(b.)
Four maidens formerly, a triplet of brides,
Were gathering a horse-tail grass—breaking off a single blade
At the edge of a fiery headland, in the cove of a fiery cape.
The maidens make hay—gathered horse-tail grass,
Mowed the great, mowed the small, mowed once the middle sort.
What they managed to mow they raked forthwith into heaps,
Arranged into shocks, into a thousand little sheaves,
Stuck it between poles—at the bottom of a hundred stacks.
| A boy came from Pohjola—a child from proper Lapland, | |
| v. A bird flew from Lapland, an eagle flew from Norway,[1] |
He burnt the hay to ashes—reduced it to cinders,
11Put the ashes in a birchbark pouch, gathered the cinders into a wallet.
Then the ashes can be carried, the cinders can be sown[2]
From the edge of the fiery headland, from the cove of the fiery cape
To remote fields of the North, to Lapland's plains beset with snares,
(And sown) into earth's black mud, into a solid mountain slope.
A huge oak grew up there, a thriving sapling raised itself,
Most ample as regards its boughs, most spreading as regards its sprays.
Variants.
11-15 He gathered the cinders—all the ashes into a birch-bark pouch,
The cinders were sown, thither the ashes were dispersed,
Before the gate of Pohjola, on the threshold of the "speckled lid".[3]
