The gods who dwell in the great heaven, nor feared
Vengeance hereafter from the hands of men;
And now destruction overhangs you all."

He spake, and all were pale with fear, and each
Looked round for some escape from death.

_Bryant's Translation, Books XXI., XXII_.





THE KALEVALA.

"Songs preserved from distant ages."


The national epic of Finland, the Kalevala, or Place of Heroes, stands
midway between the purely epical structure, as exemplified in Homer, and
the epic songs of certain nations.

It is a purely pagan epic, and from its complete silence as to Finland's
neighbors, the Russians, Germans, and Swedes, it is supposed to date back
at least three thousand years.

The first attempt to collect Finnish folk-song was made in the seventeenth
century by Palmskoeld and Peter Baeng. In 1733, Maxenius published a volume
on Finnish national poetry, and in 1745 Juslenius began a collection of
national poems. Although scholars saw that these collected poems were