157
17.
In detail, see Niemi 1898; Kaukonen 1939–1949;
1956; in English, see Pentikäinen 1999; Honko
2002; Järvinen 2010.
18.
In Matti Kuusi’s (1949) study of more than 700
examples and fragments of the so-called epic Sampo-
Cycle (documented with varying aims and degrees
of accuracy) around which Lönnrot organized his
Kalevala, only eight examples exceeded 400 lines,
and only an additional eight were 251–400 lines
(Kuusi 1949: 22).
19.
The sense of ‘poem, song’ seems to have been
general through Finnish and Karelian dialect areas
but was not found in the Värmland Finnish dialect of
Central Sweden; the sense of ‘poet, versifier’ is
found in the preface to the first Finnish Hymnal; it is
found as a parallel term for
laulaja in traditional
poetry in Karelia and Ingria; and in the form
runoi in
Värmland Finnish meaning ‘performer of traditional
poetry, sorcerer (
tietäjä)’ alongside the verb
runoa
[‘to perform sorcery, cast spell a spell, curse’] (
SKES
IV: 863–865,
s.v. ‘runo’; Toivonen 1944:189–190;
SSA
III: 104,
s.v. ‘runo
1
’;
KKS,
s.v. ‘runo’; Lehtonen 2016).
20.
On uses of
runo for a musical instrument with
examples, see
KKS,
s.v. ‘runo’; cf. also
s.v. ‘kieli’
[lit. ‘tongue, language’], which has the meaning
‘strings (of a musical instrument)’ although only
indicated for different dialects than this use of
runo.
The history of these semantic and whether these
meanings of
runo and
kieli are independent or related
developments requires detailed investigation.
21.
This notion is based on the searches
in the corpus of
the old literary Finnish language (especially the sub-
corpus
Varia); see also Laitinen 2006: 52.
22.
The Finnic form corresponds to a Proto-
Scandinavian
*rūnō or earlier form (
LägLoS III: 178,
s.v. ‘runo’). This word seems to have belonged to a
common Germanic and Celtic religious vocabulary
linked to (secret) council and communication or
knowledge that in Germanic came to be used also for
the Germanic script or runic (furthark) alphabet. The
etymology of word has a long history of debate,
recently reviewed by Bernard Mees; forms of the
word are attested as Old Norse
rún, Gothic
rūna
[‘secret, mystery; plan, council’], Old High German
rūna [‘whisper, secret’], Old Saxon
rūna [‘council,
confidential advice’]; in Celtic: Old Irish
rún [‘hidden,
occult, mystery, privacy, intimacy, enchantment,
charm, virtue, attribute, nature’] with adjectival
derivatives in Old Irish, Middle Welsh and
potentially preserved in onomastics more widely;
Latvian
runa [‘speech, speaking, talking’] is treated
as independently derived from Proto-Indo-European
(Mees 2014: 527, 520–531 and works there cited).
Germanic
*rūnō was also used as a (feminine)
agentive noun in compounds and may have already
been archaic when documented, attested as: Jordanes’
use of
haliurunnae [‘death-sorceress’] which he
translates
magae [‘sorceress, witch’]
(
Getica, ch. 24);
Old English
helerūna [‘death-sorceress’],
būrhrunan
/
burgrūnan [‘Furies; Parcas’], in only one manuscript
leodrūne [‘song-sorceress’], the
hapax legomenon
heahrūn [‘high-sorceress, seeress’]; Old High German,
only in glosses,
liodrūna [‘song-sorceress, witch’],
tōtrūna [‘death-sorceress’], and a non-agentive use
of
hellirūna [‘necromancy’] with a masculine
derivative
hellirūnāri [‘necromancer’]. (See Flowers
1986: 150–153; Macleod & Mees 2006: 5; BTASD,
s.vv. ‘burhrunan’, ‘heahrun’, ‘helleruna’, ‘leódruna’.)
23.
Collectors did use these terms in their field notes to
refer to singers and songs.
24.
The forms
runolaulu/laulaja are used mostly before
1920s, forms with the genitive -
n-
runonlaulu/
laulaja after that. The contemporary scholarly use
has returned to the 19th century form, possibly
because of the elevated, romantic and nationalistic
uses of the early 20th century. See SKVR-database
(www.skvr.fi), searches runolau* and runonlau*;
The National Library’s digital collections, newspapers
(https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/sanomalehti/search?
language=en), searches runolaul* and runonlaul*.
25.
Huttu-Hiltunen quoted this statement in an oral
conference presentation (Huttu-Hiltunen 2015 in the
works cited) with reference to a corresponding oral
presentation by Reichl: the wording may not be precise.
26.
Leino’s study of alliteration in proverbs requires
reassessment both in terms of the specific parameters
whereby a proverb is qualified as metrical, and also
to assess whether proverbs embedded within poems
of the meter are more metrically consistent and in
what tradition regions.
27.
At least in the North Finnic branch of the tradition,
local (emic) metapragmatic descriptions of sung
performance and singing competitions seem to
valorize the number of songs and their length with
concerns for text organization; descriptions seem to
attend to volume and clarity but aesthetic valuations
of voice quality and melody of ‘singing’ are
generally lacking, or veiled in metaphor (see e.g. the
discussions in Timonen 2000; Siikala 2002b: 33–38;
Tarkka 2013: 148–156).
28.
Attempts have been made to interpret Novgorod
birch bark inscription #292 (apparently a verbal
charm in a Finnic idiom) as the earliest example of a
Finnic metrical text, but this is highly problematic
(Laakso 1999; Frog 2014b: 443–444).
29.
See e.g. Harvilahti 1992; 2004; Siikala 2002a; Merilai
2006; Kalkun 2011. Some types of folklore might
even move in and out of the poetic form over time,
on which see e.g. Kuusi 1954; Rausmaa 1964; 1968.
30.
Heikki Laitinen’s (2006) proposal of
kahdeksan-
tavumitta [‘octosyllabiv meter’] as a term for the
metrical form faces a similar issue of non-specificity,
even if it may work effectively as a term when its
referent is contextually transparent.
31.
Some Germanic metricists would object to
description as a tetrameter since the meter in most
languages allows hypermetric lines with a fifth foot.
Works Cited
Abbreviations
BTASD –
Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.
Available at: http://www.bosworthtoller.com/.
ERA-database. Eesti regilaulude andmebaas – Estonian
Runic
Songs’
Database.
Available
at:
http://www.folklore.ee/regilaul/andmebaas.