Norbertas Velius

The childhood of humanity would have been considerably poorer had it not met the legend, clad in homespun garments, along-side the more extravagantly dressed fairy tale.
The typical beginning of a legend finds a person going against prevailing mythical traditions. A person may be doing laundry at night, traveling at night, looking through the crossed ears of a howling dog, and, consequently, meets a fairy, devil, or a dead person.
A person telling a legend consciously does not smile, (like a fairy tale teller) and sits in a serious, collected, and even somewhat worried manner. How can one laugh if this is "not a story, but a true event?" Most narrators describe legends they relate thus. It was believed that events described in legends really happened to neighbors, acquaintances, and to people living elsewhere. The legends were told not only to entertain, but also to teach people how to act when faced with supernatural beings, to acquaint people with the ways and fancies of the beings of the other world. This particular function of mythological legends was by far the most prevalent when they first came into existence. This largely deter-mined their artistic texture, their relation with reality, and, hence, the effect on the listener or reader.
In fairy tales, real-life experiences are transformed in such a way as to look fantastic, unusual, and magical, which is not so in real-life. Legends transform elements of everyday life while retaining a sense of reality. Unlike fairy tales, legends have no traditional formulas for the beginning and ending, which serve to separate strictly the artistic image from reality. Their beginnings are simple, mundane-as if segments from the reel of life were cut out and placed into an artistic image. " An old woman had much flax to spin. She spun and spun until she was sick of spinning, but there was still more to spin..." Such is the opening of the legend "The Spinning Goddesses." The narration intonation and vocabulary come from natural speech. Because of believing in the reality of the presented picture, the reader experiences greater awe and even fear at the appearance of fantastic beings of irregular forms. These feelings are intensified when one realizes that these beings are active and threaten to take away one’s life. A hint of misfortune surfaces in the aforementioned "The Spinning Goddesses" when a woman doesn’t think about her action - she invites goddesses to spin flax, not completely understanding all the implications. The tensest aspect of the plot is the struggle between humans and mythological beings. The tellers of legends are almost always convinced that they are relating true events and not creations created long ago that are long since known all throughout Lithuania and beyond its borders as well.
The simple plot of mythological legends-a person comes in contact with a mythological being-does not take place in some " far off land," but right here in an environment similar to that of the listener (in a house, by a river or forest, in a field, in a barn). Legends do not take place in an undefined past (like fairy tales), nor during the world’ s creation (as in cosmological myths), nor in the remote past (like in historical legends). They take place in the near past-yesterday, the day before yesterday, last year. Even when a leg-end took place "Once" or " A long time ago," we understand that it can not be that far back if it is still in human memory.
Though legends are set in real, geographically and historically defined places, the settings are still somewhat unusual. A person usually encounters a mythological being not in one’ s residence, but rather in a forest, by a river, near a cemetery, in barns standing off away from the residential houses. One encounters them late at night. This enhances the illusion of reality A person meets mythological beings where people are convinced that they must dwell, at times these beings are most likely to appear. The time and setting of the plot heighten the horror and unusual nature of the plot, but at the same time add to the appeal and popularity of the legend.
The characters of mythological legends are just as the creators and narrators of legends imagine them-realistic. The humans in legends are commonplace farmers, farmers’ wives, farmhands, servant girls, and shepherds. They are not so strictly stereotypical as the heroes of fairy tales, where two brothers are smart and the third is a fool, where the unfairly treated orphan girl is invariably good and her step-mother is evil. In legends, characters of a similar type can be rich in one legend and poor in another, generous or miserly, brave or cowardly , knowledgeable or not in dealing with mythological beings. However, people always seem to side with poor, humble, and wise heroes. In fairy tales, a person travels over the world, faces challenges, and overcomes them. In legends, a person lives in a normal environment, but is intensely aware of the surroundings. A person is never the same after encountering a mythological being-fear, surprise, insanity, illness, or even death are sure to follow These strong emotions, through which human nature is revealed, lend legends a lyrical character. Aside from these strong emotions, the human is overshadowed by the image of mythological beings in legends.
