Mythological sakme
folkloric
personified wind, four directions, elemental family, weather explanation, living natural phenomenon
The sakme
People used to say that wind is not merely empty movement of air. It has a home, a voice, and children. Some of its children are harsh and sudden, others gentler, and still others only play above fields and lakes.
When a bitter wind blew from the north, people said it was the fiercest son of the wind. When in summer a warm wind stroked the grain, they said a milder child had arrived. East and west winds were considered changeable: sometimes helpful, sometimes angry.
Therefore the old people did not get angry at the wind without cause. It had to be known: where it blew from, when it grew stronger, what cloud it drove, and what news it carried.
Interpretation: what do the wind’s children mean?
In this sakme the wind becomes a family. That lets humans understand an element not as a mechanical phenomenon but as a living power with different moods.
The child motif explains why winds are not all alike. The same element may be dangerous, pleasant, cold, warm, threatening drought or rain. People named this through the language of kinship.
The sakme also shows peasant weather observation: wind direction mattered for work, travel, fishing, and harvest.
History, variants, and recording
In Lithuanian sakmes wind is often personified: it can speak, be ill, be wounded, live in separate regions, or have a family. Such stories belong to the mythological layer about living elements.
Variants differ in the number of winds and their character. Some stress the four directions of the world; others describe a concrete meeting with wind as a human-shaped being.
This is both etiological and mythological: by explaining winds of different directions as the children of one father, the natural phenomenon is made meaningful through kinship language. Personified winds of the four directions are known in many traditions; Lithuanian sakmes about living elements are classified in Bronislava Kerbelytė’s catalogue (Lietuvių pasakojamosios tautosakos katalogas, vol. 3, 2002) and were studied by Norbertas Vėlius.
Wind as a living element
In the folk worldview the elements are not mute. Wind can scold, help, destroy, blow away, or scatter. For that reason people treat it with caution and respect.
This sakme is a good introduction to broader wind stories in which a human meets an invisible but very concrete power.
