Mourning Linden lyrics and meaning

This sutartinė with the refrain "gedula" can be understood as a song in which the fate of a tree runs parallel to the fate of a mother and her daughters. In the first part, the linden had nine branches; a storm broke them, leaving only the ninth, where the cuckoo could perch and call. The image can be read as a tree being diminished until only one branch remains.

In the second part, the same parallelism moves into human life: the mother had nine daughters, and suitors came for all nine, leaving only the ninth so that someone would sweep the earthen floor and wash the spoons. The comparison identifies the tree's branches with daughters leaving home in marriage; like broken branches, the married daughters depart from the mother-tree.

A second reading hears the linden and the mother not merely as comparison but as one mythic form. In Lithuanian worldview the linden is a feminine tree associated with motherhood and with the goddess Laima, while nine is a sacred number of fullness and cosmic order. Thus "a linden with nine branches = a mother with nine daughters" is not just an image but an archaic tree-human identity, where a woman's life and the tree's life are one. The refrain "gedula" gives the whole sutartinė the tone of lament: sending daughters away, like the breaking of branches, is felt as loss, making this family song close to a wedding lament.