SEVEN BROTHERS

SEVEN
BROTHERS

BY
ALEXIS KIVI

TRANSLATED FROM THE FINNISH BY
ALEX MATSON

LONDON
FABER & FABER LIMITED
24 RUSSELL SQUARE

FIRST PUBLISHED IN MCMXXIX
BY FABER AND FABER LIMITED
24 RUSSELL SQUARE LONDON W.C.I
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY TREND AND COMPANY PLYMOUTH
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PREFACE

Alexis Kivi, or Stenvall, the greatest prose poet of Finland, was born at Palojoki (Nurmjaervi) in Finland, on the 10th October, 1834, in the poorest and humblest of circumstances.[1] His father was a village tailor, his first home a low-roofed hut in a remote part of the country, hemmed in by those virgin forests which Kivi has described so unforgettably in his Seven Brothers.

His life was one long struggle against poverty and countless difficulties. A great hunger for knowledge and education made him leave his native village quite early, but there were so many forced interruptions in his school days at Helsinki, the capital, that he only entered the University at the age of 23. There, however, he failed to complete his education, partly on account of want and ill-health, partly also, perhaps, because of his inborn restlessness, which induced him to take to the life of a literary freelance. Soon he turned his back on Helsinki, which he was only to revisit at intervals, and returned to the countryside for good and all. Here, in peace and isolation, he began to write in earnest. Yet, in spite of an apparently solitary life, he spent all these years in the best company conceivable, in long intercourse with the rarest spirits that ever communed with the minds of men. The Bible, Cervantes, Dante, Homer and Shakespeare--these were his friends, his teachers, his models! A secret kinship, a sure and unspoilt instinct, made this lonely ailing student turn away from the literature of his own times and guided him to these masters, the source of all poetry.

The influence of Shakespeare was especially powerful with him; as a contemporary critic remarks: ‘Shakespeare loosened the tongue of his Muse, though it would be too much to say that the English Titan taught him speech’. There were many plays and poems of Shakespeare which he learned by heart in Swedish translation (the Finnish version was not published until later) and he never tired of reading and re-reading them. Professor V. Tarkiainen, the well-known student of Kivi, observes that from Shakespeare Kivi learned the art of constructing a play, of grouping characters and situations, of contrasting light and shade. Moreover, Shakespeare and Cervantes together helped him to develop and express his great natural gifts of humour.

A kind-hearted, middle-aged motherly soul, by name Charlotta Lonngvist, cook and sempstress in the same parish, gave Alexis Kivi the shelter of her roof for many years, and such material help besides as her own scanty means allowed. And there it was, in the Swedish-speaking parish of Siuntio, that the greater number of Kivi’s masterpieces came into being, Seven Brothers among them.

Nevertheless, the narrow circumstances of his life continued to have a depressing effect upon Kivi. When at leisure, he used to spend weeks together in the forest, snaring birds. Occasionally too, when want of money and companions and books became too oppressive, he escaped on short visits to the capital, or found solace for the weariness and restlessness of his soul in the glass.

No author living in Finland in those days could possibly hope to earn a competence as a writer; the reading public was small, and authors’ fees there were little or none. Still less was this possible in the case of Alexis Kivi, for he was a poet of such solitary and original genius that few of his contemporaries were able to understand the significance and range of his talents. He was like the bird that migrates too early and settles among drifting ice--his genius was not fated to light upon its hour, or awake response.

Outward circumstances combined with more intimate causes to hasten his fate. Ill-health and nervousness had dogged him through life; insanity at last declared itself. For a time the suffering poet was nursed in Helsinki, but soon he was pronounced incurable and sent back to his native village. There he was placed in the care of his brother, to whom the village allotted as maintenance a yearly allowance of rye. Kivi survived for one more year--passed, however, in almost complete apathy--and on New Year’s Eve 1872, his life, which had been rich only in the fairy gold of visions and dreams, was over. At his death he was only thirty-seven years of age. His last words were ‘I live!’

These words, murmured on his sad deathbed, were prophetic. For Kivi is still really alive, and more so perhaps than during his joyless wanderings upon this earth. He is a living force in the mind of to-day, in the literature and poetry of Finland.

Kivi’s writings embrace all the different branches of poetic art--lyric, epic, dramatic. In each of these different spheres he has experimented and attained to mastery; in epic and drama, he takes rank as a pioneer.

He first attempted a gloomy tragedy in prose, choosing a subject from the Kalevala, treating of Kullervo, one of the tragic heroes of the national epic; condemned to slavery, he broods like Hamlet, meditating vengeance upon his father’s brother. But this burning tragedy of revenge was to remain a great fragment in the hands of the author--an unfinished torso. In the choice of theme, however, and in certain soaring lines, one already discerns the master-hand.

His one or two ventures upon lofty tragic themes in the Shakespearean manner are scarcely likely to survive. But in his one-act play, Leah, the achievement is complete and fully realized. This lyrical play, with its biblical setting, has been described as a ‘sweet flower, where the voluptuousness of the East is blended with Finnish clarity.’

The action takes place during the life-time of Christ, in the house of Zacchæus, the publican. Though Christ is not seen in person on the stage, the radiance of His unseen presence seems to pervade the scene and glimmer through the ecstasy of Leah, daughter to Zacchæus.

It is from the first performance of Leah in 1869 that the beginnings of the Finnish theatre are usually dated.

However, it was not until Kivi wrote that broad comedy of peasant life called The Heath Cobblers that his powers for creating characters and situations became revealed in their full range and richness and versatility. The subject is the unsuccessful courtship of Esko, the heath cobbler’s son, who reaches the home of his would-be bride just as she is celebrating her marriage with another suitor. There is a world of varied and many-coloured types in this play; all of them are depicted with the inexhaustible joy of creative energy, and bathed in the golden light of genial humour.

Like some smaller piece cast in the same mould as The Heath Cobblers, and of the same material, yet in miniature, is Kivi’s one-act comedy, The Betrothal. Once again the subject is an unsuccessful courtship, but this time the hero is a village tailor. The Betrothal appeared in an English version in the Dublin Review, translated by Professor R. Pape Cowl, and was staged by the Ashburton Players in 1922.

Professor Tarkiainen has made a happy comparison between Kivi’s poetry and the wonder-bird of Finnish folklore--that bird ‘whose one wing touches the water while the other sweeps the heavens’.

In his lyrical poems, so tender and delicate that they scarcely will suffer any fetters of form, Kivi sometimes attains to a wonderful unearthliness, as in the poem called Dusk, which begins:

‘What fainting light
What shadows of night
Surround my soul!’

Here already one feels the gathering menace of the oncoming clouds of insanity.

