Читать книгу Types of Prose Narratives. A Text-Book for the Story Writer онлайн

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Then a magic spell overpowered her, and she swam on and on vainly seeking to rise above the waters, but always unable to do so. Seven hundred long weary years she swam thus, until one day she could not bear the loneliness longer, and cried out: "Woe is me that I have fallen from my happy home in the air, and cannot now rise above the surface of the waters. O great Ukko, ruler of the skies, come and aid me in my sorrow!"

No sooner had she ended her appeal to Ukko than a lovely duck flew down out of the sky, and hovered over the waters looking for a place to alight; but it found none. Then Ilmatar raised her knees above the water, so that the duck might rest upon them; and no sooner did the duck spy them than it flew towards them and, without even stopping to rest, began to build a nest upon them.

When the nest was finished, the duck laid in it six golden eggs, and a seventh of iron, and sat upon to hatch them. Three days the duck sat on the eggs, and all the while the water around Ilmatar's knees grew hotter and hotter, and her knees began to burn as if they were on fire. The pain was so great that it caused her to tremble all over, and her quivering shook the nest off her knees, and the eggs all fell to the bottom of the ocean and broke in pieces. But these pieces came together into two parts and grew to a huge size, and the upper one became the arched heavens above us, and the lower one our world itself. From the white part of the egg came the moonbeams, and from the yolk the bright sunshine.