[171] Mr. Brown (_Academy_, Jan. 3, 1885) says he freely acknowledges that his 'suggestion might be quite incorrect'--which seems possible--and that 'if Odysseus and Kirkê were sun and moon here is a good starting-point for the theory that the moly was stellar.' This reminds one of the preacher who demonstrated the existence of the Trinity thus: 'For is there not, my brethren, one sun, and one moon,--and one multitude of stars?' _'KALEVALA'; OR, THE FINNISH NATIONAL EPIC._ It is difficult to account for the fact that the scientific curiosity which is just now so busy in examining all the monuments of the primitive condition of our race, should, in England at least, have almost totally neglected to popularise the 'Kalevala,' or national poem of the Finns. Besides its fresh and simple beauty of style, its worth as a storehouse of every kind of primitive folklore, being as it is the production of an _Urvolk_, a nation that has undergone no violent revolution in language or institutions--the 'Kalevala' has the peculiar interest of occupying a position between the two kinds of primitive poetry, the ballad and the epic. So much difficulty has been introduced into the study of the first developments of song, by confusing these distinct sorts of composition under the name of popular poetry, that it may be well, in writing of a poem which occupies a middle place between epic and ballad, to define what we mean by each. The author of our old English _Art of Poesie_ begins his work with a statement which may serve as a text: 'Poesie,' says Puttenham, writing in 1589, 'is more ancient than the _artificiall_ of the Greeks and Latines, coming by instinct of nature, and used by the savage and uncivill, who were before all science and civilitie. This is proved by certificate of merchants and travellers, who by late navigations have surveyed the whole world, and discovered large countries, and strange people, wild and savage, affirming that the American, the Perusine, and the very canniball, do sing, and also say, their highest and holiest matters in certain riming versicles.' Puttenham is here referring to that instinct of primitive men, which compels them in all moments of high-wrought feeling, and on all solemn occasions, to give utterance to a kind of chant.[172] Such a chant is the song of Lamech, when he had 'slain a man to his wounding.' So in the Norse sagas, Grettir and Gunnar _sing_ when they have anything particular to say; and so in the _Märchen_--the primitive fairy tales of all nations--scraps of verse are introduced where emphasis is wanted. This craving for passionate expression takes a more formal shape in the lays which among all primitive peoples, as among the modern Greeks to-day,[173] are sung at betrothals, funerals, and departures for distant lands. These songs have been collected in Scotland by Scott and Motherwell; their Danish counterparts have been translated by Mr. Prior. In Greece, M. Fauriel and Dr.