In his prose, there is the same frail and dreamlike lyricism, combined with a strong grasp of the realities--the soarings of the imagination are linked with rich faculties of pithy observation, which spring directly from the soil and often indeed bring us near to naked realism.

These two fundamental and apparently contradictory qualities are also found together in Kivi’s masterpiece, Seven Brothers, now for the first time given to the English public. Seven Brothers was first published in 1870, only a short time before Kivi’s fateful illness. Nine years went to the writing of this work, and more care and pains were spent upon it than upon any other of his writings.

In this great epic novel, which has been compared with the greatest literary creations of all times and countries, and where the influence of Cervantes is unmistakable, Kivi has found the most original theme, the largest scope for his creative fantasy. The story tells of the fate of seven Finnish brothers who fly from civilization into the freedom of primeval forests, and return at last of their own free-will to human habitations and society.

There are passages where the story gleams with lyrical loveliness, as in Aapo’s tale of the Pale Maiden, or in that scene set in Eero’s home on a Sunday evening, when his young wife sings a lullaby to her child. Again, the description creates for us powerful plastic pictures, full of forest mystery, of the brothers’ hunting adventures, of their fight on the top of a boulder with a frenzied herd of bulls. At times it turns to the comic and burlesque, as in the spelling scene between the brothers and the parish clerk; and now it is rich in bubbling dialogue, and we listen to the living tones of each brother’s voice in turn, from obstinate, bristle-haired Juhani, and prating, drunken Simeoni, down to the youngest, sly and witty Eero.

In this spacious tale, unique among Kivi’s writings, and also in Finnish literature, the virgin forest-lands of Finland live and have their being, even as the wandering Kivi knew and loved them.

Kivi’s language, wonderful and original always, reaches full maturity in Seven Brothers. At a time when Finnish was still undeveloped as a literary language, he forges and creates an instrument entirely his own which he can turn, now to sublime and tragic themes, now to the comic and burlesque; he draws upon all sources and most of all upon the Bible, the Kalevala and the peasant talk of his fellow parishioners, with its wealth of idioms and puns. The nearest parallel which English readers could find would probably be the work of John M. Synge, for he has drawn upon like sources, and the rhythm of his prose most nearly recalls the language of Kivi.

The fate that befell Seven Brothers was the fate common to all masterpieces created in solitary grandeur, and independently of their time. So far from gaining early recognition, Kivi’s epic found very few readers able to divine its true significance. In various quarters indeed, criticism was violently hostile: the language was held to be coarse, the construction (here there was some justice for the comment) not sufficiently compact, and the component parts--epic, dramatic and lyric--wanting in harmony. The author’s unquestionable birthright of genius remained an unguessed secret for most of his contemporaries. It was only by slow degrees and with the passage of years that Kivi’s genius came to be recognized. To-day, fresh editions of his works are constantly appearing; Finland’s greatest artist, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, has illustrated Seven Brothers; towns vie with each other in erecting monuments to the author’s memory. Special students, known as Kivi-scholars, have risen into prominence and devote much time to the study of Kivi’s life and work, the most representative among them being the forementioned V. Tarkiainen, Professor of Finnish Literature at the University of Helsinki, and Dr. J. W. Lehtonen, lecturer at the same University.

Seven Brothers has already been translated into many languages, notably French, German, Swedish, Estonian, and now also into English.

The words of the Bible concerning the stone which the builders rejected have indeed come true of Alexis Kivi; for Kivi (The Stone) has become the cornerstone of Finnish literature.

AINO KALLAS.

SEVEN BROTHERS

CHAPTER I

Jukola Farm, in the south of the province of Häme, stands on the northern slope of a hill, near the village of Toukola. Around it the ground is bestrewn with boulders, but below this stony patch begin the fields, where, before the farm fell into decay, heavy-eared crops used to wave. Below the fields is a meadow, rimmed with clover and cleft by a winding ditch; and richly it had yielded hay before becoming a pasturage for straying village cattle. In addition to these, the farm owns vast forests, bogs and backwoods, most of which the founder of the farm, with admirable foresight, succeeded in adding to it at the first great settlement of boundaries in former days. On that occasion the master of Jukola, with an eye more to the benefit of his descendants than his own best, had accepted as his share a forest ravaged by fire and by this means received seven times the area given his neighbours. But all signs of this fire had long ago disappeared from his holding and dense forests had replaced them. Such is the home of the seven brothers whose fortunes I am about to relate.

Their names, in order of age, are: Juhani, Tuomas, Aapo, Simeoni, Timo, Lauri and Eero. Tuomas and Aapo are twins, and so are Timo and Lauri. Juhani, the eldest, is twenty-five, while Eero, the youngest, is barely eighteen. In build they are sturdy and broad of shoulder: all of middling height except Eero, who is still very short. The tallest of them is Aapo, though perhaps not the strongest. The honours in this respect are with Tuomas, who is indeed famous for the breadth of his shoulders. A peculiarity that marks them all is the brownness of their skin and the stiff, hemplike quality of their hair, the coarseness of which is especially striking in Juhani.

Their father, a passionate hunter, met a sudden death in the prime of his life while fighting an enraged bear. Both were found dead, the shaggy king of the woods and the man, lying side by side on the bloodstained ground. The man was terribly mangled, but the bear, too, displayed the marks of a knife in its throat and side, while the keen ball of a rifle had pierced its breast. Thus perished a sturdy fellow who had killed in his time over fifty bears. But for the sake of these hunting trips he neglected the care of his farm and, bereft of a master’s guidance, it had gradually fallen into ruin. Nor were the boys better inclined towards sowing and ploughing; from their father they had inherited his keen longing for the chase. They laid traps, set gins and snares, and dug grouse-pits, to the undoing of wildfowl and hares. In such pursuits they spent the days of their boyhood, until they could handle fire-arms and dared approach the bear in its wilds.

Their mother tried, indeed, with scoldings and the rod, to turn their thoughts to work and diligence, but the brothers’ obstinacy proved equal to all her efforts. She was in all a deserving woman, known for her straightforward and upright, though perhaps a trifle harsh, nature. A fine character too, was her brother, the boys’ beloved uncle, a fearless sailor who in his youth had sailed the distant seas, seeing many peoples and lands; until losing his eyesight and becoming stone-blind, he came to live the dark days of his old age on Jukola Farm. Here, as he carved by touch such things as dippers, spoons, axe-shafts, clappers and other useful articles, he would often tell his nephews tales, and describe to them wonderful happenings in his own and other countries, and, in between, miracles and events from the Bible. To these talks of his the brothers listened attentively, impressing them deeply on their memories. With less pleasure they heard the commands and scoldings of their mother, whose often-repeated whippings failed to cure them of an affected hardness of hearing. It would also often happen that, scenting the approach of a hiding, the whole crowd would take to flight, causing their mother and others much anxiety and only making their own case worse.

