Kalevala is famed to strengthen the feeble, to cheer the sad, to make the old young, and the timid brave. It makes the heart joyful and puts wise sayings on the tongue, but the fool it makes still more foolish.'

Thus the old man ended his account of[p. 116] the origin of beer, and Louhi, who had listened to him carefully, took all the tubs she had and put hops and barley in them, and water on top, and then lit huge fires to heat stones, that she might drop them in the mixture and make it boil. She made such a great quantity of beer that the springs were emptied and the forests grew small, and such a vast column of smoke went up as filled half of Pohjola and was seen even in distant Karjala and Lemminkainen's home. And all the people there thought it arose from some mighty battle between great heroes. But Lemminkainen pondered over it, and at last he found out that it was the fires for Louhi's beer-making for the wedding feast, and he grew bitterly angry, for Louhi had refused him her daughter's hand, and now had given her to Ilmarinen.

But now the beer was ready and was stored away in casks hooped with copper, and thousands of delicate dishes were made ready for the feast. But when all was nearly ready the beer began to grow impatient in its casks, and cried out for the guests to come that songs might be sung in its honour. So Louhi sent first for a pike and a salmon to sing its praises, but they could not do it. Next she sent for a boy, but the boy was too ignorant to sing the praises of the beer, and all this time the[p. 117] beer was calling out more and more loudly from its prison. Then Louhi determined to invite the guests at once, lest the beer should break forth from the casks.

So she called one of her servants and said to her: 'Go, my trusted servant, and call together all the Pohjola people to the banquet. Go out into the highways too, and bring in all the poor and blind and cripples, the old and the young, that they may be merry at my daughter's wedding. And ask all the people of Karjala and the ancient Wainamoinen, but be sure thou dost not invite wild Lemminkainen.' At this the servant asked why she was not to ask Lemminkainen, and Louhi answered: 'Lemminkainen must not come, for he loves war and strife, and would bring disturbance and sorrow to our feast, and scoff at our maidens.'

And the servant, having learned from Louhi how she should recognise Lemminkainen, set off and invited rich and poor, old and young, the deaf, the blind, and the cripples in all Pohjola and Karjala, but did not ask Lemminkainen.

ILMARINEN'S WEDDING FEAST

AT length the guests began to arrive, and Ilmarinen came escorted by hundreds of his friends, driving a coal-black steed, and with the same birds singing on his sledge as when he came to woo the Rainbow-maiden, Louhi's fairest daughter. When he alighted from his sledge, Louhi sent her best servants to take the steed and give him the very best of food in a manger of pure gold. But as Ilmarinen advanced to enter the house, they found that he was too tall to pass through the doorway without stooping, which would have been very unlucky: so Louhi had to have the top beam taken away before he could enter.

Inside the dwelling was so changed that no one would have recognised it. Louhi had cast a magic spell over it, and all the beams and door and window-sills were made [p. 119] from bones that gleamed like ivory; the windows were adorned with trout-scales, and the fires were set in flowers; and the seats and tables and floors were of gold and silver and copper, with marble hearth-stones and silken carpets on the floors. Louhi bade Ilmarinen welcome when he came into the guest-hall, and calling up her servant-maidens, she gazed at her daughter's suitor. The maidens bore wax tapers, and by their light the bridegroom looked handsomer than ever, and his eyes sparkled like the waves of the sea.