- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- shining towel, granary, unsown wheat, servant’s refusal
The story
One autumn, when threshing had begun, two servants were walking past the barn at dusk. Something like a yellowish, shining towel flashed above them. It crossed the orchard and settled on the granary. The farmhand said it was an aitvaras carrying grain.
The mistress hurried outside carrying a towel. She laid one end of the towel over the granary door, tied the other into a knot and ran back. The servants pretended to have seen nothing.
The next day one of them happened to enter the granary, which the master normally kept locked. Five bins were filled with fine wheat, although the farm had sown no wheat that year.
At the end of the year the master offered higher wages if the servant would stay. He refused. After what he had seen, he would no longer live in a house supplied by such a spirit.
Reading the story
A strange light is connected with a concrete fact about the farm: wheat has appeared without being planted. Higher wages cannot overcome the servant’s fear.
Told by Pranciška Šimkienė in Šiauliai; recorded by G. Varkalienė in 1948, LTR 2708(7).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 520, p. 534–535: „Grūdų aitvaras“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.