- Genre
- Wonder tale
- Source status
- variant tradition
- Motifs
- Frost, two brothers, mother and mother-in-law, gift, disastrous imitation
The tale: an editorial retelling
There were once two brothers. After marrying, one stayed in his mother’s home and was responsible for her upkeep. The other moved into his wife’s household, where he had to support his mother-in-law. He resented sharing his bread with the old woman.
One day he drove his mother-in-law far out into the fields. He left her almost without clothes and returned home alone, thinking that once she froze he would no longer have to feed her.
A stranger approached the woman in the field and asked whether she was cold. Instead of cursing, she said that this was frost’s season: its days had come, and it must be allowed its turn.
The stranger went away briefly and returned carrying fine, very warm clothes. The old woman put them on and was saved from freezing. The stranger was Frost himself.
Her son-in-law drove back into the fields to see whether she had frozen. Instead he found her alive, warmly and handsomely dressed. On returning home, he told his brother what had happened.
His brother decided to obtain the same gifts. He took his own mother to the very same place and left her there. Before long the same stranger appeared beside her.
He asked whether she was cold. She said she was nearly frozen and began cursing Frost, wishing that he would perish or hang himself.
Angered by her curses, Frost made the cold still more severe, and the woman froze to death. Her son came back expecting to take home a mother dressed in splendid new clothes. Instead he found her stiff and lifeless.
About this version
This retelling follows tale No. 174 on p. 509 of Lietuvių tautosaka (Lithuanian Folklore), volume III, published in 1965. The note on p. 673 identifies an earlier source: Jonas Basanavičius’s Lietuviškos pasakos yvairios, book IV, No. 144. The text and note of the 1965 edition were consulted here; this is not a transcription of the older record.
The distinction matters: the first man abandons his mother-in-law to be rid of her, while the second leaves his own mother hoping for gifts. The source’s opening connects the story with children’s duty to support parents after taking over their farms. Both men’s decisions are therefore part of the tale’s conflict.
Telling and discussing the tale
Keep the two brothers and the two women clearly distinguishable when telling it. After the first encounter, listeners can predict what the brother will do. Discuss both Frost’s response and the men’s responsibility for abandoning relatives; the tragic plot need not become a claim that suffering people deserve their misfortune.