- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- moustached wind, disturbed rest, tiny breath, ruined home
The story
A man going about his business saw a heavily moustached stranger lying under a bush. He urged him to stop being lazy and get up: time was precious.
The stranger said he was the wind and asked to be left alone. The traveller kept trying to wake him.
The wind lifted one side of his moustache and blew very slightly through his lips. He angrily told the man to go away, then lay down again. The traveller said no more and went on.
When he reached home, he found his cottage overturned and everything in disorder. He realised that the wind had done it with that single tiny breath, angry at being disturbed.
Reading the story
The wind’s power lies in the gap between a small gesture and an enormous consequence. The resting figure looks like a lazy man, yet disturbing him reaches all the way to the traveller’s home.
The 1967 note names an 80-year-old narrator, Gerlikas, in Linkuva; recorded by J. Janeliūnas in 1928. LTR 262(225).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 607, p. 583: „Supykintas vėjas“; PDF p. 582. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.