The Story of Kullervo

by J. R. R. Tolkien

  For the paths led ever deeper

  Deeper deeper into darkness

  Deeper deeper into sorrow

  Into woe and into horror.

  O thou sunlight O thou moonbeam

  O thou dear unfettered breezes

  Never never will I see thee

  Never feel thee on my forehead.

  For I go in dark and terror

  Down to Tuoni to the River.

  And before he could leap up and grasp her she sped across the glade (for they abode in a wild dwelling nigh to the glade spoken to him by the Blue Forest Woman) like a shivering ray of light in the dawn light scarce seeming to touch the green dewy grass till she came to the triple fall and cast her over it down its silver column to the ugly depths even as Kullervo came up with her and her last wail he heard and stood heavy bent on the brink as a lump of rock till the sun rose and thereat the grass grew green, birds sang and the flowers opened and midday passed and all things seemed happy: and Kullervo cursed them, for he loved her.

  And the light waned and foreboding gnawed at his heart for something in the maiden’s last speech and murmur and her bitter ending wakened old knowledge in his heart spell-blind and he felt he would burst for grief and sorrow and heavy fear. Then red anger came to him and he cursed and seized his sword and [went] blindly in the dark heeding neither falls nor bruises up the river as the Dame had directed, panting as the slopes leant against him till at dawn so terrible his haste

  [The narrative breaks off at this point, and what follows on the rest of the page is a note-outline of the end of the story, written rapidly and with aberrations in syntax attributable to haste. It is here given in full.]

  He goes to Untola and blindly lays waste to everything, gathering an army of bears and wolves together who vanish in the evening and slay the following Musti outside his vill[age]. When everything is destroyed, he flings himself drenched in blood on the bed of Untamo, his self the only house not burnt.

  His mother’s ghost appears to him and tells him his own brother and sister are amongst those he has slain.

  He [is] horror struck but not grieved.

  She then tells him that she was [killed] too and he starts up in a sweat and horror believing he is dreaming and is prostrated when he finds it is not so.

  Then she goes on.

  (I had a daughter fairest maiden who wandered to look for berries)

  Telling how she met a fair distraught maiden wandering with downcast eyes by the bank of Tuoni’s river and describes their meeting ending by revealing that it is she who slew herself.

  K[ullervo] bites sword hilt in anguish and starts up wildly as his mother vanishes. Then he laments her and goes out setting fire to the hall, passing through the village full of slain into the woods [in the margin is the note: ‘falls over body of dead Musti’] wailing ‘Kivutar’ for he has never seen her (as his sister) since he was sold to Ilmarinen. He finds the glade now bleak and desolate and is about to throw himself over same falls when he decides he is not fit to drown in same pools as Kivutar and takes out his sword asking it whether it will slay him.

  The sword says if it had joy in the death of Untamo how much in death of even wickeder Kullervo. And it had slaid [sic] many an innocent person, even his mother, so it would not boggle over K.

  He kills himself and finds the death he sought for.

  MS Folio 6

  List of Names

  [The spacing here is as it appears in the manuscript.]

  [Recto]

  Tūva (w. Nyēli) Ulto

  Kampa (Nyēli) Ūlto Kem

  or Kēma (Puhōsa his land)

  Sāaki Wanōna

  or hontō

  Black dog Mauri

  Smith Āsemo

  cf Āse

  Lumya the Marshland

  Teleä land of Kēme’s birth

  Kmnūme or The Great Land

  Ilu Iluko God of the Sky

  (the good God)

  often confused with Ukko :. ran

  Amuntu hell

  Tanto god of hell Pūh

  Lempo plague & death

  also cal[l]ed Qēle or as a [huntsman?] Kuruwanyo

  The great black river of death

  Kūru

  Ilwe Ilwinti Sky heaven (Manatomi)

  Wanwe armed goddess

  Sutse the marshland

  Samyan god of the forest

  Koi Queen of [illegible] Lōke

  [Verso]

  the seven daughters of Ilwinti

  Eltelen Mēlune

  and Saltime

  Tekkitai

  Malōlo a god the maker

  of the earth

  Kaltūse

  or

  3. Draft list of character names [MS Tolkien B 64/6 folio 6 recto].

  4. Discontinuous notes and rough plot synopsis [MS Tolkien B 64/6 folio 21 recto].

  Draft Plot Synopses

  A loose folio numbered 21 contains discontinuous jotted notes and on both sides rough plot outlines alternative to the continuous narrative. The use of the names Ilmarinen and Louhi is evidence that this precedes the main manuscript.

