well as the Sun, the Moon, the Great Bear, and the stars, are either
kind or unkind. Drops of blood find speech; men and maidens transform
themselves into other shapes and resume again their native forms at
will; ships, and trees, and waters, have magic powers; in short, all
nature speaks in human tongues.

The Kalevala dates back to an enormous antiquity. One reason for
believing this, lies in the silence of the Kalevala about Russians,
Germans, or Swedes, their neighbors. This evidently shows that the
poem must have been composed at a time when these nations had but very
little or no intercourse with the Finns. The coincidence between the
incantations adduced above, proves that these witch-songs date from a
time when the Hungarians and the Finns were still united as one people;
in other words, to a time at least 3000 years ago. The whole poem
betrays no important signs of foreign influence, and in its entire
tenor is a thoroughly pagan epic. There are excellent reasons for
believing that the story of Mariatta, recited in the 50th Rune, is an
ante-Christian legend.

An additional proof of the originality and independent rise of the
Kalevala is to be found in its metre. All genuine poetry must have its
peculiar verse, just as snow-flakes cannot exist without their peculiar
crystalizations. It is thus that the Iliad is inseparably united, and,
as it were, immersed in the stately hexametre, and the French epics, in
the graceful Alexandrine verse. The metre of the Kalevala is the
"eight-syllabled trochaic, with the part-line echo," and is the
characteristic verse of the Finns. The natural speech of this people
is poetry. The young men and maidens, the old men and matrons, in
their interchange of ideas, unwittingly fall into verse. The genius of
their language aids to this end, inasmuch as their words are strongly