- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- cloth, troubled prosperity, piece of rope, fire
The story
People said that Barbora Stonienė never wove, yet always had cloth to sell. An aitvaras brought it to her. Her wealth made her famous throughout the neighbourhood.
She was not happy, however. She was constantly anxious and worried, and her hair turned grey before its time. In the narrator’s account, the aitvaras tormented her until she lost her reason.
One day she threw a piece of rope backwards into the street. The aitvaras was in that rope. Offended, it took revenge by burning her buildings and all the wealth she had accumulated.
Reading the story
The tale separates abundance from a good life. Its link between wealth, distress and illness belongs to the narrator’s interpretation, rather than to a medical explanation.
Told by Ona Silickienė in Kūrenai; recorded by P. Valeika in 1932, LTR 397(94).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 515, p. 532: „Aitvaro kerštas“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.