  [Recto]

  Kalervo and his wife and son and daughter

  Kullervo a boy child with his father Kalervo

  The quarrel and raid of Untamo. The homestead laid waste – Kalervo slain and as Kullervo in anguish & all his folk and his wife is carried off by Untamo. She bears Kullervo and a younger sister in sorrow & anguish and tells them of the Tale of Kalervo.

  Untam Kull. waxed to marvellous strength: his vow as

  an infant—the knife–(his passionate resentful nature) his ill treatment by Untamo

  His only friend his sister. K's misbehaviour and selling in slavery to Ilmarinen. His utter misery: here he speaks with wolves in the mountain. carving strange figures with his father’s knife

  The cake of Louhi’s daughter: Rage and revenge of Kullervo: refuses to loose spell and is cursed by Ilmarinen’s dying wife. He flies from Ilmarinen and goes to destroying of Untamo: returning from his triumph he meets a maiden and forces her to dwell with him: he reveals his name and she runs wailing into the dark and flings herself over the savage falls.

  Kullervo standing in sorrow beside the falls

  [Verso]

  with 36/140—270 Dog Musti

  Quarrelsome mean Kalervo Kind mother

  wretched elder sister & brother.

  falls in with the Pohie-Lady of the Forest Who tells him where his mother is dwelling (give description) with his brother and daughters.

  And he leaves his sorrow and rides to the homestead.

  The meeting with his mother: he recounts and she recounts their ventures[?] lives since her slavery.

  He finds his mother wailing, she has sought her younger and dearly loved daughter for three years in the woods and describes her.

  Kullervo sees what has happ to his sister

  and rides recklessly over the ways to the falls where he slays himself.

  Or he can meet the maiden in the woodland while fleeing from Ilmarinen and to quench his sorrow* go and devastate Untamo and rescue his mother from bondage discover it is his sister and ride back red with the blood of Untamo and slay himself at the Falls.

  put the speech of Unt Kuli R. 36/40 ch met Kuli encounter[?] when his mother beseeches him to be more obedient to Untamo as a boy.

  (Mother and Brother are glad he’s to go. Sister alone sorry)

  Or make it thus after flight from Ilma he finds his people — then destroys Untamo gathering an [sic] magic army of his old friends the wolves and bears: Untamo curses enchants him and he wanders blinded through the forest. Comes to a village and sacks it slaying the ancient headsman and his wife and taking as wife by force his daughter.

  Who asking him his lineage he reveals

  she reveals his origin and how he has slain

  both father and mother and despoiled his sister

  Lament of Honto 34/240

  5. Further rough plot synopses [MS Tolkien B 64
/6 folio 21 verso].

  Notes and Commentary

  5 The Story of Honto Taltewenlen. An alternate title or sub-title written in the upper left corner of the first folio: Honto is one of Tolkien’s several by-names for Kullervo (see below); Talte is his by-name for Kalervo (see below); wenlen, a patronymic suffix equivalent to poika, is apparently a Tolkien invention based on the Finnish model. Taltewenlen would thus be ‘Son of Talte (Kalervo)’.

  (Kalervonpoika). Poika is a Finnish patronymic suffix, thus the full name means ‘Kalervo’s Son’, or ‘Son of Kalervo’.

  when magic was yet new. This phrase, cancelled in the manuscript, is here retained in brackets, since magic (also called sorcery) is practised throughout the story by Untamo, who is described as ‘a fell sorcerer and man of power’, by the dog Musti (himself a possessor of magic abilities), and by Kullervo, who can shape-change animals. Kalevala has numerous references to magic, probably remnants of primitive shamanism and shamanic practices usually performed through singing. One of the ‘big three’ heroes of Kalevala, Väinämöinen, has been interpreted as a shaman. He has the epithet ‘eternal singer’, and defeats a rival magician in a singing contest by singing him into a bog. In Tolkien’s story both Untamo and Kullervo ‘weave’ magic with their fingers. Kullervo also uses music – singing and playing a magic cow-bone pipe.

