Happy St. Urho's Tay!

Today is St. Urho's Tay, the Finnish-American day of celebration, and I wish the best to all of you, even those who lack Finnish ancestry. As this holiday is perennially obscured by the impending St. Patrick's Day celebration and generally neglected due to the fact that hardly anyone in this country outside of the UP has any Finnish blood, I thought I would do the Super Friends a service by telling the story of Finland's greatest hero:

St. Urho is the patron saint of Finnish vineyard workers, a stoic and pious man who, through pure sisu and command of the powerful Finnish language, saved the grape harvest and ensured that his name would live on through the ages. Before the last glacial period, wild grapes grew in abundance throughout what is now Finland, and provided a livelihood for the many workers who toiled in the vineyards. One season, swarms of grasshoppers began to creep through the countryside, and their steadily increasing numbers and taste for sweet Finnish grapes began to worry the farmers. Their worst fears were realized as the grasshopper infestation reached plague-like proportions, and once-fruitful vines were picked clean by the cursed little pests.

Enter Urho, a solitary man who spent most of his life living quietly in a seaside village in northern Finland, where he devoted himself to self-reflection and acts of charity. He gave away most everything he could to the needy, and subsisted on only the barest necessities. He ate only hardtack and kala mojakka (fish soup), and drank only river water and sour milk he received from a nearby farmer. This simple Finnish diet hardly seems noteworthy, but it endowed Urho with a remarkable attribute: a gigantic, booming voice. This voice was rarely heard. Urho, like most Finns, was a man of few words, and he found that anything more than a loud whisper coming from his mouth could rattle the countryside for miles, and potentially cause great destruction.

When news came to Urho's village of the impending plague of grasshoppers, the great man thought for a moment, packed up his horse, and started south. He rode for several days without rest until he came upon a town beset by swarms of the little green insects. The locals were frightened, knowing that with each passing day the vineyards came ever closer to disaster. They appealed to the strong, stone-faced stranger for help. Urho said not a word, climbed off his horse, and walked into the fields, going into the midst of the swarm. He took a deep breath in, and bellowed: "Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen!" (Grasshopper, grasshopper, go from hence to hell!) His words shook the ground and frightened the villagers, but in an instant, the grasshoppers were gone. Throughout all of Finland, the plague suddenly subsided. Word spread about this hero whose use of a few choice words had saved the land from catastrophe, and the great St. Urho lives on in the Finnish lore to this very day.

So, put on your purple shirts in honor of the grape harvest, and celebrate one of our nation's forgotten holidays. Happy St. Urho's Tay! (Also, it's always "Tay" and not "Day," in honor of our Finnish immigrant forefathers who couldn't pronounce English D's very well.)