Topelius and
Loennrot were conscientious collectors and compilers, but they were no
Homers, who could fuse these disconnected runes into one great poem. The
Kalevala recites many events in the lives of different heroes who are not
types of men, like Rama, or Achilles, or Ulysses, but the rude gods of an
almost savage people, or rather, men in the process of apotheosis, all
alike, save in the varying degrees of magic power possessed by each.
The Finnish lays are interesting to us because they are the popular songs
of a people handed down with few changes from one generation to another;
because they would have formed the material for a national epic if a great
poet had arisen; because of their pictures of ancient customs, and
particularly the description of the condition of women, and because of
their frequently beautiful descriptions of nature. But because they are
simply runes "loosely stitched together" we can regard them only with
interest and curiosity, not with admiration.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM, THE KALEVALA.
Andrew Lang's Homer and the Epic, pp. 412-419;
Andrew Lang's Kalevala, or the Finnish National Epic (in his Custom and
Myth), 1885, pp. 156-179;
C. J. Billson's Folk-songs, comprised in the Finnish Kalevala, Folk-Lore,
1895, vi. pp. 317-352;
F. C. Cook's Kalevala, Contemporary, 1885, xlvii.
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