I will relate here one episode of their childhood. As the boys were well aware, there was a hen’s nest under their barn belonging to an old woman called ‘Mother Pinewood’, her little cabin standing in a clump of pines near Jukola. The thought of baked eggs coming into their minds one day, they decided to rob this nest and to set off into the forest to enjoy their plunder. Acting on this idea, they emptied the nest and fled with one accord to the woods, six of them, for Eero still crawled at that time at his mother’s feet. And when they reached a certain bubbling brook in a dark spruce-wood, they made a fire on its bank, wrapped the eggs in rags, and, after dipping them in water, set them to bake in the hissing ashes. Then when the eggs were ready they ate a tasty meal and set off home again, satisfied. But on reaching the home hill they were met by a hurricane, for in the meantime their roguery had been discovered. Mother Pinewood scolded and raged, and with angry looks their own mother came forward to meet them, a whistling rod in her hand. But the boys felt loth to face this tempest and turning, fled again to the forest for shelter, heedless of their mother’s cries.

A day now passed and then another, but nothing was heard of the truants; and at last their absence began to cause their mother great anxiety; her anger soon changed to sorrow and tears of pity. She set out to look for them, scouring the forests in all directions, but without finding them. Whereupon the matter began to assume a more dreadful aspect, and at last called for help from the authorities. Word was sent to the Sheriff’s man, whose duty it was to organize search parties, and without delay the whole of Toukola village and its neighbourhood was called up. And now a party of old and young, men and women mingled, set out in a long line to comb the forests, with the Sheriff’s man at their head. On the first day they searched the vicinity, but without the hoped-for result; the next day they moved farther afield, and now as they breasted a hill, they saw far away on the edge of a bog a blue pillar of smoke that wound upward to the sky. Carefully marking the direction in which the smoke was seen, they pushed on towards it. And then, having drawn nearer, they heard a voice which sang:

‘We fared as well in olden days
Behind the river here.
The driftwood kept our fire ablaze,
The water was our beer.’

Whereat the mistress of Jukola, hearing this song, cheered up again, for she recognized the voice as that of her son Juhani. And by certain crashes which rang through the trees, the searchers knew they were approaching the truants’ camp. The Sheriff’s man gave an order to surround the boys and then to close in silently, keeping, however, some distance away.

His orders were obeyed. And when the party, closing in on all sides, had come within fifty paces of their quarry, they paused to look upon this sight; at the foot of a rock a small shelter had been built of pine branches, and against the door Juhani lay on a mossy bed, looking up at the clouds and singing. Some distance from the shelter a merry fire was blazing, and in its embers Simeoni was roasting a grouse the brothers had caught in a snare. With sooty faces, Aapo and Timo--blacked for some game--baked turnips in hot ashes. Lauri sat in silence on the edge of a little claypit, modelling clay whistles, bullocks and spirited foals; and a fine row he already had of them drying on a moss-clad trunk. Tuomas wielded the fire-hammer: he spat frothily on a stone embedded in the earth, then, placing a glowing ember on the moisture, he brought down another stone on it with all his might, whereupon a crash, often as loud as the report of a rifle, would echo around, and a sooty smoke issue from between the stones.

JUHANI. ‘We fared as well in olden days Behind the river here ...’

But the Devil will get us yet out here. That’s as sure as anything, my young beavers.

AAPO. I said that as soon as we took the hare’s road. What fools we are! Robbers and gypsies can wallow like this under the naked sky for me.

TIMO. God’s sky, anyhow.

AAPO. Living here with bears and wolves.

TUOMAS. And with God.

JUHANI. Right, Tuomas! With God and his angels. Ah! if we could only see now with the eyes of a soul in heaven, we’d see plainly enough a whole host of sheltering angels with wings camped around us, and God himself looking like a grey old gaffer sitting in our midst like the best of fathers.

SIMEONI. Ay, but what is poor mother thinking now?

TUOMAS. That she’d be glad to baste us to a turnip-stew as soon as she lays her claws on us.

JUHANI. Ai, boy, that would be a basting!

TUOMAS. A tingling basting! Ay, we know that.

SIMEONI. There’s no doubt about that. Best go and take it now and end this bullock’s holiday.

JUHANI. A bull doesn’t quite go of its own free will to the slaughterer’s bench, little brother.

AAPO. What nonsense, boy! Winter’ll soon be here, and we weren’t given a pelt to our backs at birth.

SIMEONI. So there’s nothing else to do but quick march home and take our hiding. After all we’ve earned it.

JUHANI. Brothers, let our backs be spared a few more days. Who knows what way out God may show us in the next two or three days. Ay, let us still tumble about a bit out here: the days round yon tree-stump fireplace of ours, the nights in our home of pine-branches, grunting in a row like suckling-pigs in a stye.--What dost thou say, old Lauri, in thy claypit? What? Shall we go nicely and be beaten?

LAURI. Let’s stay here still.

JUHANI. That’s what I think’s best too. Just so!--But that’s a fine herd of cattle thou hast there.

TUOMAS. Cattle and poultry, that boy has.

JUHANI. A grand flock. There’s the making of a real clay-whistle maker in thee.

TUOMAS. A real plasterer.

JUHANI. A first-class plasterer.--What Russian clay doll is that just out of thy paws?

LAURI. This is only a kind of a little boy.

JUHANI. See the beggar!

TUOMAS. Makes boys like any man.

JUHANI. Boys as stout as tree-stumps; and looks after them too like a man.--But brothers, hurry up with that dinner on the table; my stomach’s starting to grumble. More ashes, red-hot ashes, on the glowing side of that turnip. Whose turn is it to steal turnips?

SIMEONI. My turn to do the work of sin.

JUHANI. To keep the life in our bodies we are forced to pinch a little from others. If this is a sin it is one of the tiniest done in this worm-eaten world. And if I die with no other black marks in my book than that, I’m sure those little crow’s marks won’t stop me from coming to a somewhat better life. I’d soon be chased out of the real bridal chamber, that I do know, but there’d always be some doorkeeper’s job for a boy, and even that would be terrible fun.--Ay, let’s believe that and cheerfully help ourselves to a belly-full at a time.

AAPO. I believe we’d do well to leave Kuokkala’s turnip-patch in peace for a while and find ourselves another. A daily loss soon sets a farmer watching his land night and day.

