A Folk Tale for a Cold Night

The Two Harmonious Brothers
Saticeigi bruoli
Retold by Sean McLaughlin

November brings cold to the seta, the Latvian farmstead. Whether it comes in winds or in rains doesn’t matter. It simply comes.

A cold spring, or a too rainy summer, and the rye crop will be but half as high as it needs to be in August. Clear September may bring the start of harvest if all has gone well. Often it doesn’t, making a poor harvest and placing great importance on the second sowing of the winter crop.

Woe to the farmer who has not harvested the rye, the rudzi, before the soaking rains come or who has not stored it well before the hard frosts drive the field mice into the warmth of the farm buildings, for that farmer will lose part of his crop. In Latgale, eastern Latvia, even now the rye grain is “life” to the people. It is the gift of the earth that with great hard work becomes the People’s bread.

This story was told long ago during Martini, after the harvest was in and the mumming activities of kekatas had started. Those who live by the Long Lake in Latgale talk of the story as a teaching story. Yet among the elders there, many say that the story is based on fact, for once they say, there really were two brothers who found their way to wisdom.

The two brothers, near to each other in birth, in wit, and in strength, worked the rye fields left to them by their father together. As similar as the brothers were to each other, their families were not. One brother had a short, dark-haired wife with hazel eyes, while the other had a tall blonde wife who had eyes like the blue-grey sea. One had four children and one was childless. But both brothers lived on their father’s land and broke bread in one place.

It had been a difficult year for the rye crop. The harvest was poor. The summer had brought no rain then it brought uncommonly cold rains which lasted days. Hay time was a disaster. Harvest was but half the size of the crop that had been gathered the year before. Harvest itself had been hurried by the cold rains. A whole week of work had to be done in one day of the sun, while the days that lengthened without sun were spent in brooding and fear.

Yet Martins came as he always comes. What little grain there was, was threshed. The horses were corralled. Again the seta began to gather in upon itself. The brothers, as they had done for years, divided their rye crop into two equal parts and stored it against winter.

That night the oldest brother lay awake in his bed thinking about the celebrations to come and about kekatas, the masquerading which he loved. It was then that he decided to give his own portion of rye to his brother, for his brother had a much larger family and needed more bread than just he and his wife would need. In the dark of the night when the seta was finally still, he determined to simply pour his rye into his brother’s portion without his knowledge, avoiding any fuss or bother, for his brother was very proud and would never accept what he might regard as charity.

In the meantime, the younger brother also lay awake thinking similar thoughts. He thought about his four children who would soon be able to earn their own keep. He thought about his brother who was slowly growing older without any children to care for him when he was aged or to help him with his chores.
“I will go pour my grain into my bother’s portion,” he told himself.
“I will say nothing for my brother is proud. I would not hurt him by offering him what he might think of as my pity.”

Thus it was that the following morning, just before the rising of Saule, the sun, the brother’s each poured their own grain into the other’s portion, the storage of which were in different areas of the seta.

All day long they kept returning to the grain which had been equally divided the day before and, to their astonishment, it still was. So both brothers determined that in the deepest hours of the night they would again give away their rye.

So they did and still the rye was equal in the morning. So it happened for three days until each brother, realizing what was happening, talked with the other.

From that time onward the brothers lived in even closer harmony. Mercy, zelsirdiba, and compassion, lidzcietiba, the neighbors said, came to exist alongside the hard work of the seta. Never again was the grain divided. Never again did anyone count who ate more or who ate less of what the seta raised with their labor. Likewise no one feared as old age stole upon them.

There are no clay whistles made in the form of rye in all of Latgale, although the green of rye fields is among the most sought-after colors in Latgalian ceramics. To find a little whistle that goes with this story you would have to go to the village of Siljani, where the daughter of a great potter, whose own father was a great potter, and his father before him, still lives. There is an older woman who still remembers the seta named ezergailitis, the Lake Rooster, for her great grandmother was of that family.

It was she who gave the three whistles to the little daughter of this family in the late fall of the year when the last yellow birch leaves had been striped away by winds and hard frost had finally fallen on the fields. It was she who told the story.

Her whistles, which have become family treasures, are of two brothers and a sister whose mouths are open in song and whose bodies are pulled backwards like birds. The whistles represent the “gudri veli,” the wise spirits of the seta, she said.
“Those that know the songs, the tales, and the duties of the people.”