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Updated: June 1, 2025
When Lemminkainen saw him he prayed to great Ukko to send a shower of icy hail upon the fiery Hisi-steed, and presently a great shower of hail rained down, and every hailstone was larger than a man's head. After the hail was over, Lemminkainen came up to the fiery horse and coaxed him to let the golden bridle be slipped over his head.
Then was Wainamoinen born on the waters, and reached a barren land, and gazed on the new heavens and the new earth. There he sowed the grain that is the bread of man, chanting the hymn used at seed-time, calling on the mother earth to make the green herb spring, and on Ukko to send clouds and rain.
But now came the third and most terrible of all, for Ukko sent a mighty storm-wind, which lashed the waves into a fury, and stirred up the ocean to its very bottom. And at the very first pitch of the ship the magic kantele was swept overboard by the waves, and Ahto, the sea-god, caught it and carried it off to his home beneath the waves.
Saying this he left them and put on his armour and harnessed his steed into his sledge. Then he sang a song, calling on all the spirits of the woods and the mountains and the waters and on great Ukko himself to help him against the Northland wizards, and when his song was ended he drove off like the wind. In the evening of the third day he reached a little village in the Northland.
But the old man bandaged up his knee with a silken bandage, and prayed to Ukko to come to his assistance. And suddenly the pain left Wainamoinen and his knee became as strong and well as ever. Then he raised his eyes in gratitude to heaven and prayed thus to Ukko: 'Praise to thee, my Creator, for the aid that thou hast given me. For thou hast banished all my pain and trouble.
Ahti answered: 'I have well repaid the scorn of the Northland maidens, for I have brought the fairest of them with me in my sledge. I brought her well wrapt in bear-skins hither, to be my loving bride for ever. Beloved mother, make ready for us the best room and prepare a rich feast, that my bride may be content. His mother answered: 'Praised be gracious Ukko, that hath given me a daughter.
The spittle was rocked by the waves and warmed by the sun, until after a long time it was washed ashore. There the daughters of Ukko, the Creator, saw it, and said: "What would happen if great Ukko were to breathe the breath of life into this writhing, senseless mass?" But Ukko overheard them and said: "Naught but evil comes from evil, therefore I will not give it life."
The North American Indians, as we saw, worship the Great Spirit, the heaven with its breath, to whom sun and moon and other ordinances of nature act as ministers. In many cases heaven is the highest god. In others again the sun is supreme. Ukko the great god of the Finns is a heaven- and rain-god. Perkunas the god of the Lithuanians is connected with thunder.
But Wainamoinen prayed to Ukko: 'I thank thee, O Ukko, that thou hast protected me; but never suffer any other of thy heroes, not even the wisest, to go against the laws of nature to the awful Tuonela. For there are but few who return from thence.
Then he prayed to Ukko to drive away all these diseases from them, and to send these evil spirits to Tuoni's kingdom, where they belonged.
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