AN ANALYSIS OF CERTAIN FINNISH ORIGINS.
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IF such branches of knowledge as zoology, botany, and geology were confined to a study of the external surfaces of animals, plants, and the outer crust of the earth, without taking note of the skeleton, of the internal structure, or of the underlying strata, our knowledge would be vastly curtailed — would be of comparatively little account. There is ground, therefore, for supposing that the analysis of the internal structure of a set of origin-stories will not be wholly useless. Several reasons suggest themselves for selecting for this purpose the group of origins taken from the magic songs of the Finns, which have appeared in various issues of Folk-Lore. Their number is considerable. Including variants and other versions, they amount to one hundred and thirty-five, embracing fifty-one different subjects. They all belong to one country and people, are all couched in the same ballad metre, exhibit the same imagery and treatment, and belong, so far as their external form is concerned, to one period, and that a modern one. Though there are nearly fifty more Finnish prose origins, I have not included them, as some are clearly importations from over the border and their general character and style is quite different from the metrical ones. For instance, a considerable number describe metamorphoses from men into animals, generally as a punishment, a mode of origination which is not found in the metrical origins, though it is true such transformations are not unknown in the Kalevala.
The analysis about to be submitted to you is not of the
