The Story of Kullervo

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  That no drops flow down to Pūlu

  And that Tanto drink not of it

  But that when at Kame at milk tide

  Then their milkstreams may be swollen

  And the pails be overflowing

  And the good wife’s heart be gladdened.

  O Terenye maid of Samyan

  Little daughter of the forests

  Clad in soft and beauteous garments

  With thy golden hair so lovely

  And thy shoon of scarlet leather,

  When the cherry will not lead them

  Be their neatherd and their shepherd.

  When the sun to rest has sunken

  And the bird of Eve is singing

  As the twilight draweth closer

  Speak thou to my horned creatures

  Saying come ye hoofed cattle

  Come ye homeward trending homeward.

  In the house ’tis glad and pleasant

  Where the floor is sweet for resting

  On the waste ’tis ill to wander

  Looming down the empty shorelands

  Of the many lakes of Sutse.

  Therefore come ye horned creature

  And the women fire will kindle

  In the field of honeyed grasses

  On the ground o’ergrown with berries.

  [The following lines are offset to indicate a change of tone. Kirby’s edition does not so distinguish them, but notes in the Argument at the head of the Runo that it contains ‘the usual prayers and charms’ (Kirby Vol. 2, p. 78). Magoun gives the lines the heading ‘Charms for Getting Cattle Home, Lines 273–314’ (Magoun, p. 232).]

  Then Palikki’s little damsel

  And Telenda her companion

  Take a whip of birch to scourge them

  And of juniper to drive them

  From the hold of Samyan’s cattle

  And the gloomy slopes of alder

  In the milktide of the evening.

  [As above, these lines are offset to indicate a shift in tone and separate them from those preceding. Kirby’s Argument notes a charm for ‘protection from bears in the pastures’ (p. 78), while Magoun supplies the heading ‘Admonitory Charms Against Bears, Lines 315–542 (p. 232).]

  O thou Uru O my darling

  My Honeypaw that rules the forest

  Let us call a truce together

  In the fine days of the summer

  In the good Creator’s summer

  In the days of Ilu’s laughter

  That thou sleepst upon the meadow

  With thine ears thrust into stubble

  Or conceal thee in the thickets

  That thou mayst not hear cowbells

  Nor the talking of the herdsman.

  Let the tinkling and the lowing

  And the ringing in the heathland

  Put no frenzy yet upon thee

  Nor thy teeth be seized with longing.

  Rather wander in the marshes

  And the tangle of the forest.

  Let thy growl be lost in wastelands

  And thy hunger wait the season

  When in Samyan is the honey

  All fermenting on the hillslopes

  Of the golden land of Kēme

  Neath the faring bees a-humming.

  Let us make this league eternal

  And an endless peace between us

  That we live in peace in summer,

  In the good Creator’s summer.

  [As with the other separations, this indentation is offset to indicate change in tone, in this case the conclusion or peroration of the lady’s prayers. Neither Kirby nor Magoun so distinguishes these lines.]

  All this prayer and all this chanting

  O then Ukko silver monarch

  Hearken to my sweet entreaty.

  Bind in leash the dogs of Kūru

  And enchain the forest wild things

  And in Ilwe set the Sun-star

  And let all the days be golden.

  Now Āsemo’s wife was a great chanter of prayers – and also a most grasping woman and over heedful of her goods: and that is to be understood [by] the length of her prayer to Ilukko and his maidens for her kine which were very fair and sleek.

  But now Sāri had gone some way, and set his food into his wallet as he drove the kine over the water meadows and swamps and out across the heathland to the rich edge of the woodland, and ever as he went he was grieving and murmuring to himself and saying ‘Woe to me wretched youth, ill and hard going black fortune: wheresoever I turn my path nothing awaits me but idleness and endless gazing at the tails of oxen ever tramping through the marshes and the dreary level country.’ Then coming to a slope in the sun he sat him there and rested and took out his lunch and marvelled at its weight and said, ‘Wife of Āsemo thou art not wont to dole me out such a weight of food.’

