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They have the Sampo there, and until it leaves them they will always prosper. And then Wainamoinen asked him of the maiden whom he had gone to woo. 'I have turned that hateful maid into a seagull, Ilmarinen answered, frowning, 'and now she flies shrieking above the rolling waves, and will never have another suitor.
She is more beautiful than the sun and all the stars together, but she will not marry any suitor. But do thou go, dear Ilmarinen, and see her wondrous beauty; forge the magic Sampo for her mother and then thou shalt win this lovely maiden to be thy wife. But Ilmarinen replied: 'O cunning Wainamoinen, I know that thou hast promised me as a ransom for thyself.
Ilmarinen quickly forged a magic rake, and she hurried off with it to the gloomy river Tuoni, praying as she went: 'O Sun, whom Ukko hath created, shine for me now with magic power into the kingdom of death, into dark Manala, and lull all the evil spirits there to sleep.
But Louhi grew angry and upbraided him with not having guarded her other daughter, and thus being guilty of her death, and she scornfully refused to give him another of her daughters. But Ilmarinen went into the house in great anger and there addressed Louhi's next fairest daughter, begging her to come to his home with him and become his wife.
So Ilmarinen put the iron on his anvil, and made from it many fine things and tools of every kind. But he could not harden the iron into steel, though he pondered over it for a long time. He made a lye from birch-ashes and water to harden the iron in, but it was all in vain.
Last of all the mighty gray-bearded heroes took the oars, but yet the vessel did not move. Then Ilmarinen himself grasped the oars, and in a moment the vessel was moving through the waters at full speed, with old Wainamoinen at the helm. They had not gone far when they came to an island, and on the shore was a man working on a fishing-boat.
And the price Ilmarinen paid was three old worn-out kettles, seven worthless sickles, and three old scythes and hoes and axes, surely quite enough for such a fellow as Kullervo. As soon as the purchase was completed, Kullervo asked Ilmarinen and his wife to give him some work for the next day. So they decided to make him a shepherd.
But all at once the babe himself began to speak, saying: 'O aged Wainamoinen, foolish hero, thou hast given a false decision. Thou thyself hast done great wrongs, yet hast not been punished. Thou gavest thine own brother Ilmarinen to ransom thy poor life. Thou persecuted the lovely Aino so that she perished in the deep sea, yet thou wert not killed for all this.
And the storm-wind came and heaped up the clouds so that they formed a boat, and seizing Ilmarinen from the tree it placed him in the clouds and rushed off to the north, carrying clouds and all with it. On and on he sailed, rising higher than the moon, tossed about by the wind, until at last he came to the Northland and the storm-wind set him down in Louhi's courtyard.
He then flees to the isle of Saari, whence he is driven for his heroic profligacy, and by the hatred of the only girl whom he has not wronged. This is a very pretty touch of human nature. He now meditates a new incursion into Pohjola. At this part of the epic there is an obvious lacuna. The story goes to Kullervo, a luckless man, who serves as shepherd to Ilmarinen.
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