Ilmarinen returned to Louhi with the pike's head and again claimed her daughter in marriage. Louhi answered him: 'Thou hast performed this last task but badly, since thou only brought me the worthless head. But still, since thou hast completed the other tasks also, I will give thee my fair daughter. Thou hast won the Maid of Beauty, to be the help and joy of all thy future life.'
But while Ilmarinen was rejoicing in his good fortune, the aged Wainamoinen wandered sorrowfully homewards, bewailing his sad lot, thus to be compelled to live without a wife to cheer his home. 'Woe is me,' he sang, 'that I did not woo and marry in my youth, for the old men cannot hope to conquer the young ones when they go a-wooing.'
When this story was ended, Father Mikko stopped a while to rest, and the others discussed the stories that he had just told. All were pleased that the Rainbow-maiden had chosen Ilmarinen instead of the aged Wainamoinen, and little Antero asked 'Pappa' Mikko what they had had to eat at the wedding--he was rather more deeply interested in things to eat than anything else--so Father Mikko continued, after he had rested a while.
Great preparations were now made in Louhi's home for her daughter's wedding with Ilmarinen. In distant Karjala, a part of Kalevala, was a great ox, the largest in the world. It took a weasel seven days to travel round his neck and shoulders; the swallow had to fly a whole day without resting, to get from one horn-tip to the other; the squirrel travelled thirty days, starting from the tail, before he reached the shoulders. This great ox was led by a thousand heroes to Pohjola, to Louhi's house, but when he had come thither, no one could be found to kill him.
Then there came an aged hero from Karjala, and went up to the ox to kill him with his war-club. But the ox turned and gave him one fierce glance, and the old warrior dropped his club and ran away and hid in the forest. Then they sent forth far and near to find some one to kill the ox, but no one came. At last there arose from the sea a tiny dwarf, who, when he stepped on land, grew suddenly into a giant, with hands of iron, a copper-coloured face, a hat of flint upon his head, and sandstone shoes upon his feet. As soon as this sea-spirit saw the ox, he rushed at it and killed it with one blow of his golden sword. Thus was the meat provided for the feast.