- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- white fur coat, black dog, sleep, burning stump
The story
Simas Balukonis was ploughing his field. Although the day was warm, a stranger wearing a white fur coat approached. He asked the ploughman to wake him when clouds gathered, then lay down to sleep.
When thunder began, Balukonis went to wake him. Instead of a man, he found a black dog curled up on a stump. The ploughman crossed himself and stepped away.
Lightning struck. The stump where the sleeper had taken refuge burned up.
Reading the story
The changed appearance explains the unusual request: the stranger and the black dog are the same devil hiding from Perkūnas. The ploughman does not become its rescuer.
The anthology reproduces a text from Eduardas Volteris’s account of his 1887 ethnographic journey, p. 10. Its final claim that this happened more than a hundred years earlier belongs to the narrator’s account; it does not establish a verified event date.
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 502, p. 524: „Perkūnas ir miegantis velnias“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.