Willow, Clover lyrics and meaning

This song with the refrain "dobile" can be understood as a song with images of the world tree and the heavens. At the beginning, the speaker addresses the little willow, the green tree, asking why it grew so large and sent out branches: one branch, another little top. This image can be interpreted as a broadly spreading tree.

The song then moves to the father's estate, where there are several gates. In one gate the sun rises, in another the moon rolls, in the third the stars shimmer, and in the fourth a group of girls passes. These images can be understood as a connection between heavenly lights and a wedding procession.

The branches of the tree and the estate gates with sun, moon, and stars can be interpreted as cosmic, often wedding-related images. This is one possible meaning, but the motif of the world tree and heavenly gates is clear in the song.

A second interpretive possibility: the four gates of the father's estate, through which the sun rises, the moon rolls, the stars shimmer, and a group of girls passes, can be read not only as cosmic ornament but also as the image of a wedding procession. The heavenly bodies form something like a shining procession of the bride or of youth, giving meaning to the passage from one state to another. In Lithuanian songs, sun, moon, and stars often appear as members of a heavenly wedding kin group, so the group of girls at the fourth gate naturally joins the same wedding sequence of sky and earth. This meaning remains a hypothesis, but it explains why the group of girls is added to the heavenly lights.