  Then he fell athinking of his life and the luxury of this spiteful mistress, and to long for wheaten bread in slices thick with butter and cakes of finest bakery and for a draught other than water for the quenching of his thirst. Dry crusts, thought he, only does she give me for my chewing and oaten cake at best and with this chaff and straw or the bark of fir not seldom mingled: and cabbage whence her cur has eaten all the fat, and then he bethought him of his wild free early days and of Wanone [sic] and his folk, and so slept till a bird prating of evening awoke him and [he] drove the cattle to rest and sat him on a hillock and took from his back his wallet.

  And he opened it and turned it about, saying ‘many a cake without is handsome but within is ill favoured: and is as this: wheat above and oaten behind’, and being in heavy mood and not over eager for his food he took his great knife wherewith to cut the cake and it strove through the scanty crust and ground with such force on the flint that its edge was turned and its point snapped: and to this end came Sikki the heirloom of Kampa. And Sāri fell first into white wrath and then into tears for he treasured that heirloom before silver or gold, and said:

  O my Sikki O my comrade

  O thou iron of Kalervo

  Which that hero wore and wielded

  Nought I had to love in sorrow

  But my knife the picture graver.

  And against a stone ’tis broken

  By the spite of that ill woman.

  O my Sikki O my Sikki

  O thou iron of Kalervo.

  And evil thoughts whispered to him and the fierceness of the wild came into his heart and with his fingers he wove a design of wrath and vengeance against the fair wife of Āsemo: and taking a switch of birch and of juniper from a thicket he drove all the kine and cattle into the water marshes and trackless morasses. And he called on the wolves and bears each to take a half as their prey and to save him only a bone from the leg of Urula the most aged cow of the herd. And from this he made a great pipe and blew shrilly and strangely upon it: and this was magic of Sāri’s own nor do men say whence he learnt: and he sang thus the wolves to cattle and the bears to oxen, and as the sun was westering redly and bending toward the pine-trees nigh the time of milking, he drove the bears and wolves homeward before him, weary and dusty with his weeping on the ground and enchanting of the wild things.

  Now when he drew nigh the farmyard he laid his commands upon the beasts that when the smith’s wife came to look about her and stooped down to milk them, they should seize her and crunch her in their teeth.

  And so he went along the pathway piping broken and strange music from the cow-bone pipe: thrice he blew on the hill slope and six times at the garden wall. And Āsemo’s wife marvelled whence the neatherd had gotten his cow bone for his pipe but heeded not overmuch the matter, for long had she awaited the cows for milking. And she gave thanks to Ilu for the return of her herd: and went out and bade Sāri stay his earsplitting din and then said she to Āsemo’s mother,

  Mother ’tis the kine need milking.

  Do thou go and tend the cattle

  For meseems I cannot finish

  Kneading dough as I would have it.

  But Sāri mo
cked her saying that no thrifty housewife would send another and [an] old woman to milk the kine. So Āsemo’s wife went swiftly to the sheds and set herself to milk her kine, and gazed upon the herd saying, ‘Beauteous is the herd to look on and sleek the horned oxen and well filled are the udders of the kine.’

  Then she stooped to the milking and lo a wolf sprang at her and a bear seized her in his grim embrace and they tore her fiercely and crunched her bones, and thus was her jesting and mockery and spite repaid, and the cruel wife brought herself to weeping: and Sāri stood by neither exulting nor relenting and she cried to him, ‘Ill dost thou most wicked of neatherds to drive bears and mighty wolves to these peaceful yards.’ Then Sāri chid her for her ill and spite toward himself and for the breaking of his cherished heirloom.

  Then Āsemo’s wife wheedling said, ‘Come, thou herdboy, dearest herdboy, come thou apple of this homestead, alter thou thy grim resolve and I beg thee lift this magic from me and release the wolf’s jaws and the bear’s limbs from me. Better raiment will I give you then an you do so, and handsome ornaments, and wheaten bread and butter and the sweetest draughts of milk for your draining: nor shalt thou labour aught for a year and but lightly in the second.’

