The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country Part 1

The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country.

by William Forsell Kirby.

PREFACE

When I took up the study of the _Kalevala_ and Finnish literature, with the intention of publis.h.i.+ng a critical English edition of the poem, on which I am still engaged, the acc.u.mulation of the necessary materials led me to examine the literature of the neighbouring countries likewise.

I had expected to find the _Kalevipoeg_ an Esthonian variant of the _Kalevala_; but I found it so dissimilar, and at the same time so interesting, when divested of the tedious and irrelevant matter that has been added to the main story, that I finally decided to publish a full account of it in prose, especially as nothing of the kind has yet been attempted in English, beyond a few casual magazine articles.

The Esthonian folk-tales are likewise of much interest, and in many cases of an extremely original character; and these also have never appeared in an English dress. I have, therefore, selected a sufficiently representative series, and have added a few ballads and short poems. This last section of the work, however, amounts to little more than an appendix to the _Kalevipoeg_, though it is placed at the end of the book. Esthonian ballad literature is of enormous extent, and only partially investigated and published at present, even in the original; and it would therefore be premature to try to treat of it in detail here, nor had I time or s.p.a.ce to attempt it. I had, however, intended to have included a number of poems from Neus' _Ehstnische Volkslieder_ in the present volumes, but found that it was unnecessary, as Latham has already given an English version of most of the best in his "Nationalities of Europe."

The Introduction and Notes will, it is hoped, be sufficiently full to afford all necessary information for the intelligent comprehension of the book, without overloading it; and it has been decided to add a sketch-map of this little known country, including some of the places specially referred to. But Esthonian folk-literature, even without the ballads, is a most extensive study, and I do not pretend to do more than offer a few specimens culled from some of the most easily accessible sources. My professional work does not allow me time to attempt more at present; and it is from the same cause that my work on the _Kalevala_ has been delayed so long.

In outlying parts of Europe like Finland and Esthonia, which were not Christianised till long after the southern and western countries, primitive literature has survived to a much greater extent than elsewhere; and the publication of the _Kalevala_ and the _Kalevipoeg_ during the present century furnishes a striking example before our very eyes of the manner in which the Iliad and the Odyssey grew up among the Greeks, before these poems were edited in the form in which they have come down to us, by order of Pisistratus.

The princ.i.p.al books used in the preparation of this work are mentioned in the short Bibliography. The names of others quoted or referred to will be found in the Index, which has also been drawn up in such a manner as to form a general glossary.

W.F. KIRBY.

CHISWICK, _September 1894_.

INTRODUCTION

ESTHONIA

Esthonia, or Estonia, as some prefer to write it, is the most northerly of the three so-called German or Baltic provinces of Russia--Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland. It is bounded on the north by the Gulf of Finland, which lies between that country and Esthonia; on the east by the Government of St. Petersburg; on the south by Livonia, and on the west by the Baltic. Opposite its western coast lie numerous large islands, the most important of which are Dago and Oesel; these islands nearly close the north-west corner of the Gulf of Riga.

The northern part of Livonia (including the island of Oesel, already mentioned) is partly inhabited by Esthonians, and is dealt with in popular literature as forming part of the country. The four provinces of Esthonia proper, which are constantly referred to, are as follows, the German names being added in brackets. Two western, Arju or Harju (Harrien) on the north, and Laane (Wiek) on the south; one central, Jarva (Jerwen), and one eastern, Viru (Wierland). East of Livonia lies the great Lake Peipse or Peipus, eighty miles long and thirty-two miles broad at the broadest part, across which the son of Kalev is said to have waded to fetch timber from Pihgast or Pleskau, which name is used to include the Russian province of Pskov, bordering the lake on the south and south-east. At two-thirds of its length the lake is divided nearly in two, and the southern portion is sometimes called Lake Pskov.

It may have been across the narrow part between the two ends of the lake that the hero is supposed to have waded, when, even during a great storm, the water reached only to his girdle.

The coast of Esthonia is rocky, but the interior of the country is very marshy, though there are no navigable rivers or lakes of much importance except Lake Peipus, which we have already mentioned. Small lakes, however, are very numerous, the largest being Lake Virts.

