- Genre
- Etiological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- talking trees, blind ash, deception, spring leaves, autumn leaves
The story
The ash was called blind. It could not see how the other trees were changing, so in spring it asked them whether the time had come to open its leaves.
To make fun of it, the trees said it was still too early. Later the ash asked again. Now they laughed: they had all been in leaf for ages, while the ash was still unprepared. It hurried to put out its leaves.
In autumn it asked its neighbours whether it was time to let the leaves fall. Although they were still covered in foliage, they said they had long been bare.
The ash believed them and dropped its own leaves at once. So the story explains why it comes into leaf later than the others but loses its leaves sooner.
Reading the story
Both seasons belong to one plot: the ash trusts false answers in spring and autumn. The story depicts the other trees’ mockery, rather than laziness on the ash’s part.
Recorded by J. Palukaitis in Sprauliai, Pilviškiai district, in 1896. LMD I 580(4).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 396, p. 452–453: „Uosis — neregys“; PDF p. 451–452. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.