A Guelder Rose Grew with a Rowan lyrics and meaning

Augo putins su šermukšniu ryto ratuto
Ei ryto rytėlio ryto ratuto

Vienas kitų prisiaugo…
Ir ne vieni jų žiedeliai…
Pražydėjo baltais žiedais…
Užaugino uogytėlas…

//Galima dainuoti dviem balsais, kartojant atitarimą du kartus ir įstojant po Augo putins su šermukšniu

A Guelder Rose Grew with a Rowan: sutartinė interpretation

This sutartinė with the refrain "ryto ratuto" can be understood as a song built on the parallel growth of trees. At the beginning, a guelder rose and a rowan grow side by side and into one another. The image can be read as a symbol of closeness between two young people. In sutartinės and songs, trees are often set beside couples or close kin.

The song continues by saying that their blossoms were not alone, that they flowered white and grew little berries. These images can be understood as signs of flowering and fertility, which in folk poetics are connected with youth, love, and the hope of marriage.

A second interpretation emphasizes the guelder rose. In Lithuanian and in broader Baltic and Slavic tradition, putinas, the guelder rose, is a strong symbol of the bride and of a girl's purity: its white flowers and red berries are associated with weddings. Two trees growing, flowering, and bearing berries together can therefore be read not only as a nature image, but also as a wedding image of a couple, marriage, and fertility. The two-voice structure of the sutartinė itself becomes meaningful: two voices, like two trees, "grow toward one another" and settle into one shared sound.

A Guelder Rose Grew with a Rowan: symbols and phrases

Guelder rose and rowan
Two neighboring trees grown close together. They mark the parallel of a couple or two close people; the guelder rose is a strong bride symbol.
White blossoms
The trees flowering in white mark youth, purity, and the season of blossoming.
Little berries
The berries grown by the trees mark fertility and the continuation of life.
Refrain "ryto ratuto"
A repeated rhythmic refrain that marks the two-voice singing structure; two voices tune together like two trees.

A Guelder Rose Grew with a Rowan: sutartinė history

"Augo putins su šermukšniu" belongs to sutartinės about nature, where trees, plants, and birds are characteristically set beside people. According to the Visuotinė lietuvių enciklopedija, sutartinės flourished from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century and survived longest in northeastern Aukštaitija; in 2010 they were inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The presented text is two-voiced, with the refrain "ryto ratuto" and an instruction for when the second voice enters. That points to a living performance tradition, not only to a written text.

The exact place and collector of this variant could not be confirmed in the publicly available Slaviūnas index, so province or year are not given here. The motif of two trees growing together is, however, well attested in Lithuanian songs and sutartinės.

sources

  • Z. Slaviūnas. Sutartinės, vols. 1-3 (1958-1959)
  • D. Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė. Sutartinės: Lithuanian Polyphonic Songs (2002)

A Guelder Rose Grew with a Rowan: sources