Indo-European Poetry and Myth

The Baltic and Slavonic evidence

The Daughter of the Sun, Lithuanian Sáule ̇s dukrýte ̇, Latvian Saules meita
(‘Sun’s girl’, presumably for older *Saule ̄s dukte ̄), is a figure who appears in
many of the Baltic songs. In some cases she is just a variant of the personified
(female) Sun herself. Sometimes there are two, three, or more Saules meitas.
But there are never any sons of Saule.
Saules meita wears fine clothes and ornaments. She herds cows (LD 33971
= Jonval no. 309 var. 2), which may make us think of the motif of solar cattle,
but this is only one of many homely activities which she is pictured as per-
forming after the fashion of a domesticated young woman on earth. She is in
fact a paragon, as illustrated by a Lithuanian saying recorded in the eighteenth
century, applicable to someone who finds fault with everything: ‘he wouldn’t
even be satisfied with the daughter of the Sun’.^106
She is in constant relationship with the Sons of God (Jonval nos. 369–417)
in a way that strikingly parallels Su ̄rya ̄’s relationship with the As ́vins, the Divó
nápa ̄ta ̄. On occasion they are at odds (370–4, 416), but more often they are on
friendly terms (375ff.). They greet her on Midsummer Day (404). She rides
on a sleigh behind the Son of God’s horse (417). She heats the bath for the
two Sons of God, who arrive on sweating horses (381).
They are her suitors (405, 410–13; cf. 120, where her place is taken by the
Virgin Mary). The Son of God is seen saddling his horse and riding to find a
wife (128). The suit is associated with sunrise:

Les coqs d’argent chantent

au bord de la rivière d’or.

Ils faisaient lever les Fils de Dieu,

prétendants de la Fille de Saule. (LD 34008 = Jonval no. 405)

Dieu a deux fils,

prétendants de la Fille de Saule.

Saule elle-même, mère des filles à marier,

pare la chambre de ses filles,

chaque matin en se levant,

éparpillant les fleurs. (LD 33766 = Jonval no. 413)

Saule’s daughter is indeed much sought after in marriage. Her suitors or
bridegrooms in different songs include God, Me ̄nesis (the Moon), Me ̄nesis’
son, Pe ̄rkons (the thunder-god), Pe ̄rkons’ son, Auseklis (the Morning Star),

(^106) Jakob Brodowski’s manuscript Lithuanian–German dictionary (early eighteenth century)
in Mannhardt (1936), 614, nei Sáules dukte negál jám intikti.
228 5. Sun and Daughter