- Genre
- Mythological sakme
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- Perkūnas as hunter, Velnias under the turf, magical gun, ban on boasting, lost gift
The sakme
A great storm caught a hunter in the forest. Perkūnas kept striking the same place, and from under the turf a brown creature kept poking out and showing its tail to the cloud.
The hunter grew tired of watching Perkūnas miss. When the creature came out again, he fired and shot it.
Then a large strong man appeared. He thanked the hunter, said he was Perkūnas, and loaded the gun so it would never run out. He only ordered the hunter to tell no one and not to boast.
For a long time the hunter had good luck. But once, at a large hunt, after drinking and being praised, he began to show off. He fired three times, and the gun fell silent. The gift was lost because the secret was not kept.
The hunter returned home weeping and mourned the lost gun until his death. Others told different stories: some claimed to have seen a devil beside him aiming the gun; others thought the landowner had invited him deliberately, got him drunk and exchanged the weapons.
Interpretation: what does Perkūnas’ gift mean?
In this sakme Perkūnas rewards a human for helping in the fight against Velnias. But the gift is tied to a prohibition: the power works only in silence.
In the main narrative, success ends when the hunter breaks the prohibition on boasting. Yet the neighbours’ accounts at the end leave other explanations open: secret help from a devil or deception by the landowner.
The sakme joins hunting, storm, and moral measure. Good fortune is not solely a human achievement, so it demands restraint.
The source variant
Vaikams.lt: „Perkūno dovana“, complete legend text. An editorial retelling of the specific cited variant, checked against its complete source narrative. This is not a literal transcript.
Gift and prohibition
In sakmes a gift often has a condition: do not look, do not speak, do not boast, do not turn back. The condition protects the boundary between the human world and supernatural power.
When the hunter violates that boundary, the gift disappears. The story teaches that wonder demands not only courage but silence.
