- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- enchanted feast, eye ointment, birch-bark money, provoked quarrel
The story
A musician lost his way while walking home after dark. A carriage arrived, and the gentleman inside offered him work: there was a feast at his nearby manor, but no musician. The man accepted. Soon he was playing to a crowd of guests and receiving silver roubles for every dance.
He noticed the dancers rubbing their eyes with something from a bowl. Curious, he applied it to one of his own eyes. Through that eye he saw where he really was: seated on a tussock in a marsh, surrounded by devils. He kept playing in fear. When the roosters crowed, everyone disappeared. Birch bark had replaced the coins in his pockets. At daylight he escaped the marsh, but it took three days to reach home.
He entered an inn and found men fighting. With his treated eye he saw a devil whispering into one man’s ear and treading on another’s foot. The musician struck it with a stick. Once the devil tumbled outside, the men made peace.
Later the devil asked which eye could see it. The musician indicated his right eye. The devil blinded that eye and vanished. From then on the man could no longer see devils.
Reading the story
The single treated eye separates appearance from hidden reality. Escaping the feast is not the ending: special sight exposes the instigator of a quarrel, and revealing its secret brings the final confrontation.
Recorded by V. Basanavičius in Ožkabaliai in 1906 from V. Savulas; LMD I 133(57).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 463, p. 496–497: „Muzikantas velnių baliuje“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.