  Sutse. A name of Tolkien’s invention intended to replace earlier ‘Suomi’ (the Finnish name for Finland) in the text. Other replacement names, all written in the left margin of this opening paragraph, include ‘Telea’ for earlier Karelja, ‘the Great Land/Kemenūme’ for earlier Russia, and ‘Talte’ (see above) for earlier Kalervo. Asterisks beside both textual and marginal names coordinate the emendations. With the exception of ‘Talte’, the replacement names become standard, and are more or less consistently used throughout the remainder of the text. These changes offer the clearest evidence of Tolkien’s developing tendency to go from merely following the Kalevala nomenclature to using names of his own invention.*

  Kemenūme (The Great Land). Replaces Russia in the text. May be based on Kemi, a river in northern Finland on which stands the town of the same name. But see footnote to entry for ‘Sutse’.

  Telea. Replaces earlier Karelja. Karelja is a large area on both sides of the Russo-Finnish border, and is the region where most of the narrative runos (songs) compiled by Lönnrot were collected.

  Kalervo. Father of Kullervo. His name is probably a variant of Kaleva, a Finnish culture-hero and patronymic ancestor whose name survives in Kalevala (with locative suffix -la, ‘place or habitation’ thus Land of Kaleva or Land of Heroes), and in that of his descendant Kalervo. Kalervo is also called by Tolkien Talte, Taltelouhi, Kampa, and Kalervoinen, the last formed with the Finnish diminutive suffix inen. In Finnish, a name can occur in several different forms, depending on the use of diminutives. Cp. Untamoinen below.

  Untamo. Brother of Kalervo, uncle of Kullervo. He is possessed of magic powers, and is also a sadist and a would-be murderer. Also called Untamoinen, Unti, Ūlto, Ulko, Ulkho.

  borne in years past both a son and a daughter and was even now again nigh to childbirth. The elder brother and sister of Kullervo appear in Kalevala but only enter the story after Kullervo leaves the smith’s household. This ignores the fact that Untamo has already destroyed everyone but Kalervo’s wife, who is pregnant and delivers Kullervo in captivity. The compiler of Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot, apparently combined two separate stories in order to include Kullervo’s incest and death. Tolkien repairs the disjuncture by introducing the older brother and sister at the beginning of the story.

  6 black hound Musti. Tolkien first called the dog Musti, a conventional Finnish dog name based on musta, ‘black’, translating as something like ‘Blackie’. Halfway through the draft, he changed the name to Mauri – possibly formed on Finnish Muuri∕Muurikki, ‘Black one’ or ‘Blackie’, (used of a cow) – then reverted to Musti. I have retained both, with Mauri where it first appears followed by Musti in square brackets.

  7 cruel and worthless carles. Carl: a churl, a rustic, a peasant. Compare Anglo-Saxon ceorl. Tolkien’s text mixes Anglo-Saxon archaism with Finnish and pseudo-Finnish names.

  foully entreated his folk and lands. The word ‘entreat’, which conventionally has the meaning of ‘supplicate’ or ‘plead with’, seems startlingly inapposite in this context. It is not a mistake, however, but Tolkien’s deliberate usage of the word in its archaic meaning, as cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, of ‘treated’ or ‘dealt with’. The OED gives an example from 1430: ‘So betyn (beaten), so woundyd, Entretyd so fuly [foully].’

  gloomy halls of Untola. The locative or habitative suffix la identifies this as the home of Unto (Untamo).

  Kalervo’s babes. In Kalevala Kullervo discovers late in the story, after escaping the smith, that he has a sister, but the twinning of the siblings in the present narrative is the invention of Tolkien and not in the original.

  Kullervo. Tolkien translates the name as ‘wrath’, a meaning unattested in Kalevala, where it is said to be of disputed origin. It appears to be formed off the patronymic Kalervo. Tolkien described his hero as ‘hapless Kullervo’, and identified him as ‘the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own’ (Letters, p. 345). Kullervo is the earliest of Tolkien’s displaced, heroes, orphans and exiles, a succession that will include Túrin (modelled directly on Kullervo), Beren, and Frodo. Tolkien gives his Kullervo a variety of by-names or epithets: Kuli (an obvious short form of Kullervo), Sake, Sākehonto, Honto, Sāri, Sārihontō. Such multiple naming is typical of Kalevala, where for example the hero, Lemminkainen, has the nicknames Ahti (‘King of the Waves’), Ahti-Saarelainen (‘Island-Ahti’ or ‘Man of the Island’), Kaukomieli (‘[Handsome] man with a far-roving mind’), Kaukolainen (‘Man of Faraway Farm’).

