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WISHING-GEAE.
873
celebrated in the poems of the Bound Table than Sampo is in
the epic of the Finns. It was fashioned by the god Ilmarinen
in Pohjola, and a joy it was to live in the land that possessed it,
the fields were covered with standing corn and hanging fruits.
But the gods tried to win it back (just like OShrcerir, p. 902),
and Wainamoinen and Ilmarinen succeeded in the theft ; yet
Louhi the princess of Pohjola pursued them in eagle s sliape (as
Suttung did Oftinn), and overtook the fugitives on the open sea.
While Louhi makes a clutch at Sampo, and Wainamoinen strikes
at her fingers with the rudder, Sampo
falls into the sea and
breaks ; the lid alone (Kirjokannen 23, 393, conf. 11, 361) is left
in Louhi s hand, and with it she flies back to : Pohjola wretched
ness and famine have reigned there ever since. Wainamoinen
finds pieces of Sampo on the shore, and has them sown, out of
which grow up trees, one of them a lofty oak that darkens the
sun. The points of likeness between this Sampo and the Norse
drink of immortality are startling, and the pieces picked up on
the strand by the highest god, and giving birth to trees, may
be compared to Askr and Embla, whom the three ases found on
the sea-shore (p. 560. Seem. 3 b
).
The name Sampo, doubtless
one of high antiquity and sacredness, calls to mind a Mongolian
legend of a tree Asambu-bararkha, whose fruit dropping in the
water uttered the sound sambu (Majer s Myth. wtb. 1, 565) ;
sangpa in Tibetian means purified, holy. We gather from all
these examples, still far from complete, how under the veil of
sensuous images spear, hammer, hat, helmet, cloak, horn,
goblet, necklace, ring, ship, wheel, tree, rod, flower, cloth, meat
and drink lay hidden the spiritual ones of victory, happiness,
peace, healing, fertility, riches, virtue and poetic art. But when
several single attributes met in one object, as in Sampo and
the Grail, they still further enhanced its meaning and sacredness
(see SuppL).
From the prologue to the Grimnismal, Ssem. 39, we learn that
OSinn and Frigg, beside being the chief paternal and maternal
deities of antiquity, bestow their protection on special favourites :
under the form of an old man and woman, they bring up the
boys GeirroSr and Agnar respectively, the act being expressed
by the verb fostra. Frigg had even, accordiDg to Sn. 38, a