When There Were Good Years, Kadujo lyrics and meaning

Kadu buva, kadujo, geri metai, kadujo
Kadujo kadujo kadujo
Kadujo kadujo kadujo

Auga bitys, kadujo, kaip telyčios, kadujo…
O bitynai, kadujo, kaip veržynai, kadujo…
Nešė medų, kadujo, daržinėsa, kadujo…
Siuvė korius, kadujo, rezginėsa, kadujo…

When There Were Good Years, Kadujo: sutartinė interpretation

This sutartinė with the refrain "kadujo" can be understood as a song about good years and the abundance of bees. It remembers when the years were good, when bees grew like heifers and apiaries were like calf herds. These hyperbolic images praise a fertile, plentiful time.

The song continues by saying that bees carried honey into barns and sewed combs in woven carriers. These images present the bees' diligence and the sheer scale of abundance: there is so much honey that only barns can hold it. Such exaggeration belongs to festive songs that praise prosperity.

A second reading hears this exaggerated abundance not only as memory but as wish or charm. By naming what the "good years" were like, the sutartinė seems to call such plenty back. In Lithuanian tradition the bee is a sacred creature associated with the soul and prosperity, while honey is a good of offering and feasting. Such a song may have accompanied spring or harvest rites asking for beekeeping success and a well-fed year. Hyperbole functions here as magical language: the greater the imagined abundance, the stronger the wish that it come true.

When There Were Good Years, Kadujo: symbols and phrases

Good years
A remembered fertile and favorable time, marking prosperity and plenty that one wishes to see return.
Bees like heifers
Bees imagined as enormous animals; the hyperbole emphasizes abundance and fertility.
Apiaries like calf herds
A dense, plentiful apiary image that exaggerates the scale of bee abundance.
Honey in barns, combs in woven carriers
Honey carried to barns and combs made in carriers mark extraordinary prosperity.

When There Were Good Years, Kadujo: sutartinė history

"Kadu buva, kadujo" belongs to sutartinės that praise abundance and good years, with the refrain "kadujo." It tells of a time when bees grew "like heifers" and apiaries were "like calf herds," a hyperbolic image of bees and honey in abundance. Beekeeping was highly valued in Lithuanian culture, and honey was understood as a sign of welfare and sweetness.

Sutartinės flourished in northeastern Aukštaitija from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries and were inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010. The exact location and collector of this variant could not be confirmed from the publicly accessible Slaviūnas index, so no district data is given here.

sources

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

When There Were Good Years, Kadujo: sources