- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- wedding cakes, flax field, trickery, white bag
The story
A laumė was going to a wedding with a large white bag full of delicious cakes. A mischievous young man joined her on the road. When he learned where she was going, he offered to carry the bag.
As they walked, he asked which crops she could not enter: rye, wheat, barley, oats or flax. She said that she could walk into any of them except flax.
He then asked whether she could curse someone hiding in a flax field. She reassured him with a saying: a dog’s voice would never reach heaven.
When they came alongside some flax, the man jumped into the field with the bag and began eating the cakes. The laumė ran around the edge, cursing, while he repeated her own saying back to her.
At last she demanded that he at least return the bag. Once he had eaten, he tossed it out of the field. She caught it and sped away.
Reading the story
The man tricks the laumė by first learning where she cannot follow and how little her curses can achieve. Returning the bag settles the encounter, although it does not replace the stolen cakes.
The 1967 edition’s notes identify the earlier printed source as J. Basanavičius, Lietuviškos pasakos I, p. 109.
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 554, p. 554–555: „Laumės pyragai“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.