THE SHERIFF’S MAN. No need to worry over that, my boys, no need at all. Well, well, why this flurry? Look: a host of guardian angels has been camped around you right enough.

Thus spoke the Sheriff’s man to the brothers who, greatly scared, sprang to their feet and rushed off in all directions, but to their terror soon saw their way to freedom cut off everywhere. Then the Sheriff’s man spoke again: ‘You are in the net now, rascals, safe in a net from which there’ll be no escape until you have been scaled a little as a reminder, a gentle reminder, of the footsoreness you have caused us, you scoundrels. Now, mother, bring thy birch-rod here, and give it them with a warm hand. And in case there’s any resistance, there are plenty of help-women here.’ Followed a beating from mother’s hand, man by man through the whole flock of brothers; and great was the outcry in Kuokkala Wood. Hotly the woman plied her rod, yet the Sheriff’s man held stoutly that their punishment had been too mild.

But when this final task was over, everybody returned home, amongst them the mother with her sons. All the way she scolded and stormed at the truants; nor did the tempest abate when they arrived at the house. Even while setting out a meal for her sons on a stool the goodwife still raged, threatening to give them a new beating. But seeing the voracious hunger with which they dug their teeth into the bread and salt fish, she turned her face away, secretly wiping a tear from her brown, rugged cheek.

Thus ended the boys’ escapade. And this was the event from their childhood for which I interrupted my tale.

Another favourite amusement of the brothers was a game called ‘hitting the disc’, which even in the years of their manhood they still loved to play. Divided into two parties, they fought fiercely to see which party could drive the other backward, the point where the disc was laid low deciding their positions. There was always a great running, shouting and jostling, and the perspiration ran steaming from their faces. The disc sped humming along the road, often rebounding from the bat on to a man’s face, so that when they returned from their game, more than one brow would be adorned with mighty horns, or a cheek would be swollen to the likeness of a round loaf. So passed the days of their youth: the summers in the forest or hitting the disc on the highway, the winters on the top of the huge oven in perspiring heat.

But even the brothers could not fail to notice that the times changed. Events occurred which compelled them in greater measure than hitherto to think upon the morrow and to alter somewhat their former ways.--Their mother had died and one of them had now to take over the reins, to steer the farm clear of total ruin and to see to the payment of the Government Tax, though considering the wide area of land and forest belonging to Jukola, this was not large. But on a mismanaged farm there are duties enough. And to crown all, it chanced that the new Rector of the parish was a fearfully strict man in all that pertained to his calling. He was, above all, merciless to backward readers, and used every means in his power, not stopping short even of confinement in the stocks, to stimulate their taste for learning. And soon his sharp eye had fallen on the Jukola brothers. Already he had sent them by a writ-server a sternly-worded command, bidding them hasten with more than usual speed to the parish clerk to be taught how to read.--With these events in their minds, sitting one evening in late summer in the tupa, the large living-room in their home, the brothers conversed amongst themselves in the following words:

AAPO. What I say is that this wild life isn’t right, and is sure to end in ruin and destruction. Brothers! Other works and other habits, if we wish for peace.

JUHANI. What thou sayest is true, it can’t be denied.

SIMEONI. God ha’ mercy! Wild and unbridled has our life been unto this day.

TIMO. This life’s as good as another, and so’s this world. It’s all right, even if it does tell on a man. Oho!

JUHANI. The wildness, or to use the right word, the carelessness of our life cannot be denied. Let us remember though, ‘youth and folly, old age and wisdom’.

AAPO. It’s time now for us to grow wiser, time to put all our lusts and passions under the yoke of our brains and do chiefly that which brings profit, and not that which tastes best. Let us begin without delay to work up our farm into respectable shape again.

JUHANI. Well spoken! We’ll start on the manure first like dung-beetles, and to give us enough twigs to mix it with let the chopping-block echo round Jukola’s walls from morning to eve; the cattle, too, can do their best to raise the pile; and may the dunghills in our yard rise high as the golden walls of a king’s castle. That’s what we’ll do. Next Monday we begin, and down from the roots.

AAPO. Why not tomorrow?

JUHANI. Not before Monday. There’s no harm in letting the matter ripen. That’s settled then: next Monday.

AAPO. There’s another point we ought to settle at once. It is this: if we wish for order and a firm foundation to our work, one of us must be leader and master. As we know, the right and duty of leadership is Juhani’s both as his birthright and by our mother’s wish.

JUHANI. Ay, the right, the power and the might is mine.

AAPO. But see thou usest it fairly and for the common good.

JUHANI. I’m willing to try my best. If you would only obey me without blows and the whip. Still, I’ll try my best.

AAPO. The whip?

JUHANI. Ay, if so be needed.

TUOMAS. Speak to thy dogs of the whip.

TIMO. Thou wilt never warm my withers, never; let the rod of law and justice do that if ever my back itch for it.

JUHANI. Why will you seize on every loose word? There’s room enough here for all of us to be happy in, as long as we can agree and each draws in his horns.

EERO. Let’s make it plain, anyhow, how we stand to each other.

AAPO. And let us hear what each of us has to say.

JUHANI. What dost thou, Lauri, always a man of few words, say?

LAURI. I’d say something. Let us move into the forest and say farewell to the racket of this world.

JUHANI. Ey?

AAPO. The man’s raving again.

JUHANI. Move into the forest? What foolishness!

AAPO. Never mind him. Listen, this is how I have thought out the matter. Thou, Juhani, hast the first choice of being master, if it is thy wish.

JUHANI. It is my wish.

AAPO. Then we others, as long as we stay in this dear home of ours and are unmarried, will work here, eating the farm’s food and getting our clothes from the farm. The first Monday in each month, except at sowing and reaping times, is to be our holiday, though on that day too the farm must feed us. Every year the farm is to give each of us a half-barrel of oats for sowing, and every year we are to have the right to cut a common clearing of at least three acres. Such is my plan for as long as we stay here, and are single. But I know that none of us would willingly leave the beloved soil of our dear Jukola, and why should we? There’s plenty of room for seven brothers on these lands. But should anyone in the course of time feel the wish to start a home of his own and yet be unwilling to begin cutting up the farm as he has the right to demand, with all the cost of surveyors, couldn’t he agree to what I now say? Let him inherit a piece of land to build his house and lay out fields on. Let him also be given a share of the pasturage and the right to make a clearing in the forest big enough for him to be able to keep a couple of horses and four or five head of cattle. This land he can farm tax-free and enjoy its produce, both he and his children, living peacefully on his own soil.--That’s how I have thought out this matter. What do you say?

JUHANI. Fairly sensibly thought out. Let us take and weigh over these paragraphs.

