- Genre
- Mythological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- court summons, two wind brothers, compensation, corrupt judge, clerk
The story
One evening a man returning from work was blown off a bridge. Badly bruised, he climbed out of the river and told his wife he would lodge a complaint. She tried to dissuade him, but he insisted.
At the manor, judges and clerks laughed at him. One clerk offered to write a summons for a fee. The man paid, then hung the document on a cross, asking God to help settle his case against the wind.
On the appointed day the complainant arrived first and was mocked again. At the exact hour written in the summons, a violent whirlwind arose. A carriage drawn by four horses brought a fearsome gentleman whose enormous head was bound with iron hoops.
Entering the court, he asked who had complained about the wind. When the man answered, the visitor explained that his brother had knocked him from the bridge. That brother was now at a feast abroad, so he had come in his place with instructions to settle the matter. He handed the injured man a bag of money.
The chief judge approached and criticised such generosity: for half that sum, he would have ruled in the wind’s favour. Seeing how dishonestly the court worked, the wind twisted the judge’s head off and went out to walk around the estate.
As the man headed home, the clerk caught up and demanded another payment for the summons. The man said he would first ask the wind whether that was allowed. The clerk immediately abandoned his demand and slunk away.
Reading the story
The wind that caused the injury and the wind that appears in court are brothers. This satire on justice ends with violent retribution against a corrupt judge, while the complainant learns how to resist an extra demand.
The 1967 notes cite J. Basanavičius, Lietuviškos pasakos I, p. 138. The retelling preserves both the threat and the ending of the recorded narrative.
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 610, p. 584–585: „Į teismą paduotas vėjas“; PDF p. 583–584. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.