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About a month after this, all the maidens were met together for a dance in a glen among the hills, and among them was Kyllikki.
Suddenly Lemminkainen came galloping up in his sledge and seized the fair Kyllikki as she was dancing with the rest, placed her in his sledge, and drove off like the whirlwind, and as he flew by the frightened maidens he cried out to them: 'Never tell that I have taken Kyllikki, or I will cast a magic spell over your lovers, so that they will all leave you and go off to the wars and will never come back to dance and make merry with you.
"These things is it safe to undo them?" he asked, fumbling with safety-pins. "Yes, that's all right," laughed Kyllikki, loosening her own cloak. Olof had taken off the outer wrappings. He lifted the little arms, held the boy upright, looking at him critically, like a doctor examining recruits. "Long in the limbs and sound enough, by the look of him!"
But fair Kyllikki alone would have nothing to do with him would not even look at him in spite of all his endeavours to win her. At last she was tired out with his attentions, and told him that he had better return home, for she did not like him, and that so long as he stayed there she would not even look at him. Still he did not go away, but waited until a chance came to carry out his new plan.
The daughter at Moisio is well known too; none carries her head so high, and a tender glance from her eyes is more than any of the young men round can boast of having won. Kyllikki is her name and no one ever had such a name at least, folk say there's no such name in the calendar. The lumbermen's rearguard had come to Kohiseva.
"Olof dear!" she cried, taking his hand. "What have I done? I did not mean to reproach you. It might be my fault as well it must be mine more than yours...." But Olof sat motionless as before, save for a shiver that now and then passed through his frame. And Kyllikki, seeing him thus, felt her own trouble fade; a wave of unspeakable tenderness and affection came over her.
Now at the time my story begins, there lived in the Northland a beautiful maiden named Kyllikki. She was so lovely that the Sun had begged her to marry his son and come and live with them. But she refused, and when the Moon came and besought her to marry her son, and the Evening Star sought her for his son, she refused them both.
As soon as Lemminkainen came home, his sister Ainikki came to him and told him how Kyllikki had broken her promise and had joined in the dance. Then Lemminkainen grew angry and sad at the same time, and he went to his mother and asked her to steep his clothing in the blood of serpents, for he was going off to battle since Kyllikki could not keep her vow.
"That ghastly little abortion came to me to-night and told me...." He stopped, on purpose to torture her the more. "What did he tell you?" asked Kyllikki breathlessly. "You know well enough ... that you had given him long ago what should have been mine to-night!" He stood enjoying the effect of his words: Kyllikki staggered as if struck exactly as he had intended.
So the two swore before the great Ukko, Lemminkainen promising never to go to battle, and Kyllikki that she would never go to the village dances. And then Lemminkainen rejoicing cracked his whip, and they galloped on like the wind over hills and valleys towards the plains of Kalevala.
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