- Genre
- Recorded place narratives
- Source status
- Editorial discussion of recorded accounts
- Motifs
- laundry, witches, day and night, workplace memory
A name remembered through work
Women washing clothes beside the river are central to the account of Bobų Stone. A place name can survive through everyday work, tools and conversation. A named boulder need not have a story about a petrified giant or a stone dropped by the devil.
Daytime work and a nighttime belief
In text no. 191, the narrator recalls washing on the stone and a remark contrasting women washing by day with witches washing at night. This is a reported belief, not a claim that she personally saw supernatural washerwomen. Domestic memory and a legendary motif remain distinguishable within the same interview.
When comparing nighttime washing stories, ask what was heard, what was seen and what was merely said. No encounter with a witch or punishment for disturbing her should be added to this particular record.
Recording details
Zenona Gotovt-Šumska, aged 66, told the account in Verkšionys, Dūkštai eldership. Ida Stankevičiūtė recorded it in 2005. It was published in 2007 in Tautosakos darbai XXXIII, no. 191, p. 246. This page is editorial commentary, not a transcription of the original speech.
The source also preserves practical recollections of preparing laundry and working in cold water. They explain why this stone was an actual workplace in the narrator's memory, as well as a place associated with a belief.
Locating the account
The editors describe the stone on the right bank of the Neris, upstream of the Verkšionys Wedding Stones. This is the source's geographical description; a current access point has not been verified here.
Bobų preserves the recorded Lithuanian name, referring to women in a colloquial form. Its modern tone can vary, so the name is retained while the women's work is described neutrally.
