[71] Compare vol. i. p. [223].
[72] Põrgu neitsi. Who she was is not clearly explained.
[73] Doubtless Olev of the Kalevipoeg; possibly St. Olaf may also be intended.
[74] This incident reminds us of the story of St. Olaf and the giant Wind and Weather (see Keightley's Fairy Mythology, Bohn's edition, 1860, p. 117), though here it is the giant church-builder who falls. According to one of the legends of Cologne Cathedral, the architect was hurled from the top of the unfinished building by the Devil. The calling of a person by name was often regarded by the Scandinavians as a death-omen.
[75] There is a similar tale told of the arrival of the Cholera in one of the Greek islands.
[76] Speaking of the Vad Velen, the Yellow Plague, in Britain, we are told in the Mabinogion that all who saw him were doomed to die.
[77] This story somewhat resembles that of the old hag seen by Lord Seaforth when lying ill of scarlet fever with several of his schoolfellows. The narrative has been reprinted several times, and is included in Stead's More Ghost Stories, p. 37.
[78] Such origins are common in Esthonian and Finnish folk-literature, and I regard them as relics of fetishism.
[79] Kalevipoeg, Canto 9, lines 769-925. Neus, Ehstnische Volkslieder, pp. 305-311. The manner in which the gathering symbols of the horrors of war, each more terrible than the last, are successively brought upon the scene in this poem is very fine.
[80] Kalevipoeg, xix. 493-583.