Lauma

In the Baltic folkloric corpus Lauma/laumė is described as originally a sky spirit who descended to earth; sources state that her compassion for human suffering brought her down from the clouds. In Lithuanian accounts Laumės are also framed as some of the oldest goddesses, imagined as dwelling in a cloudy sky-court (tradition includes images such as a throne in the clouds). Over time these divine figures were folk-transformed into local fairy-like beings inhabiting lakes, meadows and forests.

Descriptions vary across tales. Laumės are often female and may appear anthropomorphic or as hybrids and animal forms: women with bird-claws for feet; women with the head or lower body of a female goat; half-human/half-dog or half-mare forms; or as mares, female goats, bears or dogs. Folklore sometimes depicts them with a single eye. They are also described in celestial terms as beautiful cloud-dwelling goddesses; narrative motifs include exaggerated breasts with stone-like nipples (folkloric identification of belemnite fossils as 'Laumės nipples'). Laumės commonly appear in groups, frequently in threes, and are associated with dancing in circles that leave rings in grass.

Laumės occupy an ambivalent moral role. Beneficially, they are guardians of birth, mothers, children and orphans; they are skilled in women's crafts (weaving and spinning) and help or reward the industrious (tales include returning an abandoned child unharmed and bestowing treasure). They are also portrayed as atmospheric or weather-affecting beings: their singing and dancing may cause rain, hail or storms and they are linked to rainbow motifs. Dangerously, some tales portray them as lethal to women who are targeted for their hair or body parts (if a laumė loses yarn she may take women's hair, entrails or veins, first killing them), and as predators of men—luring men with lust, exhausting them to death and then eating their bodies (a motif compared in sources to the Greek Lamia). They also pronounce or foretell newborns' fates in folklore. Laumės are said to fear iron.