The Story of Kullervo

Notes and Commentary

5 The Story of Honto Taltewenlen. An alternate title or sub-title written in the upper left corner of the first folio: Honto is one of Tolkien’s several by-names for Kullervo (see below); Talte is his by-name for Kalervo (see below); wenlen, a patronymic suffix equivalent to poika, is apparently a Tolkien invention based on the Finnish model. Taltewenlen would thus be ‘Son of Talte (Kalervo)’.

(Kalervonpoika). Poika is a Finnish patronymic suffix, thus the full name means ‘Kalervo’s Son’, or ‘Son of Kalervo’.

when magic was yet new. This phrase, cancelled in the manuscript, is here retained in brackets, since magic (also called sorcery) is practised throughout the story by Untamo, who is described as ‘a fell sorcerer and man of power’, by the dog Musti (himself a possessor of magic abilities), and by Kullervo, who can shape-change animals. Kalevala has numerous references to magic, probably remnants of primitive shamanism and shamanic practices usually performed through singing. One of the ‘big three’ heroes of Kalevala, Väinämöinen, has been interpreted as a shaman. He has the epithet ‘eternal singer’, and defeats a rival magician in a singing contest by singing him into a bog. In Tolkien’s story both Untamo and Kullervo ‘weave’ magic with their fingers. Kullervo also uses music — singing and playing a magic cow-bone pipe.

Sutse. A name of Tolkien’s invention intended to replace earlier ‘Suomi’ (the Finnish name for Finland) in the text. Other replacement names, all written in the left margin of this opening paragraph, include ‘Telea’ for earlier Karelja, ‘the Great Land/Kemenūme’ for earlier Russia, and ‘Talte’ (see above) for earlier Kalervo. Asterisks beside both textual and marginal names coordinate the emendations. With the exception of ‘Talte’, the replacement names become standard, and are more or less consistently used throughout the remainder of the text. These changes offer the clearest evidence of Tolkien’s developing tendency to go from merely following the Kalevala nomenclature to using names of his own invention.^{4}

Kemenūme (The Great Land). Replaces Russia in the text. May be based on Kemi, a river in northern Finland on which stands the town of the same name. But see footnote to entry for ‘Sutse’.

Telea. Replaces earlier Karelja. Karelja is a large area on both sides of the Russo-Finnish border, and is the region where most of the narrative runos (songs) compiled by Lönnrot were collected.

Kalervo. Father of Kullervo. His name is probably a variant of Kaleva, a Finnish culture-hero and patronymic ancestor whose name survives in Kalevala (with locative suffix — la, ‘place or habitation’ thus Land of Kaleva or Land of Heroes), and in that of his descendant Kalervo. Kalervo is also called by Tolkien Talte, Taltelouhi, Kampa, and Kalervoinen, the last formed with the Finnish diminutive suffix inen. In Finnish, a name can occur in several different forms, depending on the use of diminutives. Cp. Untamoinen below.

Untamo. Brother of Kalervo, uncle of Kullervo. He is possessed of magic powers, and is also a sadist and a would-be murderer. Also called Untamoinen, Unti, Ūlto, Ulko, Ulkho.

borne in years past both a son and a daughter and was even now again nigh to childbirth. The elder brother and sister of Kullervo appear in Kalevala but only enter the story after Kullervo leaves the smith’s household. This ignores the fact that Untamo has already destroyed everyone but Kalervo’s wife, who is pregnant and delivers Kullervo in captivity. The compiler of Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot, apparently combined two separate stories in order to include Kullervo’s incest and death. Tolkien repairs the disjuncture by introducing the older brother and sister at the beginning of the story.

6 black hound Musti. Tolkien first called the dog Musti, a conventional Finnish dog name based on musta, ‘black’, translating as something like ‘Blackie’. Halfway through the draft, he changed the name to Mauri — possibly formed on Finnish Muuri∕Muurikki, ‘Black one’ or ‘Blackie’, (used of a cow) — then reverted to Musti. I have retained both, with Mauri where it first appears followed by Musti in square brackets.

