In this study, then, I propose to examine one of Vihtoora Lesonen's Kalevala-derived songs with an eye to the interplay of printed text and oral tradition in late nineteenth-century Karelia. In so doing, I hope to reveal both the artistry and the traditionality of Vihtoora's act of appropriation. By examining literacy in the region and the social contexts in which peasants met with Finnish anthologies, I provide a framework for understanding the means by which a text from 1849 could become part of oral tradition in 1894. The paper's stance and content answer an earlier article in the pages of this journal (1993) in which I attempted to show how Elias Lonnrot transformed oral tradition in creating the Kalevala in the first place. The back and forth of oral and written art--this synergism--lies at the very heart of Finnish folk poetry at the end of the nineteenth century./
