Mighty Mikko: A Book of Finnish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales. Fillmore Parker

was once a poor couple who had no children. Their neighbors all had boys and girls in plenty but for some reason God didn’t send them even one.

      “If I can’t have a flesh and blood baby,” the woman said one day, “I’m going to have a wooden baby.”

      She went to the woods and cut a log of alder just the size of a nice fat baby. She dressed the log in baby clothes and put it in a cradle. Then for three whole years she and her husband rocked the cradle and sang lullabies to the log baby.

      At the end of three years one afternoon, when the man was out chopping wood and the woman was driving the cows home from pasture, the log baby turned into a real baby! It was so strong and hearty that by the time its parents got home it had crawled out of the cradle and was sitting on the floor yelling lustily for food. It ate and ate and ate and the more it ate the faster it grew. It wasn’t any time at all in passing from babyhood to childhood, from childhood to youth, and from youth to manhood. From its beginnings it was known in the village as Log and never received any other name.

      Log’s parents knew from the first that Log was destined to be a great hero. That was why he was so strong and so good. There was no one in the village as strong as he nor any one as kind and gentle.