Kalevala shortly #4 - Aino's tragedy

• This is part of my "Kalevala series" in which I tell the epic folklore poetry of Finns as a series of short stories.

• Don't know what Kalevala is? Check my introduction post of it: Kaleva: An epic folklore of Finns - A source of inspiration for Tolkien's mythology

• Want to start from the beginning? Go to Part 1: The birth of Väinämöinen

• Previous part: The challenge of Joukahainen

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Miserable for his fate as the becoming wife of Väinämöinen, Aino sorrowed and cried to her father, her brother Joukahainen, her sister and her mother who said to her child:

"Why my daughter are you crying. Eat well and more graceful you'll come.
In a chest inside my hovel, there are silver, golden clothes for you,
for the joy of whole family, for the honor of our home tribe."

But Aino didn't listen her mother's advice: instead she cried for two more days and the mother asked her again:

"What my poor virging are you crying, miserable, who do you complain on?"

Aino answered:

"Your own child you gave away to, commanded for decrepit old man.
I wish you rather commanded me, down below the waves among fish.
Much better down below is to be, rather than for old man's safety."

She got her clothes from the barn, put them on and ran three days in the woods crying until arriving next to a sea in where she went to clean up herself. She saw a boulder and climbed on top of it.

But it rolled down and Aino sank down into the ocean with it:

"Next to a shore I went for wash, into the sea I dipped for bath,
there I, little chicken, was lost, my death in deep waters I found."

When a rabbit delivered the message of Aino's death to her mother, she cried so heavily that it created three rivers of intense rapids.

In every river's islet a tree was grown and on each a cuckoo came and the first one sang: "of love, of love!" the second one: "bridegroom's, bridegroom's!" and the third one: "of bliss, of bliss!"

Aino's mother heard the cuckoos and sorrowed:

"I, poor mother, shall not long for, listen to cuckoos, my heart aches! Otherwise eyes out of my head I'll, cry with tears flowing on my cheeks."

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• Part 5: The virgin of Vellamo

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Pics: 1, 2