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The Great Bull and the Heritage of the Stone Age

Summary/Abstract: In Rune XX of the Finnish epic "The Kalevala" we find the description of a great bull to be butchered for a wedding party. The incredible proportions of the bull seem to suggest a mythical being, possibly an incarnation of a numinous cosmic power. A similar song is also widely known in Estonia. Although it has been argued that there have existed two different songs of the great bull, their aesthetic principle seems to indicate a structural identity. Following the Kantian aesthetics of the "mathematical sublime" (Mathematisch-Erhabene), one can say that the description of the bull aims to create an impression of something that would be "great without any comparison" (über alle Vergleichung groß). In an Estonian version from Haljala (1894), the great bull will be "made" by a tiny black cow, whose proportions are no less incredible. That might support the idea that the song of the great bull is in fact a cosmogonic myth ending with a scene of a sacrifice. This idea finds more support in other important details: the search for a butcher, who is nowhere to be found except in some mythical foreign country; the connection of the bull with both the sun and the moon; the fact that the song has been sung in the ritual context of harvest, bee parties and beer brewing; and the inclination to represent the body of the bull as a source of cornucopian fertility. All that leads one to suspect that the image of the great bull might be remarkably older than the songs themselves. It might belong to some common European heritage tracing back to the Neolithic or even the Paleolithic era.

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