- Genre
- Etiological legend
- Source status
- folkloric
- Motifs
- speaking trees, felling, plea for mercy, loss of speech
The story
In old times trees could speak. When a person came with an axe, the tree begged to be spared: let it keep growing and choose another one instead.
The person moved to another tree, but that one pleaded too. Whichever way the woodcutter turned, the same appeal could be heard, until listening became unbearable.
To put an end to this, God took speech away from the trees. Since then they have been unable to voice their pleas to people.
Reading the story
This brief legend retains the tension between a tree’s wish to live and a person’s intention to cut it down. The ending removes the audible plea; it does not say the trees no longer wish to survive.
Told by Uršulė Misevičienė, aged 60, in Nariūnai; recorded by V. Dičiūnas in 1938. LTR 1486(518).
Source and retelling
Lietuvių tautosaka, IV (1967), Nr. 397, p. 453: „Kodėl medžiai nešneka“; PDF p. 452. An original retelling of the recorded traditional narrative cited here. The sequence of events and ending are retained in modern language.