- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- unseen voice, three warnings, barn, fatal response
The story
The tale begins with an old belief that someone facing trouble lies with their hands behind their head. A farmhand named Jonas went to sleep in the barn as usual and lay that way on a stack of harvested grain.
Before he was fully asleep, he heard the door open and someone approach. A voice said that great misfortune would befall him that day. He woke and looked around, but saw nobody.
The warning sounded a second time, now from below beside the stack. Again he looked and found no one. As soon as he closed his eyes, the unseen speaker repeated the warning a third time.
Angry, Jonas threatened the voice and scrambled down from the stack. A pitchfork lay directly below him. He fell onto it and was badly injured.
In the morning his master found him still alive. Jonas died three days later. The tale explains that it was Death who had called to him.
Reading the story
The invisible speaker is identified as Death, but the text gives no description of Giltinė and no scythe. Jonas encounters danger while reacting to a warning; the opening belief about sleeping posture is not a rule for predicting misfortune.
Told by Povilas Grybas in Užugajai, Anykščiai district; recorded by S. Vaitkevičius in 1942. LTR 2438(42).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 435, p. 480–481: „Mirties balsas“. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.