Cockayne's "Leechdoms." Now that these Magic Songs have been made accessible to English students of folklore (the larger part of them have not before been translated from the Finnish) they will be studied, I hope, with the attention which they certainly deserve.
As to the merits of Mr. Abercromby's translation, I hardly venture to express an opinion; but so far as I am capable of judging, I have found it very accurate, and at the same time the English is chosen with care and taste. Sometimes the language is perhaps rather too conversational, e.g. "turn a hair" (p. 80), "bothering" (p. 161), &c. On page 68 I do not know why tulinen and panuinen are both represented by "fiery": would not "fiery" and "flaming" be better, as on pp. 180, 335, &c.? On page 84, in the passage "Hills flowed like butter," &c., are not voina, lihana, &c., essive cases used as predicates; and would not a more accurate rendering be "Hills flowed into butter, rocks into swinesflesh, lakes into ale," &c.? and again on p. 88, "The Creator's clouds got watery-wet, the sky crackled with fire." The use of the word "like" in both of these passages seems to detract from the reality of the wizard's conjuring.
On page 91, "puskuja puserran" is rendered "the elfshots squeeze." Is not the disease, in this case, conceived as a horned animal, and should not the translation be "press back, or resist the blow of the horns"? (Cf. panen puskut puskimahan, which Mr. Abercromby translates on page 92, "I'll order it" (the ox) "to butt at thee." In other places, however, puskut is properly rendered "elfshots.") I doubt whether "light of heart," on page 194, quite represents the epithet of Lemminkäinen, "lieto," which properly seems to refer to a light sandy soil, "terra arenosa" (Juslenius). Lemminkäinen, I take it, is like the sand blown about by every wind of passion, and probably "wayward," or even "unstable as sand," would be nearer the mark. "Unstable- or weak-shoulders," would also perhaps render "lapalieto," on page 369, better than "defective-shoulders." On page 108, line 3, would not "pliant," rather than "complaisant," express the double idea, there being apparently an allusion to the flexible body of the wasp?
I may be allowed to add that it would have been much more convenient for reference if the numbering of the songs had been made to correspond with that of the Finnish text.