7 cruel and worthless carles. Carl: a churl, a rustic, a peasant. Compare Anglo-Saxon ceorl. Tolkien’s text mixes Anglo-Saxon archaism with Finnish and pseudo-Finnish names.

foully entreated his folk and lands. The word ‘entreat’, which conventionally has the meaning of ‘supplicate’ or ‘plead with’, seems startlingly inapposite in this context. It is not a mistake, however, but Tolkien’s deliberate usage of the word in its archaic meaning, as cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, of ‘treated’ or ‘dealt with’. The OED gives an example from 1430: ‘So betyn (beaten), so woundyd, Entretyd so fuly [foully].’

gloomy halls of Untola. The locative or habitative suffix la identifies this as the home of Unto (Untamo).

Kalervo’s babes. In Kalevala Kullervo discovers late in the story, after escaping the smith, that he has a sister, but the twinning of the siblings in the present narrative is the invention of Tolkien and not in the original.

Kullervo. Tolkien translates the name as ‘wrath’, a meaning unattested in Kalevala, where it is said to be of disputed origin. It appears to be formed off the patronymic Kalervo. Tolkien described his hero as ‘hapless Kullervo’, and identified him as ‘the germ of my attempt to write legends of my own’ (Letters, p. 345). Kullervo is the earliest of Tolkien’s displaced, heroes, orphans and exiles, a succession that will include Túrin (modelled directly on Kullervo), Beren, and Frodo. Tolkien gives his Kullervo a variety of by-names or epithets: Kuli (an obvious short form of Kullervo), Sake, Sākehonto, Honto, Sāri, Sārihontō. Such multiple naming is typical of Kalevala, where for example the hero, Lemminkainen, has the nicknames Ahti (‘King of the Waves’), Ahti-Saarelainen (‘Island-Ahti’ or ‘Man of the Island’), Kaukomieli (‘[Handsome] man with a far-roving mind’), Kaukolainen (‘Man of Faraway Farm’).

Wanōna, or ‘weeping’. Compare Túrin Turambar’s surviving sister, Nienor/Níniel, whose names mean respectively ‘mourning’ and ‘tear-maiden’. Wanōna is a name of Tolkien’s own devising, as in Kalevala the sister is not named. One early occurrence in the manuscript calls her Welinōre, but this is immediately cancelled and replaced with Wanōna, and the ‘W’ is also crossed out and ‘U’ written in above it (Folio 3). The name occurs once as Wanilie (Folio 4). One instance late in the manuscript changes Wanōna to Wanōra (Folio 7), with the ‘W’ overwritten with ‘O’, thus Oanōra. Oanōra (for Wanōna) appears again on the verso of Folio 11 in the sentence ‘And as yet was his heart bitter against his own folk too save Oanōra only.’ The sister is not cited by name in the succeeding portions of the text.

8 for ill cradle rocking. The ‘for’ in this phrase should be taken to mean ‘because of’. The tradition that physical mistreatment of an infant could have psychological repercussions is an old one. Compare the saying, ‘as the twig is bent so grows the tree’.

one generation from the men of magic. Compare with Tolkien’s use of the word magic in the opening line, ‘when magic was yet new’. Kullervo is in touch with ancient shamanic practices.

not yet more than knee-high. Mythic heroes traditionally grow at an accelerated rate. Compare the Greek Hercules and the Irish Cú Chulainn. Wanōna, described as ‘wondrous’, also grows at an accelerated rate. In this respect, the twins may owe something to the classical Apollo and Artemis, twin children of Leto by Zeus. In some versions of their story both grew to full adulthood within the day of their birth.

9 hound of Tuoni. Hounds in mythology are frequently associated with the underworld, either as guardians or as guides. In Kalevala Tuoni is Death (personified) also called Lord of Death. His domain is Tuonela, the underworld, so-called from his name plus the locative/habitative suffix la.

10 Tuoni the marshland. Perhaps an error for Suomi. See entry for ‘Sutse’ above.

{and to Kullervo he gave three hairs…} This entire sentence, cancelled in the manuscript, is retained in the present text since a magic hair of Musti’s later saves Kullervo’s life.

11 a [hundred] fathoms. The word in brackets is illegible in the manuscript, but ‘hundred’ is used in Kirby’s translation.

