Now they had been waiting a long time, waiting, looking
to see if the girl’s retinue was coming to craftsman Ilmarinen’s home.
The old people’s eyes are running as they sit by the windows,
the young people’s knees are shaking as they wait at the gates,
the children’s feet were getting cold as they stood by the walls,
the middle-aged people’s shoes were wearing out as they walked on the pier.
So on a certain morning, on a certain day
a rumbling is heard in the wilderness, the clatter of a sled on the heath.
Lokka, gracious mistress, a Kaleva descendant, beautiful wife,
uttered a word, spoke thus: “That is my boy’s sled;
now he is coming from North Farm with his young maiden!
Now he is near these parts, near this farmstead,
the house provided by his father, fixed up by his parent.”
Craftsman Ilmarinen is coming home right now
to the farmyard provided by his father, fixed up by his parent.
Hazelgrouse bells are whistling on the sapling shaft-bows,
cuckoo bells are calling on the prow of the decorated basket sleigh,
carved squirrels lie stretched out on the maplewood shafts.
–The Kalevala, Poem 25:1-36, translated by Francis Peabody Magoun Jr.
Unknowing 