  Then said Sāri, ‘If thou diest so mayest thou perish; there is room enough in Amuntu for thee.’

  Then Āsemo’s wife in death cursed him using his name and [very?] father’s and cried on Ukko the highest of Gods to hear her words.

  Woe thou Sāri Kampa’s offspring

  Woe thou crooked fated child Nyelid

  Ill thy fortune dark thy faring

  On the roadway of thy lifetime.

  Thou has trod the ways of thralldom

  And the trackless waste of exile

  But thy end shall be more awful

  And a tale to men forever

  Of a fate of woe [and] horror

  Worse than anguish in Amuntu.

  Men shall hither come from Loke

  In the mirklands far to northward

  And shall hither come from Same

  In the southways of the summer

  And shall fare to us from Kēme

  And from the Ocean bath to Westward

  But shall shudder when they hear them

  Thy fate and end of terror.

  To woe thou who as [illegible]

  [The verse breaks off here without closing punctuation or any indication that more is intended.]

  But Sāri went away and there she died – the daughter of Koi even the fair one whom Āsemo the smith primeval wooed in far Lohiu for seven years. And her cries reached her husband at his forge and he turned from the smithy and went to listen in the lane and then with fear at his heart hastened and looked about the yard and the distant sound of piping shrill and strange faring away out over the marshland under the stars came to his ears and nought else, but to his eyes came soon that evil sight upon the ground and his soul was darkened deeper than the night and starless. But Sāri was far abroad in the wild with pipe of bone and no man might follow for Mauri’s magic was about him. And his own magic ever waxing went with him too.

  And he wandered onwards aimlessly forward for that night and a day through thickest woodland till the next night he found himself in the densest timber grounds of Pūhu and it grew stifling dark and he flung himself on the ground and reflected bitterly.

  Wherefore have I been created?

  Who has made me and has doomed me

  Thus ’neath sun and moon to wander

  ’Neath the open sky forever?

  Others to their homes may journey

  That stand twinkling in the even

  But my home is in the forest.

  In the wind halls must I slumber

  And in bitter rain must bathe me

  And my hearth is midst the heather

  In the wide halls of the wind blast

  In the rain and in the weather.

  Never Jumala most holy

  In these ages of the ages

  Form a child thus crooked fated

  With a friendless doom forever

  To go fatherless ’neath heaven

  And uncared by any mother

  As thou, Jumala, hast made me

  Like a wailing wandering seagull,

  Like a seamew in the weather

  Haunting misty rocks and shoreland

  While the sun shines on the swallow

  And the sparrow has its brightness

  And the birds of air are joyous

  But that is never never happy.

  I Sāri am not happy.

  O Ilu, life is joyless.

  {I was small and lost my mother father

  I was young (weak) and lost my mother.

  All my mighty race has perished

  All my mighty race}

  Then into his heart Ilu sent a thought: and he lifted his head and said ‘I will slay Ūlto.’ And the thought of his father’s wrong and his oath and the tears of his whole lifetime came to him and he said ‘Gladly will I slay Ūlto.’ And as yet was his heart bitter against his own folk too, save Oanōra only, and he thought him fiercely of the red light leaping from Untamo’s dwellings and Untamo lying dead on the stained floor of his own grim halls: but Kullervo knew not his way thence for on every side the forest encompassed him; still he fared onward saying ‘wait thou, wait thou Untamoinen destroyer of my race; if I find thee then quickly will thy dwelling leap up in flames and the farmlands lie empty and withered.’

  As he fared musing an old dame, even the Blue-robed Lady of the Forest met him asking him ‘Whither O Kullervo son of Kalervo goest thou so hastily?’

  Then Kullervo told her of his desire to quit the forest and wander to the homeland of Untamo and with fire avenge his father’s death and his mother’s tears.

