Fiona’s Reviews > The Man Who Spoke Snakish > Status Update

“Elder, I have lived in the forest all my life and I tell you there are no sprites! There is no need to fear them; what you should fear is people who believe in sprites. The same goes for you God. It’s just a new name for the sprites, given by the monks, like me changing my name if I were christened, I’ll still be myself; it doesn’t matter what I’m called. I can’t be bothered to play this game.”

Tambet could not have wanted a better fate for his bones. I thought, smirking bitterly. His bones would bring wings to carry my warlike grandfather to the land of the iron men, while his huge skull would be used as a victory chalice. In his blindness Tambet wanted to sacrifice Hiie to the sprites, but it was he that was sacrificed. His strong skeleton could now carry the last army of the Estonians into battle.

Long ago, when our ancestors were still living in caves and didn’t know fire, they had power over insects. How else would they have survived the attacks of the gadflies and mosquitoes that could freely get at them, without campfire smoke to scare them away? Nowadays their ancient pronunciation has been forgotten. Even we can’t speak it as they did tens of thousands of years ago.

“Pärtel and Leemet—those are heathen names. When you come to live in the village, you’ll be christened, and you’ll get names from the Bible. For instance, my name used to be Vambola, but for many years now I’ve had the name Johannes. And my daughter’s name is Magdaleena. Isn’t that beautiful? Names from the Bible are all beautiful. The whole world uses them,

The Frog of the North is a great snake, the biggest of all, much bigger than the king of the snakes. He is as big as a forest and he can fly. He has enormous wings. When he rises in the air, he covers the sun and the moon. In ancient times he used to rise often in the sky and devour all our enemies who came to that shore in their boats. After he devoured them, we took their possessions. So we were rich and powerful