- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- infant in the meadow, silk, accidental forgetting, deliberate imitation
The story
A woman went to rake hay and took her baby with her. She worked until she was tired, then hurried still more as rain clouds gathered. Only after rushing home did she realise that she had left the child in the meadow.
She ran back at once. The baby’s ragged clothes lay to one side, while the child was wrapped in silk, adorned and lying in a cradle. Laumės rocked it, singing that this little one had been forgotten by accident.
A wealthy neighbour heard what had happened. The next day she too went to rake hay and returned home as clouds began to rise. She deliberately left her own baby behind.
When she went back, she found the laumės beside her dead child. They had killed it and laid it on a bench. Their rocking song now described a baby deliberately abandoned, rather than one accidentally forgotten.
Reading the story
The plot contrasts an exhausted worker’s accident with a calculated attempt to receive gifts. The second family’s violent loss belongs to this recorded folklore variant; it does not establish any fault or deserved punishment on the child’s part.
Told by Kazimiera Rocienė in Girvainiai, Laumėnai area; recorded by N. Vėlius in 1958. LTR 3148(342).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 537, p. 545: „Laumės ir kūdikis“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.