Esthonia was one of the countries conquered during the Middle Ages by the crusading German Knights of the Sword, and has been described as a country with a Finnish population and a German aristocracy under Russian rule. Occasionally we meet with reminiscences of oppression by the German n.o.bility in the songs and tales; as, for instance, in the story of the Royal Herd-boy; while everything beautiful or above the ordinary life of the peasants is characterised as Saxon.

The bulk of the population speak a language very closely allied to Finnish, and they possess a large store of oral literature, much of which has been collected, and in part published, during the present century. It has, however, attracted very little attention out of Esthonia, except in Finland, and to some extent in Germany, and very few articles on the subject have appeared in England or France. It is believed that this is the first work published in England giving any detailed account of the popular literature of Esthonia, and it does not pretend to be exhaustive, nor to extend much beyond the publication of Kreutzwald, Neus, and Jannsen.

The Finnish-Ugrian race, though not Aryan, is widely distributed throughout Europe and Asiatic Russia, and the princ.i.p.al peoples belonging to it in the North are the Finns, the Esthonians, and the Lapps, who speak very similar languages, and whose tales and legends possess much similarity, while in the south the Magyars are more distantly related to them. The Lapp hero-tales, however, have more of a historical basis, while the popular tales are much shorter and less artistic. It is, however, curious that Swan-maiden stories are peculiarly common among the Lapps. Several other lesser known peoples belong to the same race, whom we need not further notice.

Esthonian abounds in dialects, but is so close to Finnish that it bears almost the same relation to it as Lowland Scotch to English, or perhaps as Danish to Swedish. But there is a strong admixture of German words in Esthonian, and their tales, when exhibiting traces of foreign influence, have apparently derived it from Germany. In Finnish tales, on the contrary, Russian influence is often very apparent.

The orthography is a little unsettled, words like Ukko or Kalev being often written with a single or double consonant, as Uko or Kallev; while words like Kapa are often written with double vowels, as Kaapa.

The p.r.o.nunciation of most of the letters resembles that of English, or, in the case of the vowels, German, and calls for no special remark.

_j_, as in nearly all languages except English and French, corresponds to our _y_.

_v_ is printed either _v_ or _w_ in Finnish and Esthonian, but corresponds to our _v_, and is thus used by the best Finnish authorities. Of course the Germans properly write it _w_, their _w_ corresponding to our _v_.

For the modified vowels we have no exact equivalent in English; _a_ and _u_ are p.r.o.nounced nearly as in German; but the __ may roughly be said to resemble our _ee_ in sound. _y_ has somewhat of a _u_ sound, as in the Scandinavian languages; and, as in these too, the modified vowels are placed at the end of the alphabet, but in the following order: _u_, _a_, __. Musical as is Finnish itself, Esthonian is still softer, as may be seen in the dropping of final consonants, as Vanemuine for Vainamoinen; and in such words as _kannel_ (harp) for _kantele_. As in most parts of Northern Europe, the Gothic character is still much used in Finland and Esthonia, especially in literary works.

As a specimen of the language we may quote the original of the lines on p. 14:--

Rist.i.tantsi tantsitie, Viru tantsi veeritie, Arju tantsi hakkatie, Laane tantsi lhutie, Sre liiva stkutie, Murupinda piinatie.

Tahte peig ja Salme neidu, Pidasivad pulma ilu!

We may add the text of the lines on p. 49:--

Kalevide poeg ei vasi; Piht on meehel pihlakane, lanukud unapuusta, Kaevarred vahterased, Kuunarnukud kunnapuusta, Srmelulid ssterased, Srmekuuned kuuslapuused, Raudarammu kiges kehas.

THE KALEVIPOEG

In the year 1838 some Esthonian scholars founded a society called "_Die gelehrte Ehstnische Gesellschaft_," and set themselves to collect the popular literature of their country. Doubtless encouraged by the recent publication of the _Kalevala_ in Finland, Dr. Fahlmann undertook specially to collect any fragments of verse or prose relative to the mythical hero of Esthonia, the son of Kalev, intending to weave them into a connected whole. He did not live to complete the work; but after his death Dr. Kreutzwald carried out his design, and the book was published, accompanied by a German translation by Reinthal and Bertram, from 1857 to 1861.