LAURI. Another and better plan is this. Let us move far into the forest and sell wretched Jukola, or rent it to the tanner of Rajaportti. He has told us of his wish for such a bargain; but he wants the farm for his own for at least ten years. Let us do as I say and move with horse, dogs and guns to the foot of Impivaara’s steep fell. There we can build ourselves a merry cabin on a merry, sunny hillside, and there, hunting game in the forests, live in peace far away from the din of the world and its crabby people.--This is what I have dreamed of night and day for many years.

JUHANI. Has the Devil turned thy brains, boy?

EERO. If not the Devil, a forest-nymph.

LAURI. That’s what I’m thinking of and that’s what I’ll do some day. There we could live like gentlemen, hunting wildfowl, squirrels, hares, foxes, wolves, badgers and bushy-coated bears.

JUHANI. Well! Go on with the whole Noah’s ark from mouse to moose.

EERO. There’s an idea for you: say goodbye to salt and bread and instead suck meat, gorge flesh like mosquitos or Lapland wizards. Would we eat fox and wolf too, out there in Impivaara’s caves, like hairy ogres?

LAURI. Foxes and wolves would give us skins, the skins money, and with money we could buy salt and bread.

EERO. The skins will do for clothing, but let meat, bloody, smoking meat, be our only food; salt and bread are no use to apes and baboons in the forest.

LAURI. That is what I think of and what I shall yet do.

TIMO. Let us take and weigh over the matter from the roots upwards. Why shouldn’t we be able to munch bread and salt in the forest? Why? It’s Eero who is a mocker, always in our way, always the cross stick in our pile. Who can prevent a man of the woods from drawing near to a village now and again, once in a while, as his needs drive him? Or wouldst thou hit me on the head with a stick if I did, Eero?

EERO. No, brother, I would even ‘salt give to him who berries doth bring’.--Move, boys, move, I won’t forbid you, but will even cart you there, carry you off at a wolf’s trot.

JUHANI. They’d soon be driven back by the forest sprites, that I’ll wager.

LAURI. For him who comes a second time the home threshold is high. I know, so don’t think I’ll knock at thy door once I have left it.--On May-day I move.

TIMO. Who knows I don’t come with thee.

LAURI. I’ll neither forbid nor invite thee; do as thy heart says is best.--Next May-day I move to Impivaara clearing. At first, until my own warm little cabin is ready, I’ll live in the moss-grown hut grand-father used when burning charcoal. Then, when my day’s work is over, I shall sleep in peace in my hut, hearing the bear whistle in the forest and the grouse calling on Sompio Bog.

TIMO. I’ll come, Lauri; it’s said, Lauri.

TUOMAS. If the times don’t improve, I’ll come too.

JUHANI. Even Tuomas! Wouldst thou too move?

TUOMAS. If the times don’t improve.

LAURI. I’ll move next May-day, even if days of milk and honey were to set in for Jukola.

TIMO. Thou and I, we two, we’ll move from here to Sompio Bog like cranes in spring; and wind and weather whistle.

JUHANI. Well, well! But if I were to admit the truth, there’s a secret spell in Lauri’s plan. The forest draws. Oh the devil! It’s as though I could see the bonny plain of sky behind it.

AAPO. You madmen, what are you thinking of?--Move into the forest! Why? Haven’t we a farm and a farmhouse; a precious roof over our heads?

JUHANI. True, we have a farm to which we’ll stick tooth and nails as long as it smells at all of bread. But look you, if hard luck were to upset everything now, contrary to a man’s best plans, let the forest be my other farm, to which I’ll be quick to scuttle when the last grains rattle in the mill-funnel. Ay, but now we’ll pounce with fearsome speed on the work of farming; and let us go back to the paragraph which was the real question at point.--According to my dull wits Aapo has thought out matters fairly wisely; and all will be well, if each of us works on his own part for harmony and peace. But if it’s trouble we’re looking for, we’ll always be finding something to set our neck hairs bristling.

SIMEONI. Where can we not find it so long as the Old Adam tickles and itches within us, here between our bones and skin.

TIMO. I have always thought of Old Adam as a solemn old gaffer in a felt hat, long black coat, kneebreeches and a red waistcoat reaching to the pit of his belly. As such a gaffer he strides in my thoughts, driving a pair of oxen.

SIMEONI. By Old Adam we mean the root of sin, original sin.

TIMO. I know he is the mark and sign of original sin, the horned devil of Hell, yet as such an old boy he marches before me, driving a pair of oxen. I can’t help it.

JUHANI. This point of religion can wait, and we’ll stick to the matter at hand.--Aapo, what are we to do with those two crofts of ours, Vuchenkalma and Kekkuri?

AAPO. We have to remember that both their tenants once wrested the land from raw, dismal forest, and therefore ought not to be evicted from their holdings--which would indeed be wrong--so long as they have the power to keep their fields in crop, and even then the law is that they must be looked after in their old age. Such are the facts in that matter.--But let us glance at another question, which I believe is a ticklish one. For it is the most important step we are called upon to take down here, a step that either makes our heads gray before their time, or brings sunshine into our lives and rounds off our days with a golden sunset. And it is thee, Juhani, the matter first touches. Note therefore what I say: a wifeless mastership is lopsided and lame: a house without a mistress on its storeroom path....

TIMO. Is like a wolf’s den without the wolf-bitch, or like a top-boot without the other top-boot; truly, there is something lopsided in it, as Aapo said.

AAPO. A home without a mistress on its storeroom path is like a cloudy day, and dullness sits at its family table like a mournful autumn eve. But a good mistress is the bright sun of a house, that lights up and warms.--Lo! she is first to leave her bed in the morning, mixes her dough, lays the breakfast for the men, puts up their food for the day, and then hurries with milkpail in hand to the yard, to milk her mottled cattle. Now she kneads bread, hustles and bustles; now she stands at the table, now trips with a loaf on her palm to the back bench, and now like a tempest she stirs the fire, which spews out flame and smoke from its glowing bowels. Then, while the bread is rising, she finds time at last, with a baby at her breast, to break her own fast, a hunk of bread and a broiled sprat, with sour milk from the bowl. Nor does she forget the dog, the farm’s faithful guardian on the step, or the cat that peers sleepily down from the oven-top.--And now again she hustles and bustles, trips and turns, mixes another dough to rise in her trough, kneads it into loaves and bakes it, and the sweat flows in streams from her brow. And see: when evening falls she has hung the loaves under the ceiling, pole over pole, full-loaded, from which new life breathes down. And when the men return from the forest a steaming supper awaits them on the newly-scrubbed table. But where is the mistress herself? There in the yard she milks her crooked-horned cattle again, and the hissing, foaming crest of the milk rises high in the pail.--So she hustles and bustles, trips and turns, and only when the others already rumble in deepest sleep, does she sink down in prayer beside her own bed. But even then her labours are not over. Uncomplaining she rises from her couch during the night for a moment, for an hour at a time, to hush the child which cried in its cradle.--Such, brothers, is a good mistress.