The mythological being of legends is completely different from the human. It is described with graphic detail, to the minutest element, with all its horror and greatness (and sometimes simplicity or mundane nature). Simple, peasant laumes (witch-pixies) and their large-headed, big eyed children, the calm hunter Perkunas (god of thunder) and fiery, flying aitvarases (wealth carrying spirits), earthly wizards and the velnias (devil) of a hundred faces-all these are clearly illustrated. They pass before our- eyes as if frozen models, but mystical and elusive at the same time. Sometimes whole legends are devoted to characterizing one such being’s appearance.
The actions of these mythological beings in legends are described in great detail as well. Laumes wash their never-ending linens in lakes, spin and weave, give presents to, kill, or swap children; laimes (luck goddesses) determine fates of newborn children; aitvarases carry stolen grains, money, or dairy products to their keepers; witches hurt people, animals, and nature, they fly to their meetings, covens; wizards help bewitched people, and so on. In Lithuanian mythological legends, rarely do we find two mythological beings meeting. Generally, a person comes into contact with one of these beings.
Legends have a completely different understanding of mythological beings as well as of the whole mythical world than do fairy tales. In fairy tales, the mythical world doesn’t have its characteristic supernatural shield. A person interacts with mythical beings (Perkunas, velnias, giltine (personified death), talking animals, even the sun) as with others beings of this world. A meeting with those from the other world does not bring forth any more fear or surprise than any other meeting. In legends, however, the mythological world is mystical and threatening for a person. A person tries to avoid such an encounter, since it usually brings no good with it. Since listeners are convinced of the validity of the events related and believe they can happen again, they almost expect to meet a velnias, a walking dead person, or a laume on their way home. However, the fear experienced listening to these legends has a certain aesthetic value and differs from real fear, which we may experience if we chance upon a wolf (for example). Nobody desires to repeat feelings of real fear , but everyone wants to hear more legends, which are somehow stately and uplift and enrich the human spirit.
Mythological legends have no less effect on the modern per-son, who no longer believes in mythological beings. Primitive, but harmonious, complete artistic images, unexpected confrontations with the ghastly and unusual all make legends interesting reading that even appeals to our intellectual age.
The historical and cultural value of mythological legends also makes them attractive. Entire epochs of our people’ s mythical consciousness, world-view, social and cultural relations, and history are reflected in legends.
Let us take the most popular legends about laumes. The very image of the laume, which we see in these legends, ultimately formed in an agricultural society of high culture. This is illustrated by the anthropomorphic appearance of the laumes and their agriculture-related actions (spinning and weaving of flax, washing linen). The pre-history of this image is long and complicated. It is hard to imagine that a laume is actually a personified dangerous and threatening natural (at first water-related) element, which primitive humans tried to tame and use for their own purposes. Legends about laumes on the one hand reflect the irrationality and danger of natural elements, but on the other hand show the human’ s ability to use these forces for personal benefit. Like most Indoeuropean water spirits, our laumes control the harvest bounty and fertility.
Meanwhile, the image of the aitvaras is of later origin and was formed during the disintegration of original society and during heightened social inequality. It reflects social rather than the unfathomable natural forces. Legends about aitvarases denounce immoral ways of getting rich, using other people, and lust for wealth.
