- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- rooster’s egg, sleepy choice, bast shoes, wordplay
The story
A man kept a black rooster for fifteen years. When it laid an egg, he placed it beneath his mattress, hoping to hatch an aitvaras.
After several nights a voice asked to be let into the house, saying it was freezing outside. The man looked around and tried to wake his wife Agota, but she slept soundly. At the third call he opened the door. Something black flashed past, and all was quiet.
Back in bed he heard a question: did he want čižuliai or vyžuliai? Half asleep, he chose vyžuliai. In the morning the space beneath the bed was packed with bast shoes, old and patched as well as new.
He moved them all to the cart shed. The next morning they were under the bed again, and he struggled to get rid of them. Had he asked for čižuliai, the tale explains, the aitvaras would have brought money.
Reading the story
The joke turns on similar-sounding Lithuanian words and a careless answer. The narrative identifies vyžuliai with bast shoes and čižuliai with money; keeping the original terms makes the misunderstanding clear.
Told by Kazimieras Zavadžius in Paketuriai; recorded by A. Kriauza in 1940, LTR 2413(97).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 521, p. 535–536: „Čižulių ar vyžulių“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.