- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- mockery, secret owner, return, fire
The story
A farmhand saw a kaukas but did not know who kept it. He decided to get the secret from the spirit itself.
He asked the kaukas to show him its estate and promised to show his own in return. Then he mockingly bared his backside.
The kaukas rushed back to the house where it lived and set it alight. Its response to the insult was a fire.
Reading the story
The farmhand tries to extract a secret, but his mockery ends in fire. The source’s verb parlėkęs can mean a hurried return; this word alone does not establish that the creature literally flew.
Told by Uršulė Jančiauskienė in Veviržėnai; recorded by N. Vėlius in 1962, LTR 3526(209).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 524, p. 537: „Kauko dvaras“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.