clear the forest; but he left the slender birch for the birds to nest in,
thus winning the gratitude of the silver-voiced singers.

In the land of Kalevala, Wainamoinen passed many happy years, and the fame
of his wonderful songs of wit and wisdom spread even to the land of the
Lapps, in the dismal north, where lived Youkahainen, a young minstrel.
Against the advice of his parents, the youth, filled with jealousy,
visited Kalevala, to hold a singing contest with Wainamoinen.

He proudly displayed his wisdom to the old minstrel, who laughed at it as
"women's tales and children's wisdom," and when Youkahainen declared in
song that he was present at the creation, Wainamoinen called him the
prince of liars, and himself began to sing. As he sang, the copper-bearing
mountains, the massive rocks and ledges, trembled, the hills re-echoed,
and the very ocean heaved with rapture. The boaster stood speechless,
seeing his sledge transformed into reed grass and willows, his beautiful
steed changed to a statue, his dog to a block of stone, and he himself
fast sinking in a quicksand. Then comprehending his folly, he begged his
tormentor to free him. Each precious gift he offered for a ransom was
refused, until he named his beautiful sister Aino. Wainamoinen, happy in
the promise of Aino for a wife, freed the luckless youth from his
enchantment, and sent him home.

Aino's mother was rejoiced to hear that her daughter had been promised to
the renowned Wainamoinen; but when the beautiful girl learned that she was
tied by her brother's folly to an old man, she wandered weeping through
the fields. In vain her mother and father sought to console her; she wept
for her vanished childhood, for all her happiness and hope and pleasure
forever gone. To console her daughter, the mother told her of a store of
beautiful ornaments that she herself had worn in girlhood; they had been