JUHANI. Well spoken, Aapo, and I well understand thy meaning. It is to turn my thoughts to marriage. Ay, I understand. A wife, thou sayest, is a necessary piece in a household. True. But don’t worry. Thy hope, I believe, will soon be fulfilled. Oh well: ay! I confess that my mind has already pounced in earnest on a maiden, who I hope will be my wife and a good wife, unless the old signs betray me.--Ay, brothers, new times and new tricks draw near for us, and the mastership I must take over is a great weight on my mind. A master has a heavy load to bear down here, and has much to answer for on Judgment Day. I am now responsible for the lot of you; remember that.

TUOMAS. Thou responsible? For what?

JUHANI. I am your master; from my finger-tips the blood will once be drawn for your sakes.

TUOMAS. I answer for both my body and my soul.

TIMO. I answer for myself too. Ho!

AAPO. Brother Juhani, note that such remarks cause bad blood.

JUHANI. I meant bad blood no more than I meant bad flesh. But like tar, like burrs on a hot summer day you seize wildly on an idle, meaningless word, though you know my heart through and through. I’ll lose my temper.

AAPO. Enough of this, and tell us, if thou wilt, who is the maiden who has drawn thy heart to her.

JUHANI. That I will say without flinching. The wench whom I love with a pitiless love is Mother Pinewood’s Venla.

AAPO. Hm.

JUHANI. What didst thou say?

AAPO. Hm, was all I said.

TUOMAS. A vexing matter.

SIMEONI. Venla. Well, well! But may everything be left to the Heavenly Father.

AAPO. Hm, Venla indeed.

JUHANI. What are you muttering at? But ah! I suspect something; and may the Son of the Lord protect us! What? Speak out!

AAPO. Listen: for years my thoughts have been busy around that girl.

SIMEONI. If God has meant her for me, why should I sorrow?

EERO. Don’t then. She is meant for thee, while I take her.

TUOMAS. A vexing matter; the maiden pleases me greatly, that I’ll admit.

JUHANI. Indeed, indeed. Good. And Timo?

TIMO. I make the same confession.

JUHANI. Son of the Lord! And Eero?

EERO. I make the same guileless confession, the same guileless confession.

JUHANI. Good, very good! Ha-ha! Even Timo--Timo!

TIMO. The girl is greatly dear to me, I confess. True she beat me once hard, leathered me like anything, poor little nipper that I was, and I remember that hiding well, ho!

JUHANI. Shut up! The question is now: dost thou love her?

TIMO. Oh ay, that I do, and greatly, that is if she loves me back.

JUHANI. Ah! Thou too steppest in my way then?

TIMO. Not at all, not at all, unless thou really canst not keep thy temper in hand, thy temper and thy tongue. Still, I like the wench a lot and will also do my best to win her.

JUHANI. Good, good! And what says Lauri?

LAURI. What have I to do with the girl?

JUHANI. Whose side art thou on?

LAURI. I won’t be mixed up in the matter on any side.

JUHANI. There’ll be a fine broth anyhow.

LAURI. I’ll keep my spoon out of it.

JUHANI. All of you then, except Lauri. Boys, boys, Jukola brotherhood and kinsmen all! Now we’ll hit out, and earth and Heaven shall shake. Now precious brothers, a knife, an axe or a billet, and one against all and all against one like seven bulls! Right! A billet’s my weapon; I seize this curly-wooded one, and may he blame himself whose skull gets a splinter from it.--Grab your billets, boys, and step forth, if you dare stand up against a man.

EERO. Here I stand armed, though a bit shorter than you others.

JUHANI. Thou, whipper-snapper! But look, I see that mocking, that sly, that damnable grin on thy face again, and it seems thou makest a joke of the whole thing. But I’ll teach thee.

EERO. Why worry, so long as my billet speaks truth?

JUHANI. I’ll soon teach thee. Take your clubs, boys, your clubs, boys!

TIMO. Here I am and my billet, if so needed. I don’t want anger and quarrelling, but if it’s needed.

JUHANI. Thy billet, Tuomas!

TUOMAS. Go to Hades with thy billet, owl!

JUHANI. Fire and lightning!

SIMEONI. Fearful, heathen and Turkish is all this din; but I withdraw from the game and leave my marrying to God.

LAURI. I withdraw too.

JUHANI. Then stand aside, you, stand aside out of the way!--Seize thy billet, Aapo, and let Jukola’s walls echo to the cracking of skulls. Fire and horny devils!

AAPO. Oh wretched heart of man. I’m horrified, Juhani, when I look upon thee now, seeing how thy eyes roll and thy hair stands on end like a tuft of grass.

JUHANI. Let it stand, let it stand, it’s just the ordinary, proper way of it.

EERO. I feel like dusting it a little.

JUHANI. Thou hop-o’-my-thumb! Best for thee to stop nicely in a corner. Away! I feel sorry for thee.

EERO. Take that horrid jaw of thine into a corner in time. I feel sorry for that. Even now it shakes and trembles like a crippled beggar.

JUHANI. Look how this billet trembles, look!

AAPO. Juhani!

EERO. Strike! And it’ll rain back from here, I believe, real hailstones perhaps, big as billets. Strike!

JUHANI. I will.

AAPO. Thou wilt not, Juhani.

JUHANI. Go to the dunghill thou, or take a billet and defend thyself, if I’m not to soften thy head. Take a billet!

AAPO. Where are thy brains?

JUHANI. In this curly-wooden billet; look, now it’ll whisper a word.

AAPO. Wait a bit, brother, wait, until I too have my weapon.--Now then; here I stand with a round club in my hand. But first a word or two, thou Christian brotherhood of Jukola, and then we’ll fight like raging wolves.--Take note; a man in a rage is a bloodthirsty beast of prey and no human being; he is stone-blind to justice and fairness; least of all can he carry out works of love in a rage. Notwithstanding, if we were now to try to look sensibly at this matter that has brought brothers to the point of blows, I believe the case would be this. The girl cannot love all of us, but only one, if she is willing to take any of us as the one in whose company she feels like wandering hand in hand over life’s thorny hill. I think it best, therefore, that we all go together to her and gravely informing her of our intentions, ask her with solemn heart and tongue if she will give her heart to one of us. Then if the girl is willing, let the one on whom the happy choice falls thank his lucky stars, and the others be content with their fate. The one who is left forlorn must swallow his anger, in the hope that he too will meet the one marked out for him. If we do this we shall be acting like men and true brothers. And then the glorified ghosts of our father and mother will step forth from the glowing gate of Heaven and, standing on the edge of a shining cloud, look down upon us, crying to us in a loud voice: ‘So, Juhani, so, Tuomas and Aapo, so, Simeoni, Timo and Lauri, just so, my little Eero! You are boys in whom we are well pleased!’