  Then said she, ‘Easy it is for thee to journey though the track be not known to thee through the forest. Thou must follow the river’s path and march for two days and a third day when turning to the Northwest thou wilt find a wooded mountain. Fare not towards it lest ill find thee. March on under the shadow often bending to the left when thou comest to another river and when thou hast followed its banks soon thou wilt strike a fair spot and a great glade and over a great leap a triple waterfall foaming. Then you will know thou art halfway. Even so thou must continue pushing up the river toward its source: and the ground will slope against thee and the wood darken and lie in again till for a day you stumble across bleak waste and then soon wilt thou see the blue of woods of Untamo rising afar off: and mayhap these thou hast not yet quite forgotten.’

  Then slipped the Woman of the Forest away among the tree boles and Kullervo following the river – for one not very great was nigh – marched for two days and a third day, then turned to Northwest and espied the wooded mountain. And the sun shone upon it and the trees bloomed and the bees seemed a-humming there and the birds singing, and Kullervo tired of the blue shadows of the wood and thought – my quest will wait, for never can Untamo in the end escape me: I will go drink the sunlight and he turned from the forest path into the sun; and was going up the slopes till he came to a wide clearing and on a fallen log in a patch of light amidst the brambles he saw a maiden with her yellow hair all flowing. And the curse of Louhi’s daughter was on him and his eyes saw and saw not: and he forgot the slaying of Untamo and strode to the maiden who heeded him not. A garland of flowers was she plaiting and was singing yet wearily and half-sorrowfully to herself.

  ‘O fair one, pride of Earth,’ said Kullervo, ‘come with me; wander in the forest with me unless indeed thou be a daughter of Tapio and no human maiden: but even so do I desire thee to be my comrade.’

  And the maid was affright and shrank from him. ‘Death walketh with thee, wanderer, and woe is at thy side.’

  And Kullervo was wroth; but very fair was the maiden and he said ‘’Tis not good for thee to be alone in the forest; nor does it please me; food will I bring thee and fare abroad to lay and lie in wait for thee, and gold and raiment and many things of
cost will give thee.’

  ‘Though I be lost in the evil woods, and Tapio has me fast in his hold,’ said she, ‘yet would I never wish to roam with such as thee, villain. Little does thy look consort with maidens. But thou wouldst, an thou were honest aid me to find the homeward road to my folk which Tapio hides from me.’

  But Kullervo was wroth in that she had reviled his ungainliness, and put kind thought from him and cried: ‘Lempo seize thy folk and swift would I put them to the sword didst I come upon them, but thou I wilt have, nor shalt thou dwell in thy father’s house again.’

  Whereat she was adread and sped like a wild thing of the woods through the tangle from him and he angry after her: till he laid hands upon her and bore her in his arms away in the depths of the woods.

  Yet was she fair and he loving with her, and the curse of the wife of Ilmarinen [sic] upon them both, so that not long did she resist him and they abode together in the wild till on a day even as Jumala brought the morning, the damsel resting in his arms spake unto him questioning him and said,

  Tell me now of all thy kinfolk

  Of the brave race that thou springst from:–

  Yea, a mighty race it seems me

  Thine is, and a mighty father.

  And Kullervo’s answer was thus:

  [These lines are offset apparently to indicate a change in speaker.]

  Nay my race is not a great one

  Not a great one nor a small one:

  I am just of middle station;

  Kalervo’s unhappy offspring

  Uncouth boy and ever foolish

  Worthless child and good for nothing.

  Nay but tell me of thy people

  Of the brave race whence thou comest.

  Maybe a mighty race has born thee

  Fairest child of mighty father.

  And the girl answered quickly (nor let Kullervo see her face),

  Nay my race is not a great one

  Not a great one nor a small one

  I am just of middle station

  Wandering maiden ever foolish

  Worthless child and good for nothing.

  Then stood she up and gazing in woe at Kullervo with outstretched hand and her hair falling about her cried,

  To the wood I went for berries

  And forsook my tender mother.

  Over plains and heath to mountains

  Wandered two days and a third one

  Till the pathway home I found not.