12 the great knife Sikki. In Kalevala the knife is not named. In his article ‘From adaptation to invention’ John Garth cites Tolkien’s Etymologies, a root SIK- with the Qenya and Sindarin derivatives sikil, sigil, meaning ‘dagger, knife’ (Tolkien Studies Vol. XI 2014, p. 40, The Lost Road, 385).

13 Now a man in sooth I deem me. This is the first of the ‘chunks of poetry’ interspersed among the prose sections which Tolkien described (Letters, p. 7) as his narrative style for The Story of Kullervo, and there are rough drafts among the note folios. It is in the so-called ‘Kalevala metre’, that Tolkien would have known from the Kirby translation, in which he first read Kalevala. This is a rendering into English of the Finnish four-beat eight-syllable line, and is most familiar to English-speakers as the metre of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. It is less monotonous in Finnish. Alternate versions of the poem appear on folios 22 recto and (upside down) on the verso.

14 Lempo. Described in Folio 6 as ‘plague and desolation’. The name is confusingly close to the Kalevala name for Lempi, father of the playboy hero Lemminkäinen. Finnish lempi is ‘erotic love’. Tolkien has borrowed the name but not the meaning.

16 daughter of Keime. Obscure. Possibly a reference to Russia, called Kemenūme in the text; alternatively a possible reference to Teleä/Karelja, glossed in Folio 6 as ‘land of Kēme’s birth’.

17 the smith Āsemo. The name Āsemo is apparently Tolkien’s invention to replace the Kalevala name for this character, Ilmarinen, formed on ilma, ‘sky, air’. Āsemo may be formed from Finnish ase, ‘weapon, tool’ (he is, after all, a smith) with the suffix mo, used to change a noun into a proper name. In Kalevala the smith Ilmarinen has a far greater role, hammering out the lid of the sky and forging the magical Sampo, actions which qualify him as a kind of creator-god, but might have made him too potent a figure for his minor role in Tolkien’s story. Mythic heroes such as Kullervo are often fostered out to smiths; for example the Irish Setanta was fostered to the smith Culann from whom he took the name by which he was thenceforth known, Cú Chulainn, ‘Hound of Culann’. The Norse hero Sigurd was mentored by the smith Regin. Puhōsa, the smith’s homestead, is hard to locate geographically. It is said at various times to be in the Great Lands identified in the opening paragraphs as Russia, but also in Telea, identified with Karelja.

18 swart and illfavoured. It is Tolkien’s invention to have his hero’s angry and resentful internal emotional state externalized in his dark and ugly outward appearance. In Kalevala, Kullervo is described as handsome and yellow-haired. Folio 23 recto contains the marginal note ‘Kullervo ugly’ and beneath it, also in the margin, ‘Mauri black’.

20 thralldom. Slavery, serfdom, state of bondage. From Anglo-Saxon thræl, from Old Norse thræll, ‘servant’.

daughter [of] Koi Queen of the marshlands. The smith’s wife, in Kalevala called Pohjan neiti, ‘North maid, North miss’, is unnamed in Tolkien’s story, identified only as the daughter of Koi. In Finnish koi is not a proper name but a word meaning ‘dawn, daybreak’, so this usage is Tolkien’s invention. Although Koi does not appear in the story, Tolkien describes her in the name-list as ‘Queen of Lōke’ (see below). Tolkien clearly means the character to be equivalent to Louhi, a major character in Kalevala, where she is a sorceress, the Mistress of Pohjola the Land of the North, and the scheming mother of the North maid. The name Louhi is a shortened form of Loviatar, minus the feminine suffix tar. In Kalevala, Loviatar is called Death’s daughter, the half-blind daughter of Death’s Domain. One of Tolkien’s name-lists identifies ‘Louhiatar’ as ‘name of smith’s wife’ (see entry for ‘Kivutar’ below).

Puhōsa. Untamo’s homestead. Also called Puhu, perhaps as a diminutive.

