MIGHTY MIKKO
A Book of Finnish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales
BY
PARKER FILLMORE
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND DECORATIONS
BY
JAY VAN EVEREN
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1922, by
PARKER FILLMORE
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N J
| BY PARKER FILLMORE |
| CZECHOSLOVAK FAIRY TALES THE SHOEMAKER’S APRON Both Illustrated by Jan Matulka |
| THE LAUGHING PRINCE Illustrated by Jay Van Everen |
| THE HICKORY LIMB Illustrated by Rose Cecil O’Neill |
| THE ROSIE WORLD Illustrated by Maginal Wright Enright |
Ilona came floating up through the waves. Page 17
To my niece
Phyllis
These stories of her mother’s native land
NOTE
The spirit of nationalism that swept over the smallpeoples of Europe in the early nineteenth centurytouched faraway Finland and started the Finns onthe quest of the Finnish. There as elsewhere scholarswho were also patriots found that the native tongue,lost to the educated and the well-to-do, had been preservedin the songs and stories which were currentamong the peasants. Elias Lönnrot spent a long andbusy life collecting those ancient runos from which hesucceeded in building up a national epic, the Kalevala.This is Lönnrot’s great contribution to his own countryand to the world. Beside the material for the KalevalaLönnrot made important collections of lyrics, proverbs,and stories.
During his time and since other patriot scholars have[Pg viii]made faithful records of the songs and tales which theold Finnish minstrels, the runolaulajat, chanted to thestrains of the kantele. The mass of such material nowgathered together in the archives of the Society ofFinnish Literature at Helsingfors is imposing in bulkand of great importance to the student of comparativefolklore.
My own excursions into the Finnish have been madepossible through the kindness and endless p