The materials were defective, and were augmented and pieced together, not always very successfully or artistically,[1] by Dr. Kreutzwald, and the story is interrupted by long lyrical pa.s.sages, especially at the beginning of some of the cantos, which are tedious and out of place in a narrative poem. Consequently, a complete translation would hardly be sufficiently attractive; but there is so much that is curious and beautiful in the poem, that I think that a tolerably full prose abstract may perhaps be found both useful and interesting, as opening up an almost new subject to English readers.

Besides Reinthal's translation, there are two condensed abstracts of the poem in German, one by C. C. Israel, in prose, published in 1873, and the other by Julius Grosse, in hexameters, published in 1875.

But while the _Kalevala_ has been translated into six or seven languages, and into several of them two or three times, extremely little has been published on the _Kalevipoeg_ outside of Esthonia and Finland.

The metre is the eight-syllable trochaic, which is the commonest metre used by the Esthonians and Finns. In the _Kalevipoeg_ the verse usually flows continuously, while in the _Kalevala_ it is arranged in distichs, almost every second line being a repet.i.tion of the first in other words; nor is the _Kalevipoeg_ quite so full of alliteration as the _Kalevala_.

Longfellow adapted this metre in his _Hiawatha_ from Schiefner's German translation of the _Kalevala_, and as it was then a novelty in English, it was set down at the time as Longfellow's own invention, and was much ridiculed. A similar metre, however, was used before the appearance of _Hiawatha_ in some parts of Kenealy's _Goethe_, which was published in 1850, and subsequently condensed and completed under the t.i.tle of "A New Pantomime." I quote a pa.s.sage from this wonderful but eccentric poem (_Goethe_, p. 301) to show the manner in which Kenealy has used it in the lighter parts of his work; but in some of the darker pa.s.sages it shows itself as a versatile metre of great power in English:--

"We have come, enchanting ladyes, To sojourn awhile, and revel In these bowers, far outs.h.i.+ning The six heavens of Mohammed, Or the sunbright spheres of Vishnu, Or the Gardens of Adonis, Or the viewless bowers of Irim, Or the fine Mosaic mythus, Or the fair Elysian flower-land, Or the clas.h.i.+ng halls of Odin, Or the cyclop-orbs of Brahma, Or the marble realms of Siva, Or the grandly proud Walhalla."

I do not find this metre used in either of the two cognate poems, _Faust_ and _Festus_.

To return to the _Kalevipoeg_, the poem consists of twenty cantos and about 19,000 verses. Some of the legends are found also in the _Kalevala_, and the giant-hero whose life and adventures form its subject is evidently the same as the Kullervo of the _Kalevala_, as will be seen in our notes on various pa.s.sages in the poem.

Of the other heroes of the _Kalevala_, besides an occasional reference to Vanemuine and Ilmarine (Vainamoinen and Ilmarinen), we find no trace; but three heroes, apparently cousins of the Kalevipoeg, appear suddenly in the poem. These are usually called by their patronymics, Alevide, Sulevide, and Olevide, but sometimes simply Alev, Sulev, and Olev.

[Footnote 1: This is specially noticeable in the manner in which the story of the Great Oak Tree is scattered in disjointed fragments through three cantos; and in the unsuccessful result of the Kalevide's voyage, when he reaches his goal after his return by a land journey.]

FOLK-TALES IN PROSE

The most important collection of Esthonian prose tales was edited by Kreutzwald, and was published by the Finnish Literary Society at Helsingfors in 1866, under the t.i.tle of _Eestirahwa Ennemuistesed jutud_, and has since been reprinted at Dorpat. In 1869 the same Society published a useful little Esthonian-Finnish glossary to the volume. A good German translation of many of these tales, by F. Lowe, appeared at Halle in 1869, under the t.i.tle of _Ehstnische Marchen_, with notes by various contributors; and M. Dido, who has lately translated two or three of the tales into French, and given more or less detailed notices of the others, mentions that they have also been translated into Russian. Other collections of Esthonian tales have since been published; and Harry Jannsen has published a selection in German under the t.i.tle of _Marchen und Sagen des estnischen Volkes_ (Dorpat, 1881; Riga, 1888).