Lithuanian laumes have many characteristics in common with Celtic fairies and with the goddesses of fate of the Balkan nations. The aitvaras is similar to the flying dragons of Iran. It becomes apparent that the Baltic people had close relations with the Celts while the image of the laume was being formed, with Balkans during the formation of the laime image, and direct or indirect contact with Iranians when the aitvaras came about. It goes without saying that the Lithuanian mythological world has more in common than not with the Slavic, Germanic, and Ugro-Finnic peoples. Nevertheless, Lithuanian mythological legends reflect a mythical world, which has a distinct national character different from other-even closely related-nations’-mythological worlds. Fantastic images are dictated by the ethnic type, way of life, and geographic environment of the people creating them. One feels the spirit of a peaceful agricultural people, living on even, uncontrasted land, in the Lithuanian mythological world. Lithuanians have -no beliefs or legends about dangerous water and forest spirits, as do the Russians and Germans, about warring vilas, as do the Bulgarians, nor about dwarfs dwelling in mountains, as do the Scandinavians.  Lithuanian laumes are more closely tied to agriculture-they have become simple peasant workers-than the water spirits of other nations The Lithuanian aitvaras is more domestic (executing house-hold chores) than wealth-fetching beings of other nations. The main occupation of witches and wizards has remained to heal or harm animals, and so forth.
Ancient centuries and millenia-old Lithuanian mythological images have changed along with changing economic and social conditions. In the last few centuries, these images have been greatly affected by the images of the new religion Christianity. The influence of Christianity is felt in the images of the witch, wizard, the dead person, aitvaras, partly in the laume, and in those of other mythological beings. Fortune tellers, the healers of people, witches and wizards, became enemies of humans, spreading evil of all sorts, and associating closely with evil spirits. Uncharacteristic, detrimental actions, such as searching sheep or riding horses, were ascribed to laumes-the spirits of nature. Aitvaras and velnias images were intertwined. However, the influence of Christianity is superficial and does not reach the deeper layers. Our most popular mythical image, the velnias, demonstrates that Christianity was unable to shake the traditional world-view of the Lithuanians. The velnias image formed on the foundation of the ancient cult of the dead. It differed radically in names, appearance, and functions from the understanding of the evil spirit propagated by Christianity. In fact, had a person of the Middle Ages confessed to imagining the spirit of evil as the velnias of legends, that person most likely would have been burned at the stake as the biggest heretic.
It is even more apparent that Christianity has not affected the very mythological legends themselves. Nowhere can one find the propagated medieval asceticism, humility, self-denial, resignation to the will of the Christian God. On the contrary, these legends value the optimism, cleverness and cunning characteristic of the typical person as well as the morals and ethics of the people, which have been developed over thousands of years. Though mythological legends are one of the oldest genres in our folklore (having formed before social stratification), they also reflect the antagonistic social relations which have prevailed in our rural regions over the past centuries. It is apparent that our people denounce greedy landlords ("The Carriage Pulled by Landlords," "The Velnias Horses," "The Landlords’ Horses"), immoral farmers ("The Little Bleak," "The Angered Aitvaras," "The Slaughtered Aitvaras"), and jealous farmwives ("Laumes and the Baby"), while poor, but clever and decent peasants, shepherds, and servants are exalted.
The surprising images, richness of ideas, and great value of mythological legends have long since attracted the eyes of readers.  It is possible that legends have been such an inseparable part of folk traditions that they unconsciously flow into the creative, artistic world. Starting with writers K.Donelaitis, S.Stanevicius, and M.Valancius and ending with modern-day poets and writers, all these people have uniquely incorporated mythical images or en-tire legends into their artistic conceptions.
Until recently , Lithuanian mythological legends were usually published along with fairy tales. It was said that they were few in number. The present publication presents a larger number of legends selected mostly from unpublished sources. Though they constitute less than one tenth of the total variations recorded in Lithuania, they can at least illustrate the variety of stories and the richness of Lithuanian mythology. The collection includes stories about so-called domestic mythical beings (the kaukas, aitvaras, puscius [all beings affecting people’s wealth]), about spirits of nature (the laume, Perkunas, mermaids, and lake and river guardians), about people given supernatural gifts (the witch, wizard, werewolf, seer), about unusual animals (the grass snake, king of snakes, wolf, stork, and swallow), about forces controlling the fate of humans (the laime, goddesses of the plague, giltine), and about the dead person, velnias, and bewitched treasure guardians.