Then Louhi answered the third time: 'I will tell thee the truth. I sent him to fetch me the Hisi-reindeer, and then after the fire-breathing horse, and last of all, after the swan that swims the death-stream, Tuoni, that he might gain the hand of my fairest daughter. He may have perished there, for he has not come back since to ask for my daughter's hand.'
No sooner had Louhi said this than the anxious mother hurried off to hunt for her son. Over hills and valleys, through marsh and forest, and over the wide waters she went, but looked for him in vain. Then she asked the Trees if they had seen him but they answered: 'We have more than enough to think of with our own griefs. We are cut down with cruel axes and burned to death, and no one pities us.'
So she wandered on and on, and finally she asked the Paths if they had seen her son pass by. But the Paths replied: 'Our own lives are too wretched to think of other people's sorrows. We are trodden under foot by beasts and men, and the heavy carts cut us in pieces.'
Next she asked the Moon, but the Moon replied: 'I have trouble enough of my own. I have to wander all alone in both summer and winter nights, and have no rest.'
Next she questioned the Sun, and he was kinder than the rest, and told her how her son had died in the gloomy river Tuoni.
Then she hastened to Ilmarinen, the wondrous smith, and bade him make a huge rake for her out of copper, with teeth a hundred fathoms long and the handle five hundred fathoms. Ilmarinen quickly forged a magic rake, and she hurried off with it to the gloomy river Tuoni, praying as she went: 'O Sun, whom Ukko hath created, shine for me now with magic power into the kingdom of death, into dark Manala, and lull all the evil spirits there to sleep.'
The Sun came and sat upon a birch-tree near the river of Tuoni, and shone upon the Deathland, Tuonela, until all the spirits fell asleep. Then he rose, and hovering over them, warmed them into a yet deeper slumber, and then hurried back to his place in the sky.
Meanwhile Lemminkainen's mother had raked a long time in the coal-black river, but could find nothing. Then she waded in deeper and deeper, until she could reach into the deepest caverns with her rake. First, she found his jacket, and then the rest of his clothing; and finally, the third time she swept her rake along, it brought up Lemminkainen's body, but the hands and arms and head were still missing. Still she went on with her search, and at length all the pieces were gathered together.