Short Lithuanian Quotes

They were often very turbulent meetings, with half a dozen men declaiming at once, in as many dialects of English; but the speakers were all desperately in earnest, and Jurgis was in earnest too, for he understood that a fight was on, and that it was his fight. Since the time of his disillusionment, Jurgis had sworn to trust no man, except in his own family; but here he discovered that he had brothers in affliction, and allies. Their one chance for life was in union, and so the struggle became a kind of crusade. Jurgis had always been a member of the church, because it was the right thing to be, but the church had never touched him, he left all that for the women. Here, however, was a new religion—one that did touch him, that took hold of every fiber of him; and with all the zeal and fury of a convert he went out as a missionary. There were many nonunion men among the Lithuanians, and with these he would labor and wrestle in prayer, trying to show them the right. Sometimes they would be obstinate and refuse to see it, and Jurgis, alas, was not always patient! He forgot how he himself had been blind, a short time ago—after the fashion of all crusaders since the original ones, who set out to spread the gospel of Brotherhood by force of arms. Chapter

I will need to speak briefly about the divine twins in Proto-Indo-European mythology. In short, these are recurring twin Gods that show up in many Indo-European cultures. They are typically depicted as youthful sons of the Sky Father, associated with horses, who attend a consort Goddess with solar characteristics. Their sun Goddess consort is typically rescued from the sea, or some other “watery peril.”31 The mythology is mainly reconstructed using Greek, Vedic, and Lithuanian culture. The Greek Dioscuri correspond clearly to the Vedic Aswins, and the Baltic Dieva Deli. This is pertinent to the episode of the Nart Sagas explained above, because Zerasha is retrieved from the sea and marries the hero, Akshar. Later, Akshar and his twin brother Akshartag quarrel over her and both of them die. Interestingly, Zerasha’s daughter Satanaya (born from her tomb) also marries one of two twin brothers. (one of her two half-brothers). This strengthens the idea that Satanaya is, in some sense, Zerasha reborn.

The first book printed in Lithuanian was an edition of Luther’s Short Catechism, published in (Polish) Ducal Prussia at Königsberg in 1547; the Luther Catechism was the second published work in the related language of Lettic, at Königsberg in 1586.