Finnish Folklore: Spirits Of Air And Fire
In Finnish folklore, different phenomenons in nature are always personified, such as the maidens of fire and air. they all have different functions in the way the universe works. when people had troubles they would ask for assistance from these goddesses. kiputyttö the pain girl was called when person was in pain. she figuratively eases the pains in her mortel. source: magic songs of the Finns, by elias lönnrot, 1898 narrated by fairychamber
Transcript
The maidens of the air,
Of springs,
Dells,
Swarms,
Etc.
,
Are beneficent beings,
And were often invoked for extinguishing fire and cooling burns.
The four anonymous maidens first mentioned are perhaps the lónotars.
For maidens,
Three celebrated daughters were formerly mowing grass on a misty cape in a foggy Iceland,
And making it into hay,
After spreading it,
Out a fairy Thursas from Turjaland came and burned it to ashes.
It happened opportunely that they were short of ash and in need of lye to wash the head of the sun's sun.
But before they could collect the ash,
A note whisked it away to the banks of a holy stream,
And from it a splendid oak sprang up in another version.
The four maidens,
A triple of brides,
Are making hay with the boy from Bohjola,
Or an eagle from Dúria,
Came and burned the hay,
Put the ash into his wallet and carried it to Lapland,
Where it was sown in black mud,
And from it sprang a huge oak.
Again four maidens find a sapling oak,
And plant it in an Iceland farm where three rivers had flowed from a tear shed by Gudelijn in a charm against injuries from fire.
Ismo,
One of the daughters of the air,
Is asked to come with a speed of thought and pour herself out like a foam upon her son's evil work and throw water from her apron on the burns.
Nunmus or Munmus of the daughters of the air is requested to bring frost and ice,
As there is frost enough in the air to freeze the fingers of an exorcist and allow him to handle fire and hurt.
After Ukko had struck fire in the sky and put it into a golden bag,
He gave it to an air maiden to rock,
Who after Ukko had struck fire in the sky and put it into a golden bag,
He gave it to an air maiden to rock,
Who carelessly let it fall to the earth.
A holy maiden on a cloud,
A woman,
Kapo,
On the rim of a rainbow,
With a golden box under her arm and a golden wing in her hand,
Wiped away the pain caused by burns and solved the injuries of fire.
A maiden standing by a little pond in a drop of water in a cloud carries slush,
Salt,
The injuries of fire.
A maiden standing by the little pond in a drop of water in a cloud carries slush and ice in her arms,
With which she extinguished fire and cooked the burns it had caused.
Again,
In order to extinguish fire,
An exorcist says he will raise up Sumudar,
Daughter of mist,
The poorly woman,
From the swamp,
And she will repair the injury done.
In the next example the character of the air maiden changes,
Though she still belongs to cloud land.
A little girl,
A woman,
Kapo,
Appeared on the edge of a rainbow,
And while smoothing her hair,
The milk in her breast overflowed,
Fell on a honey-dropping meadow,
And from it salts and ointments are obtained.
In the next two examples her function is entirely different.
A maiden lives in the air on the edge of a little cloud,
With a skine of veins on her lap and a roll of skin under her arm.
She let them fall onto the earth,
And from the bits of skin are taken to place on woods from the tooth of a wolf or the claws of a bear.
A maiden above the air from the middle of the sky is made of veins,
Through the bones and joints,
To lengthen short veins,
Shorten toes that are too long and ardent,
And arrange them in their proper places.
Then with the needle and silk thread she is to stitch up the ends of the veins.
These last two air maidens cannot be very different from Sumudar,
Where the becious woman of veins,
Suoni,
The beautiful Sumudar,
Who spins veins from a golden tuft on a copper spitting rock and weaves a cloud of veins,
Is invoked to approach and tie up the ends of broken veins.
An exorcist requests a maiden to rise from Adele from inside a frosty spring,
With her clothes all over frost and rime in order to gap fire's mouth and weigh down the head of Pano.
A fair,
Clean-faced girl is desired to rise from Adele from the corner of a swamp and bring some cooling stuff to lay upon a burn.
A frosty maiden,
An icy girl crouching at the mouth of a frosty spring with a golden ladle in her hand,
Is invoked to throw water upon burns.
In a chant to excite love a grey-eyed maiden is besought to rise from a spring and help a darling wife.
She is to fetch water from the spring of love that the wife may wash her baby.
