Historical sources from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century

The Polish chronicler Johannes Dlugosz (1415-80) provides material about Lithuanian pre-Christian rituals and deities. Following the custom of interpretatio romana, which was at that time common in Europe, Dlugosz calls the local deities not by their Lithuanian names, but assigns Greek and Roman names to them according to their functions: Vulcanus, Jupiter, Diana, Silvanus and Aesculapius.

In 1589, Salomon Henning (1528-89), the Duke of Courland Gotthard Ketler’s advisor in spiritual matters, writes that the Latvians of Courland (Kurzeme) and Semigallia (Zemgale) worship as deities the sun, the stars and animals such as the toad, and that the people themselves have the ability to turn into werewolves. Henning describes an incident, which he himself had witnessed, in which the country folk fed milk to toads and snakes until they grew fat and swollen, and when they were chopped in half, milk gushed forth from their bodies.

The sixteenth-century German historian and cosmographer Sebastian Münster (1489-1552), in his book Cosmographia (published in 1544 and supplemented in 1550), claims that even though the Latvian and Estonian peasants of Livonia had Christian names, they were ignorant and did not understand Christ’s teachings. According to Münster, these same people worshipped not only heavenly bodies as deities but also particular trees and stones. Münster also describes marriage and burial practices of the time, describing how food and drink, as well as money, were buried with the dead in a grave.

In 1581 a chronicler from Poland but of Italian origin, Alexander Guagnini (1534-1614), describes Lithuanian and Latvian folk songs, both in terms of their public was introduced to dainas by Walter Scott (The Foreign Quarterly Reviews, 1831). In Latvia the systematic collection of folk songs was begun in the nineteenth century by Georg Ludvig Bitner, Jekabs Zvaigznite, Aronu Matiss, Brivzemnieks-Treilands and Krisjanis Barons; the latter became the main editor of a collection of dainas published in six volumes (1894-1914), comprising a total of 35,789 dainas. Since then the work of collecting and republishing dainas has continued up to the present day. Currently, such work is being carried out by researchers at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art (University of Latvia).

Besides dainas, magic formulae, as well as a number of Baltic folk beliefs and customs of the Balts, may reflect a pre-Christian historical layer. The fact that some of these customs, such as the taboo against eating frogs and crows, are found among Latvians but not Lithuanians, may reflect the historical continuity of an older tradition among the Latvians. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between everyday folk customs of indeterminate origin on the one hand and beliefs and reflexes of earlier religious practices on the other.

Most contemporary Latvians and Lithuanians have integrated elements of pre- Christian and Christian origin in their everyday life. The eves of spring, midsummer, winter solstice and other notable events of the annual cycle are celebrated in ways that have non-Christian roots, by singing folk songs, burning fires, dancing; the next morning and day will typically be spent going to church and observing relevant Christian rituals. Other customs are almost certainly syncretistic, that is, they reflect pre-Christian celebrations that were given a Christian interpretation, as when days for ritual activities were over time assigned to the veneration of Christian saints.