21 blue woods/Blue Forest. Finnish sininen salo translates literally as ‘blue wilderness’, but is often translated ‘hazy blue wilderness’ or ‘blue woodland haze’, the result of rising mist in forested areas and especially in low-lying ground. Tolkien associates the colour and the phenomenon with mystery and magic — blue Puhōsa, the blue woods round Untamo’s dwelling, the Blue Forest of Kullervo’s wanderings.

22 Ilu the God of Heaven. Also called Iluku and sometimes confused with Ukko. In Tolkien’s list of names in Folio 6 (see below) Ilu is identified as the God of the Sky. Contrast with Malōlō below. It is worth noting that Ilu is also the initial element in Ilúvatar, the Elvish name for the godhead of Tolkien’s mythology, the ‘Silmarillion’.

Manatomi. Sky, heaven, also called Ilwe, Ilwinti.

Guard my kine. The longest of Tolkien’s ‘chunks of poetry’, this charm to protect cattle follows closely the incantation of equivalent length by the smith’s wife in Runo 32 of the ‘Kullervo’ portion of Kalevala, which Tolkien calls the ‘splendid kine-song’ (see essay and Notes). He clearly felt it to be an important element in both Kalevala and his own story. Both passages are testament to the importance of animal husbandry in a subsistence economy, and both, by their naming of the many woodland and nature spirits (though here Tolkien allows himself some poetic invention), give a good picture of the pagan Finnish worldview.

23 daughters of Ilwinti. Apparently air spirits, perhaps breezes. Ilwinti is formed from ilma, ‘sky, air.’ The mother goddess in Kalevala is called Ilmatar, ‘Maid of the Air’ (Magoun), or ‘Daughter of the Air’ (Kirby); literally ‘air maiden’ from ilma (‘air’) plus tar, the feminine suffix.

Manoine. From its context with ‘daughters of Ilwinti,’ ‘blue meads of Ilwinti,’ and ‘white kine’ (clouds), Manoine is likely to be equivalent to Manatomi as sky or heaven (see Manatomi above).

Ukko. The ancient Finnish thunder-god. The name means ‘old man’, and the diminutive, ukkonen, is a term for thunder. See ‘Ilu’ above.

children of Malōlō. Folio 6 identifies Malōlō as ‘a god, the maker of the earth’. In the preceding lines the daughters are called ‘maidens great and ancient’, and ‘mighty daughters of the Heaven’. They appear to be ancient feminine divinities or spirits.

24 Palikki’s little damsel, Telenda, Kaltūse, Pūlu. Names apparently of Tolkien’s invention.

Kame. Perhaps a variant of Kēme.

25 Terenye maid of Samyan. Folio 6 lists Samyan as ‘god of the forest’, making him the equivalent of (or replacement for) Tapio, whose daughter is Tellervo, also called ‘wind spirit’. Terenye could then be either a forest spirit, a dryad, or akin to the daughters of Ilwinti.

And the women fire will kindle. On Finnish farms smudge fires were lit in the evenings, creating smoke to keep away mosquitoes which bothered the cattle.

26 Honeypaw. Certain wild animals in Northern Europe, such as the bear and the wolf, were considered so powerful that to speak their names was to invite their appearance, with predictable danger to human life. Thus circumlocutions, by-names or descriptions were often used, such as ‘honeypaw’, or ‘bruin’ (brown) or ‘winter sleeper’, or ‘woodland apple’ for the bear. All of these appellations are applied to bears in Kalevala, where the actual word for ‘bear’ is karhu. Tolkien would use this name himself in a 1929 ‘letter from Father Christmas’, in which the North Polar Bear reveals his ‘real name’ as ‘Karhu’. In Tolkien’s poem the smith’s wife calls the bear ‘Uru’ (bear) but she also flatters him with an affectionate-sounding nickname.

27 Kūru. In Folio 6 called ‘The great black river of death’ with possible variant Kuruwanyo. Finnish kuolema is ‘death’, and Tolkien may have formed the name from that base.

30 neatherd. An old word for cattleherder. The word neat is archaic and obsolete, but is specific in distinguishing cattle (cows) and oxen from other domestic hoofed animals such as sheep or goats.