JUHANI. Man, thou speakest, Devil take me, like an angel from Heaven, and were near to making me cry.

SIMEONI. We thank thee, Aapo.

JUHANI. Thank you. There goes my billet.

TIMO. There goes mine too. And this quarrel ends as I all along wanted it to.

SIMEONI. Aapo holds up a mirror to us, and for that let us thank him.

EERO. Let us thank him and sing a real ‘Simeon’s song of thanksgiving’.

SIMEONI. Mockery, mockery, and scoffing again!

TIMO. Don’t mock, Eero, at the Word of God and Simeon’s song of thanksgiving.

AAPO. Ah, so young and so hardened!

SIMEONI. So young and so hardened! Eero, Eero! Ay, I’ll say no more now, only sigh on thy behalf.

JUHANI. I prophesy, Eero, that we shall have to lay on thee once or twice with a father’s hand. For our mother brought thee up too gently.

SIMEONI. We must punish him while his heart is still youthfully pliant and yielding; but let us do it with loving hand and not in rage. Punishment given in anger drives in devils and not out.

EERO. There’s for thee, and from a loving hand.

SIMEONI. The godless child, he hit me now!

EERO. Right on the mouth. Bile has overflowed for less.

JUHANI. Come here, my boy. Timo, fetch the stick from yon corner.

SIMEONI. That’s it. Juhani, hold him across thy knee while I let his trousers down.

EERO. Stop, in Hell.

JUHANI. Wriggling won’t help thee, weakling.

SIMEONI. Don’t let go of him.

JUHANI. See the wild-cat. But thou canst not escape, no.

EERO. Hit me, you accursed, and I’ll set the house on fire. I swear I’ll raise fire and smoke for this!

JUHANI. What bile! Thou wouldst set the house on fire? Oh what bile!

SIMEONI. The Lord preserve us, what bile!

JUHANI. Give the stick here, Timo!

TIMO. I can’t find it.

JUHANI. Blind, canst thou not see it in yon corner?

TIMO. What, this one? This birch one?

JUHANI. Just that; bring it here.

SIMEONI. Strike, but wisely and not with all thy strength.

JUHANI. I know how.

LAURI. Not a single swipe, say I!

TUOMAS. Leave the boy alone!

JUHANI. He needs a little something on his tail.

LAURI. Thou wilt not lay a finger on him.

TUOMAS. Let the boy go! This minute!

TIMO. May he be forgiven, Eero-boy, this once at least.

SIMEONI. Forgiven, forgiven, until the tares and thorns choke the wheat.

LAURI. Don’t touch him.

AAPO. Let us forgive him: and in so doing we can try to heap coals of fire on his head.

JUHANI. Go now and thank thy luck.

SIMEONI. And pray to God for a new heart, mind and tongue.

TIMO. I’m off to bed.

AAPO. Let us still weigh over one matter.

TIMO. I’m off to bed. Come along, Eero; let’s go to bed and forget this miserable ant-heap of a world, a wretched heap that smokes and steams in the rain. Come on, Eero!

JUHANI. What is the matter thou wouldst thresh out?

AAPO. God ha’ mercy! it is a fact that we don’t know our ‘a’ yet, the first letter of the alphabet, and that although the art of reading is the first duty of every Christian citizen. But the law can force us to learn, the law of the church. You all know what Crown contraption awaits us, ready to seize us in its teeth if we don’t dutifully teach ourselves to read. The stocks await us, brothers, the black stocks, which, with all its holes agape, basks in the church porch yonder like a black boar. With these same pincers of Hell the Rector has already threatened us, and he can carry out this threat if he doesn’t see us hard at work daily, that’s certain.

JUHANI. Impossible to learn to read!

AAPO. It’s a trick human beings have learned before.

TUOMAS. It would make any man sweat though.

JUHANI. And puff. I have such a hard head.

AAPO. A strong will carries its man even through grey granite. Let’s get to work, send for a-b-c books from Hämeenlinna and go to the parish clerk’s to school, as the Rector has commanded. Let us do this before we are taken there by the Crown.

JUHANI. I’m afraid it’s what we shall have to do. I’m afraid so. God have mercy upon us! But this matter can stand over till tomorrow, and let us now get to bed.

CHAPTER II

It is a calm September morning. Dew glitters in the fields; fog rolls along the bare spikes of the leafless trees, to fade at last into the air. This morning the brothers rose in vicious mood and, in a sulky silence, washed their faces, brushed their hair and dressed themselves in their Sunday best. For they had decided that to-day they would go to the parish clerk’s to school.

They now eat their breakfast at Jukola’s long pinewood table, and the brown peas seem to taste well to them, though their air is far from merry and dull care gleams from their brows; the thought of the school-trip, on which they must soon depart, is the cause of this gloom. Yet, having eaten, they did not hasten at once on their way, but sat and rested a while. They sat in silence, some staring moodily downward at the floor, others fixing their red-backed a-b-c books as they turned the stout leaves. Beside the southern window of the farmhouse Juhani sat, looking up along the stony hillside towards the dense pinewood, where the old woman’s cabin glowed faintly with its red-lintelled door.

JUHANI. Venla trips there along the path, and nimbly she skips.

AAPO. And only yesterday both mother and daughter were to go to their kinsfolk at Tikkala to dig turnips and pick whortleberries, and stay there until late autumn.

JUHANI. Until late autumn? It makes me uneasy. I suppose they’ll go; but there’s a farm-hand at Tikkala this year, a bonny lad and a bit of a scamp, and there’d be the end of all our hopes. Best do the great deed this minute; put the question, the question of questions. Let’s go now and ask the wench if she’s willing and if her heart’s aflame.

TUOMAS. I believe that would be best, too.

TIMO. I too.

JUHANI. Ay, ay! Nothing else now but all a-marrying at the same time like true lads. Ay! The Lord protect us! It can’t be helped, so a-wooing, a-wooing! Here we are in our best clothes, washed and brushed; our whole outer man that of a Christian being: clean, and, as it were, born again. I feel very uneasy in my mind. But on to Venla! Now is an acceptable time.

EERO. And may it be also a day of bliss.

