- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- exchange of weapons, forbidden hammer, three years, destroyed home
The story
A hunter was watching for hares when a storm broke. A small cat with two horns kept appearing from beneath a rock and turning its backside towards the cloud in mockery. Each thunderclap sent it back into hiding. The hunter fired. Close up, the fallen creature looked strangely like a hare: it was a little devil.
An old man appeared and asked to see the quarry. He was Perkūnas. He admired the hunter’s gun, saying that he himself had been unable to hit the devil from above. He offered a pistol a handspan long in exchange. Merely pointing it at a bird or animal would bring it down. The hunter must never touch the hammer.
The man agreed. For three years he hunted effortlessly and lived comfortably with his wife and child. Then he wondered what would happen if he cocked and released the hammer.
A tremendous thunderclap knocked him down. Perkūnas appeared, took back the little weapon and returned the old gun. He reproached the hunter for striking down a third of the world.
The man returned to find his own buildings destroyed. For three years afterwards there was no thunder. Ever since, Perkūnas has refused to lend his weapon to people.
Reading the story
The prohibition in this version concerns the hammer. Its consequences extend beyond one household: the ending explains three silent years in the sky and Perkūnas’s refusal to trust people with his weapon again.
Told by ninety-year-old Petras Lapienis in Kvėriškis in the Biržai area; recorded by I. Jašinskaitė in 1956, LTR 3020(2).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 504, p. 525–526: „Mainai su Perkūnu“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.