- Genre
- Etiological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- desire for splendour, shining feathers, hiding, survival
The story
Some partridges once complained to God about their feathers. Their coats seemed plain and ugly, and they wanted the light of stars, or at least the glow of a glow-worm, to adorn them.
God granted their wish. But they enjoyed their new beauty only briefly: shining so brightly, they could no longer hide anywhere.
Hunters shot some, and hawks caught the others. Only the partridges with ordinary mottled feathers survived.
Reading the story
The desired gift has a cost: being conspicuous makes survival difficult. The ending does not turn the shining birds back into plain ones; the mottled birds are those that remain.
Recorded by M. Bučnys in Veviržėnai district, Kretinga county, in 1937. LTR 1431(64).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 374, p. 442–443: „Kodėl kurapkos raibos“; PDF p. 441–442. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.