JUHANI. Whose bliss, whose? Aha! What dost thou think, boy?

EERO. Why not all of ours?

JUHANI. Meaning that she should marry all of us?

EERO. Why not?

JUHANI. What!

SIMEONI. How in God’s name would that be possible?

EERO. Before God nothing is impossible. Let us all love with one accord.

JUHANI. Shut up, Eero, for now we’re off a-wooing and the same road to school, bags on our shoulders.

AAPO. If we are to carry out the thing properly, one of us ought to act as a kind of spokesman in yon cabin.

JUHANI. An important point. But thou thyself art as though cast for the job. Thou hast a goodly gift; thy speech will always awaken fire and lightning in a man’s breast. Verily, thou wert born to be a parson.

AAPO. What do I know? And why speak of gifts? Here in the forest they fade in the mists of ignorance, die away like a tinkling brook in sand.

JUHANI. Hard luck has kept thee from school.

AAPO. Where would our farm have got the means to send me to school? Remember that more than one food-bag dances between home and school before a lad is ready for the wooden tub. But to come to business again, our wooing-business, may it be as you say. I’ll step forward as the common spokesman and try to speak as a wise man.

JUHANI. Let’s get to work. Lord ha’ mercy! Nothing can help us now, so let’s get to work in earnest. We can leave our bags outside the old woman’s cabin, and Lauri, who has no cows in this well, can guard them from the pigs. Come on now! And let’s enter the bridal chamber with our a-b-c books in our hands; it lends us a kind of solemnity.

EERO. Still more if we turn the last page with the cock on outside.

JUHANI. At it again? But the cock reminds me of a horrid dream I had last night.

SIMEONI. Tell it us; it might be a warning to us.

JUHANI. I dreamed that on yon stove there was a hen’s nest with seven eggs in it.

SIMEONI. Jukola’s seven sons!

JUHANI. But one of the eggs was ridiculously small.

SIMEONI. Eero!

JUHANI. The cock dies.

SIMEONI. Our father!

JUHANI. The hen died.

SIMEONI. Mother!

JUHANI. Then all at once the whole world’s mice, rats and weasels attacked the nest.--What would these animals mean?

SIMEONI. Our sinful passions and the lusts of the world.

JUHANI. I suppose so.--Well, the weasels, rats and mice came and turned and rolled the eggs, tapped and rattled them, so that they broke, and from the little egg burst a very evil smell.

SIMEONI. Mark that, Eero.

JUHANI. The eggs were broken and an awful voice, as the voice of many waters, shouted from the oventop into my ear: ‘all is broken, and the breakage is great!’ So it shouted but at last we began, however, to gathering the mess together and cook it, and in the end we got what is called scrambled eggs; this we ate with great pleasure and even gave some to our neighbours.

EERO. A good dream.

JUHANI. A bad one; thou stankest in it like Hell. It was a very bad dream I had of thee, my boy.

EERO. But I had a real sweet dream of thee; I dreamed that the cockerel in the a-b-c book laid thee, as a reward for thy diligence and wisdom, a big heap of sweets and lumps of sugar. Thou wert greatly pleased and smacked thy lips over them; they gavest me some too.

JUHANI. Did I give thee some? That was a good deed.

EERO. When is it ill to give?

JUHANI. Never; especially if I were to give thee a little taste of the stick.

EERO. Why only a little?

JUHANI. Hold thy jaw, bull-calf!

TUOMAS. Do that both of you, and let us start.

AAPO. Let each take his bag and his a-b-c book.

And they set forth to woo their neighbour’s daughter. In Indian file, silent, they crossed the mound in which their potato-cellar lay, marched up the stony hill and stood at last before Mother Pinewood’s cabin.

JUHANI. Here we are and here we leave our bags; do thou, Lauri, keep faithful watch until we return from the bridal chamber.

LAURI. Will you be there long?

JUHANI. As long as the shaping of our errand demands.--Has anyone a ring?

EERO. It isn’t needed.

JUHANI. Has anyone a ring in his pocket?

TIMO. Not I, nor as far as I know have the others. There you are now: a bachelor ought always to have a ring in his pocket when he goes out.

JUHANI. The Devil! Here we stand now. And peddler Isak was at our place yesterday, who could have sold me both the ring and the shawl. But, I pig that I am, never thought of that.

AAPO. Such instruments we can buy ourselves later. Indeed it is best to know first for certain whether any of us, and which, is to make these joyful purchases.

JUHANI. Who opened the door? Was it Venla?

TIMO. It was the old woman, the long-chinned hag.

JUHANI. Venla’s spinning-wheel hums in there like a merry dung-beetle on a summer evening, foretelling fine weather. Let’s go in now. Where’s my a-b-c?

AAPO. In thy fist, brother. Why, God’s creation, thou art as though a little mixed in thy head.

JUHANI. Nothing much to be afraid of, brother. I’m not smutty in the face, am I?

EERO. Not in the least, thou art as clean and warm as a new-laid egg.

JUHANI. Let’s go in now!

EERO. Wait! I am the youngest and will open the door for you and come in last myself. Walk in.

They entered the old woman’s low-roofed cabin, Juhani first, with staring eyes and hair upright like the spikes of a hedgehog, while with great gravity the others followed at his heels. They entered, and Eero quickly closed the door after them, but himself stayed outside and sat down on the grass, a knowing grin on his lips.

The old woman in whose cabin five brothers now stand as wooers, is a nimble and vigorous woman; she makes a living by keeping hens and gathering berries. All the summer and autumn she bobs about the stump-bestrewn clearings, the mounds where grow the alpine strawberries and whortleberries, bobs and sweats with her daughter Venla. The maiden is said to be beautiful. Her hair is the colour of rust, her glance cunning and sharp, her mouth melting, though perhaps a little too wide. She is short in stature, but broad-shouldered and plump; she is also said to be strong. Such was the brothers’ love-bird in the pinewood’s shelter.

But suddenly the cabin door squeaked and Juhani came excitedly out, angrily exclaiming to the others who still lingered within: ‘come away, boys!’ And soon they were all outside, with annoyance writ large in their faces, and began walking onwards to the village. But when they had come some fifty paces from the cabin, Juhani picked up a stone about as big as a man’s fist and, snorting with rage, cast it at the cabin door. The cabin shook, and inside, the old woman shrieked; then, throwing open the door, she cursed and raged, shaking her fist at the retreating brothers. With their a-b-c’s in their hands and bags on their shoulders the brothers marched after each other along the road to church, without exchanging a word. At a furious speed born of anger they marched: the sand flew and the bags danced; nor did they notice how quickly they fared.

EERO. How did the matter succeed?