- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- plague personified, carriage, red tassel, unexpected feast, twins
The story
People told of Pavietrė travelling the world like a noble lady. Two horses drew her carriage, and she wore a hat with a red tassel. She would enter a village, crack her whip, turn around and leave. Then people there would begin dying of plague.
Once Pavietrė ordered a feast to be prepared for her. The villagers placed a bowl of urine on the window ledge. When she arrived, she said they had understood what to serve. Afterwards she left and did the people no further harm.
The account adds two protective beliefs. Plague would supposedly spare a village if a horse or ox born as one of twins drew a furrow around it. People also believed that a human twin could stop Pavietrė by meeting her and driving her away with insults.
Reading the story
Pavietrė personifies plague; the text does not present her as another name for Giltinė. She is included alongside death legends as a related figure of epidemic danger. The feast and enclosing furrow are historical beliefs, not methods of disease prevention.
Told by Uršulė Damošienė in Sarapiniškė, Salakas parish; recorded by E. Rūkštelytė in 1941. LTR 2430(38).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 432, p. 479: „Pavietrė“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.