- Genre
- Etiological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- pursuing dog, devil’s wound, alder, red wood
The story
One day the devil was wandering the earth when he approached a farm where a fierce dog ran loose. He came too close to the house, and the dog sprang after him.
The devil ran fast, but the dog ran faster. With nowhere else to escape, he leapt into a tree. Just then the dog caught up and bit his leg.
Blood flowed from the wound. The tree into which the devil had climbed was an alder. That, the story says, is why its wood is red to this day.
Reading the story
The wood’s colour comes from an encounter with the devil, but it is blood that marks the tree, rather than deliberate painting or a curse. The action starts in an ordinary farmyard.
Told by Liudvikas Petraška, aged 74, in Tripuckai; recorded by E. Rūkštelytė in 1958. LTR 3150(192).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 395, p. 452: „Kodėl alksnis raudonas“; PDF p. 451. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.