31 Amuntu. In Folio 6 identified as Hell.

Nyelid. The list of names on Folio 6 gives Nyēli as a by-name for Kampa, which is itself a by-name for Kalervo. Nyelid could mean something like ‘of the clan of’. But see ‘The Etymologies’ in The Lost Road, where NYEL- is glossed as ‘ring, sing, give out a sweet sound. Q nyello singer; nyelle bell; T Fallinel (Fallinelli) = Teleri [PHAL]. N nell bell; nella- sound bells; nelladel ringing of bells. Q Solonyeldi = Teleri (see SOL); in Telerin form Soloneldi’.

32 Men shall hither come from Loke. A place-name apparently equivalent to Lohiu. The similarity to Loki, the name of the Old Norse trickster god, may be intentional. An etymological relationship between Loki and Louhi has been suggested, but cannot be demonstrated.

But shall shudder when they hear them. This and the following two lines are syntactically awkward, and seem to require emendation. The fact that they are also metrically irregular begs for poetic as well as grammatical smoothing. The word I have transcribed as ‘hear’ (and it certainly looks like it) yet has the ‘h’ ascender firmly crossed like a ‘t’. Logically, ‘hear them’ should be followed by ‘of’: ‘hear them of thy fate’, but ‘of’ is not there. ‘To’ is jotted in the margin to the left of, and (confusingly) between, the last two lines. It is capitalized, as if beginning a sentence, but it works better after ‘Woe’, and the final word (or words) is/are illegible. A workable emendation would be ‘But shall shudder when they hear them/ [of] thy fate and end [it is written ‘and’] of terror./ Woe to thou who…’

far Lohiu. Etymologically similar to ‘Louhi’ and ‘Louhiatar’ but here clearly referring to a place, not a personage. See entry for ‘Lōke’ below.

33 Jumala most holy. In Kalevala Jumala is a sacred being, often translated as ‘God’, ‘God on high’, or ‘Creator’. Perhaps originally a pagan figure but assimilated to Christianity.

34 I was small and lost my mother father / I was young (weak) and lost my mother. Cancelled in the manuscript, the lines are a near direct quote from Kirby’s translation of Kalevala: ‘I was small, and lost my father, I was weak, and lost my mother.’ They are retained here as a possible indication of Tolkien’s personal interest in what he called ‘a very great story and most tragic’. The parallel with Tolkien’s own life — his father died when he four years old, his mother when he was twelve — is self-evident.

Blue-robed Lady of the Forest/Woman of the Forest/Blue Forest Woman. The first title follows that of Kirby’s translation, and Tolkien has added variations on the epithet. Magoun’s translation has ‘green-robed maid of the thicket’, Friburg’s has ‘blue-robed matron of the forest’. The mistress of the forest, traditionally named as Mielikki, is the consort or wife of Tapio, a major woodland deity. The world of Kalevala is full of nature spirits, woodland demi-gods who appear when needed. This one has a particularly portentous role, since it is when Kullervo disobeys her instructions to avoid the mountain that he has the fated meeting with his sister.

35 Louhi’s daughter. Almost certainly an error for ‘Koi’s daughter’, the smith’s wife.

36 daughter of Tapio. A dryad, a woodland spirit.

Tapio. God of the forest.

37 the wife of Ilmarinen. A mistake for Āsemo. Ilmarinen is the smith in Kalevala and Tolkien originally kept the name, then changed it to Āsemo (see above).

40 wailing ‘Kivutar’ Kullervo’s sister apparently was at one stage of composition to have had the name (possibly a nickname) Kivutar. At the top of Folio 22 verso is written a brief list of names:

Kalervo — Paiväta

Kiputyltö — maiden of pain — his wife;

Kivutar — daughter of pain — his daughter.

Louhiatar — name of Smith’s wife

Saari — Kalervoinen — the hero

Both Kiputyltö and Kivutar are formed from Finnish kipu, ‘pain’. In his translation of Kalevala Friburg calls Kiputyltö ‘Pain Maiden’; Magoun calls her ‘Pain Girl’ and translates Kivutar as ‘Pain Spirit’ and identical with ‘Pain Girl’ (i.e. ‘maiden of pain.’). Kirby leaves the names untranslated.