Who Slept in the Forest? lyrics and meaning

This song with the refrain "kalėda" can be understood as a parallel song linking a hunted hare and a girl under courtship pressure. At the beginning a little hare sleeps in the forest and is awakened by the fox: get up, because the hounds have blocked the road and the hunter will shoot you. The hare answers that it is not afraid of the hounds and will leap over its bed. This part can be read as a hunting image.

In the second part a young woman sleeps in the manor and is awakened by her mother: get up, because the matchmakers have surrounded the manor and the young man has blocked the road. The girl answers that she is not afraid of the matchmakers and does not care about that young man. This part can be understood as a sign of the girl's independence from the suitors.

The two parts are built in parallel, so the hare's situation and the girl's situation mirror one another. This comparison can be interpreted as the likeness between a hunted animal and a girl pressed by courtship, and also as the courage and fearlessness of both. That is one possible meaning, but the parallel hunting and courtship structure is clear.

A second interpretive layer is also possible. The fixed refrain "kalėda" allows the song to be read first of all as an Advent and Christmas ritual song, not only as a story about a hare and a girl. In such calendar songs, the recurring refrain and parallel images carry a magical shade of wishing prosperity and fertility: the awakening motif, "rise, do not sleep," may connect with the old marking of the year's and nature's awakening at the winter turning point. The rumbling of the earth at the start and the steady question-and-answer chain recall the structure of ritual singing, in which the word as it were helps light and harvest to come. This remains a hypothesis, but it explains why hunting and courtship images are framed by a Christmas-season refrain.