Väinämöinen and Antervo Vipunen
Old Väinämöinen made,
made a boat with knowledge.
He lacked three words
to put on the rim board;
he went to search for them
from the mouth of Antero Vipunen.
For a long time had Vipunen been dead,
a long time had Antero been missing;
a great ash tree on his shoulders,
on his knees a squirrel-hill,
an alder on his jaws,
a bird-cherry by his beard.
He walked for a day lightly
along the blades of men’s swords,
he stepped another gropingly
on the points of women’s needles.
His left foot slipped
into Antero Vipunen’s mouth.
He turned his shirt into a forge,
his fur mantle into a bellows,
his elbow into a hammer,
his small fingers into tongs;
he beat and hammered,
hammered an iron cowlstaff.
He slipped the iron cowlstaff
into Antero Vipunen’s mouth;
Antero Vipunen
bit on the top of the tough iron;
he did not know how to bite steel,
nor eat the heart of the iron.
“What manner of man may you be,
and what fellow?
A hundred men have I eaten,
a thousand heroes destroyed.
Rascal, get out of my lungs,
tramp, out of my liver!”
“I’ll leave, rascal, your lungs;
tramp, I’ll leave your liver
when you say a hundred words,
a thousand charm words.”
With that old Väinämöinen
got his little boat ready.
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