Finnic tetrameter in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Story of Kullervo in comparison to W.F. Kirby’s English translation of the Kalevala

The Finnish epic Kalevala is written in the so-called Finnic “Kalevala-metre”, typical of oral poetry. Its main features are use trochaic tetrameter (octosyllabic lines), alliteration, assonance, sound parallelisms and repetition words. It difficult to retain those translation but one early successful attempts was first full English directly from by William Forsell Kirby (1907). Kirby’s a source inspiration linguistic model for Story Kullervo, tale John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (probably 1912), based on Kalevala’s stories. Our aim compare texts.