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
given her by the daughters of the Moon and Sun,--gold, ribbons, and
jewels. Beautifully arrayed in these long-concealed ornaments, Aino
wandered through the fields for many days, bewailing her sad fate. On the
fourth day, she laid her garments on the sea shore, and swam out to the
standing rock, a little distance from the shore.
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