This is the first appearance in the English-speaking world of the companion volume to the great Finnish epic The Kalevala (also available in the World's Classics). The Kanteletar , roughly `zither-daughter', is a selection from a treasury of nearly seven hundred lyrics and ballads, based on oral tradition, and celebrates the everyday life of a rural society as work and play - hunting, dancing, marrying, caring for children, and much else. This book is intended for students of comparative literature, students of Finnish and Finno-Ugrian languages, and cultural anthropologists.