Customer Reviews

The Kanteletar: Lyrics and Ballads after the Oral Tradition by Elias Lï¿1/2nnrot (Oxford World's Classics)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Elias Lönnrot (1802-84) was a district health officer and amateur scholar stationed in northeastern Finland in the late 1820s who became passionately interested in the folklore of his people. Influenced by the Romantic conception of folk culture as the repository of national identity, Lönnrot spent years studying and recording the ancient Finnish oral epic, the "Kalevala", which he published in 1835 in a famous edition and revised over the next fifteen years. In 1840-41 he followed this up with the publication of a companion work, the "Kanteletar", a collection of lyrics and ballads also drawn from the Finnish oral tradition. Meaning literally "zither-daughter", the "Kanteletar" is made up of poems originally sung over the zither by a bard (or 'laulaja' in Finnish). Although the book is hardly known outside Finland, Keith Bosley's translation for Oxford World's Classics is excellent and the first one in English.

As Bosley points out, the Finnish lyric tradition is one of the oldest still extant. Most Finnish folksongs sung today are so-called "later songs" (that is, both the lyrics and the tunes came to Finland since the start of the Middle Ages, mostly from Sweden). Yet what is unique about the lyrics and ballads of the "Kanteletar" is that they date from a much earlier period. These poems are part of the so-called "Kalevala" tradition brought by the Finns from their home in Central Asia well over a thousand years ago and that survived the longest in eastern Finland (where Lönnrot worked) and the Russian borderlands. Sung to simpler, usually five-note tunes, the "Kanteletar" lyrics also had a rythym all their own.

Most of the "Kanteletar" poems are very somber and sing of love spurned or the woes of life. But others are surprisingly comic, like "The Origin of Beer" or "Spinster". "Churchgoers" is worth quoting in full:

"A tip-tap of shoes / a clip-clop of leather shoes: / the girls are coming to church / twinkling to the gallery. / They tear open their bosom / they wrench out their books / from which they intone a hymn / and read beautiful verses. / A clatter of clogs / a rattle of birchbark shoes: / the boys are coming to church / rowdily up the church hill / flasks of booze beneath their coats / jugs of beer under their arms. / The book is not in their minds / nor are the priest's best sermons: / in their minds the girls lie down / in their hearts they kindle fire." (I apologize for my ignorance of HTML!).

The ballads at the end of the book have interested scholars more than the lyrics, above all the "Ballad of the Virgin Mary," a ballad from the Orthodox eastern Finns, and the grim "Elina", the tale of a jealous husband who burns his wife to death.

In short, this a great way to get to know Finnish folk literature. If you enjoyed the "Kalevala", you'll love the "Kanteletar".

This should be readily available in libraries, etc. Not as good as the Kalevala, but worth reading. Thanks to Amorphis for tuning me into it..