- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- voice from water, appointed hour, warning, return to bathe
The story
At midday a farmer went fishing with his sons. After a while they heard a voice from the water: the time had come, but the person was not there. Everything fell silent again.
A little later the voice repeated its words. Frightened, the fishermen headed home. On the way they met their farmhand and asked where he was going. He said he wanted to bathe.
The farmer and his sons warned him not to go: something was in the water. The farmhand argued but turned back with them. Soon afterwards, however, he slipped away and returned to bathe. The moment he entered the water, he drowned.
The fishermen then understood the voice as a sign. Within the tale’s belief, every person had an appointed place and hour of death.
Reading the story
The voice comes from the water, but the source names neither Giltinė nor a particular water spirit. The legend belongs here through its theme of an appointed death, while the narrator’s explanation remains a folk belief.
Told by Petras Mikalčius in Šiaulėnai; recorded by V. Mikalčius in 1936. LTR 989(56).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 436, p. 481: „Laikas yra, žmogaus nėra“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.