Sad the lives of man and hero, Sad the house of ocean-dwellers, If the sun shines not upon them, If the moonlight does not cheer them. At the prayer of Wainamoinen, appalled by the monstrous growth, his mother, the wind-spirit, sends a tiny water-creature, who, soon turning into a giant, with a mighty swing of his hatchet strikes the tree. With the second stroke he cuts it, and with the third fire springs from its huge bulk and the oak yields, “shaking earth and heaven in falling.” It is not till then that its beneficent powers are made manifest:— Eastward far the trunk extending, Far to westward flew the tree-tops, To the south the leaves were scattered, To the north its hundred branches. Whosoe’er a branch has taken Has obtained eternal welfare. Who receives himself a tree top He has gained the master-magic. Who the foliage has gathered Has delight that never ceases.[278] The corresponding legend amongst the neighbouring Esthonians, as told in their epic, the Kalevipoeg, contains a quaint medley of the practical and the poetic. Here, too, the monstrous oak is felled by a giant who grows from a dwarf; in falling it covers the sea with its branches and is quickly turned to use by the people. From the trunk is fashioned a bridge with two arms, one stretching to Finland, the other to an adjoining island. Ships are built from the crown, and towns from the roots, and toy-boats from the chips. What is left over is used to build shelters for old men, widows, and orphans, and the last remainder to provide a hut for the minstrel. Therewith he gains “the master-magic,” for the strangers who cross the bridge now and again, and stop at his door to ask what city and what splendid palace stand before them, receive for answer that the palace is his poor hut, and all the splendour around is the light of his songs reflected from heaven.[279] To return again to the East, it has already been mentioned that in a tradition common both to the Persians and the Hindus, and therefore presumably of considerable antiquity, the cosmic tree produced the food whereby the gods preserved their immortality. The universe-tree had become a tree of life. This conception of a mystical life-giving tree was associated with the ritual use of an earthly counterpart of the immortalising drink.