  Wanōna, or ‘weeping’. Compare Túrin Turambar’s surviving sister, Nienor/Níniel, whose names mean respectively ‘mourning’ and ‘tear-maiden’. Wanōna is a name of Tolkien’s own devising, as in Kalevala the sister is not named. One early occurrence in the manuscript calls her Welinōre, but this is immediately cancelled and replaced with Wanōna, and the ‘W’ is also crossed out and ‘U’ written in above it (Folio 3). The name occurs once as Wanilie (Folio 4). One instance late in the manuscript changes Wanōna to Wanōra (Folio 7), with the ‘W’ overwritten with ‘O’, thus Oanōra. Oanōra (for Wanōna) appears again on the verso of Folio 11 in the sentence ‘And as yet was his heart bitter against his own folk too save Oanōra only.’ The sister is not cited by name in the succeeding portions of the text.

  8 for ill cradle rocking. The ‘for’ in this phrase should be taken to mean ‘because of’. The tradition that physical mistreatment of an infant could have psychological repercussions is an old one. Compare the saying, ‘as the twig is bent so grows the tree’.

  one generation from the men of magic. Compare with Tolkien’s use of the word magic in the opening line, ‘when magic was yet new’. Kullervo is in touch with ancient shamanic practices.

  not yet more than knee-high. Mythic heroes traditionally grow at an accelerated rate. Compare the Greek Hercules and the Irish Cú Chulainn. Wanōna, described as ‘wondrous’, also grows at an accelerated rate. In this respect, the twins may owe something to the classical Apollo and Artemis, twin children of Leto by Zeus. In some versions of their story both grew to full adulthood within the day of their birth.

  9 hound of Tuoni. Hounds in mythology are frequently associated with the underworld, either as guardians or as guides. In Kalevala Tuoni is Death (personified) also called Lord of Death. His domain is Tuonela, the underworld, so-called from his name plus the locative/habitative suffix la.

  10 Tuoni the marshland. Perhaps an error for Suomi. See entry for ‘Sutse’ above.

  {and to Kullervo he gave three hairs ...} This entire sentence, cancelled in the manuscript, is retained in the present text since a magic hair of Musti’s later saves Kullervo’s life.

  11 a [hundred] fa
thoms. The word in brackets is illegible in the manuscript, but ‘hundred’ is used in Kirby’s translation.

  12 the great knife Sikki. In Kalevala the knife is not named. In his article ‘From adaptation to invention’ John Garth cites Tolkien’s Etymologies, a root SIK- with the Qenya and Sindarin derivatives sikil, sigil, meaning ‘dagger, knife’ (Tolkien Studies Vol. XI 2014, p. 40, The Lost Road, 385).

  13 Now a man in sooth I deem me. This is the first of the ‘chunks of poetry’ interspersed among the prose sections which Tolkien described (Letters, p. 7) as his narrative style for The Story of Kullervo, and there are rough drafts among the note folios. It is in the so-called ‘Kalevala metre’, that Tolkien would have known from the Kirby translation, in which he first read Kalevala. This is a rendering into English of the Finnish four-beat eight-syllable line, and is most familiar to English-speakers as the metre of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. It is less monotonous in Finnish. Alternate versions of the poem appear on folios 22 recto and (upside down) on the verso.

  14 Lempo. Described in Folio 6 as ‘plague and desolation’. The name is confusingly close to the Kalevala name for Lempi, father of the playboy hero Lemminkäinen. Finnish lempi is ‘erotic love’. Tolkien has borrowed the name but not the meaning.

  16 daughter of Keime. Obscure. Possibly a reference to Russia, called Kemenūme in the text; alternatively a possible reference to Teleä/Karelja, glossed in Folio 6 as ‘land of Kēme’s birth’.

  17 the smith Āsemo. The name Āsemo is apparently Tolkien’s invention to replace the Kalevala name for this character, Ilmarinen, formed on ilma, ‘sky, air’. Āsemo may be formed from Finnish ase, ‘weapon, tool’ (he is, after all, a smith) with the suffix mo, used to change a noun into a proper name. In Kalevala the smith Ilmarinen has a far greater role, hammering out the lid of the sky and forging the magical Sampo, actions which qualify him as a kind of creator-god, but might have made him too potent a figure for his minor role in Tolkien’s story. Mythic heroes such as Kullervo are often fostered out to smiths; for example the Irish Setanta was fostered to the smith Culann from whom he took the name by which he was thenceforth known, Cú Chulainn, ‘Hound of Culann’. The Norse hero Sigurd was mentored by the smith Regin. Puhōsa, the smith’s homestead, is hard to locate geographically. It is said at various times to be in the Great Lands identified in the opening paragraphs as Russia, but also in Telea, identified with Karelja.