Add a little bulwidge and make it very beautiful so as to admire it by everyone.
In a chant to fortify water and give it virtue a slender-fingered maiden is invoked to rise from a spring or from the gravel and to fetch energetic,
Serviceable water from Jordan in which Christ was baptized.
Lastly,
A maiden from Adele from the humid herd or a warm maiden from a spring,
Blue socks from a swamp,
A swarthy girl with a shaved head and skinless teeth was holding a copper box containing a golden camp.
One of the teeth of the camp fell out and from it sprang a splint oak,
The head of which seized the sky and its branches held the clouds.
The mist and fog maidens differ considerably from their sisters of the air.
The mist and fog maiden and the air maiden,
Auteretar,
Is asked to sieve down mist and fog to prevent an enemy seeing either to attack or to escape.
The maid of mist and fog is invited to clip wool from a rock and make a shirt of mist,
A copper cloak which an exorcist can wear day and night as a protection against sorcerers.
With the evidence of a leaf-bud,
She pwn yarn dressed in a fine linen,
She is invoked to scatter fog from a sieve before the white animals of the forest when they approach a hunter so that he may have time to get his ball ready.
Fire is the offspring of Hohenes of the Panudars,
Fire's daughter of Lemmes of the Lentohatar,
Who gave birth to her child in the sea.
She could not hold or touch it,
And from that she knew it must be fire.
Hohenes of the Panudars is invoked with Nurnus mentioned above to bring frost and ice to freeze an exorcist and allow him to handle the fire without hurt.
Panudar,
The best of girls,
Is asked to come and quench a fire by putting it into her clothes and keeping it safe there.
An anonymous maid of fire is desired to extinguish fire and repair Panu's work.
She is to bring frost,
Ice and iron held to a ply upon the burns.
If that is not enough,
She is to poke a hayfear's hide into fire's mouth or throw it over Panu's head.
The maid of pain and sickness,
Kivutar,
In spite of her name,
Is always invoked as kindly,
Benevolent personality.
Kivutar has a kettle,
The daughter of Vayner in a pot,
In which she boils pains on the heel of pain and then flings them into a hole nine phantoms deep so that they cannot possibly escape the vehement maid of Kibula.
Sitting on a speckled stone,
Spins pains on a copper spindle,
Winds them into a ball and hurst them into a sea.
The good mistress,
Kivutar,
The distinguished Vamutar,
Daughter of Wunse,
Is asked to take a fetter,
Sweep away wounds,
To put them into her glob,
Which she is then to throw down on the heel of pain,
On which is a big stone.
Then she is to break the stone,
To poke the glob inside and roll it into the depths of the sea.
The lovely old wife of pains,
The good mistress,
Kivutar,
Is requested to come and see the sufferings in a human body and make them cease.
She is to wrap them up in a bundle and throw them into a mountain cleft,
Into a blue stone,
Into a liver-colored chink,
Where they will never be heard again.
Kirsti,
The maid of pains,
Sits on a stone of a pain where three rivers flow,
Grinding the stone of pain,
Twirling the heel of pain.
She is asked to gather the pains into a hole of a blue or a speckled stone and then roll them into the water.
An exorcist wishes that certain pains may be shot down on the pillow of Paivatar.
The maid of swellings,
Koolatar,
The active girl,
The back-er-up,
Is desired to back up her packages,
To remove her needles and monstrous things and take them to an apple or an oak tree.
The beautiful old mother of pains,
The great mistress of the heel of pain,
The old maker of salves,
That makes the best of magic cures,
Is requested to try it if certain ointments are good,
And if so,
To bring them anoint a sick man's wounds.
It is only when we come to origins that the old wife or daughter of pain and sickness is regarded as an evil spirit.
Inflammatory wounds result from the fire that fell from the fiery horn which Koolatar,
The old wife of pain,
Was carrying.
The daughter of pain,
The daughter of death,
Fell asleep on a meadow,
Was made pregnant by an east wind and gave birth to a snake,
And the daughter of pain and Dornis' son are the parents of snails.
Thank you so much for listening.
I have a new course slash lecture series on mermaids in Finnish mythology.
If you would like to deepen your knowledge you can check out that course.
People don't always know that I keep courses in Finnish folklore so I shall try to mention them more often.
You can find my courses at fairychamber.
Com.
If you want to follow me on Instagram,
My name there is at fairychamberart.
Have a great day.
Bye.
