Pikne

In collected Estonian myths (as assembled by Matthias Johann Eisen and summarized in later accounts) Pikne is presented within a divine family: cited as a son of Uku and brother of Kõu. In one narrative recorded in the folk corpus, the underworld figure Vanatühi stole Pikne's whistle or bagpipes, depriving the gods of the means to help farmers pray for rain; Uku then sent Pikne back to Earth, where he worked as a farmhand and recovered his instrument by posing as a musician at a wedding. This genealogy and the stolen-instrument motif are preserved in the folk-myth collections summarized in modern references.

No consistent iconography or sustained physical description of Pikne is preserved in the supplied materials. Narrative episodes record that Pikne was able to assume human guise — for example, working as a farmhand on Earth and pretending to be a musician at a wedding to regain his instrument — which indicates stories depict him taking familiar human form in at least some tales. Beyond these narrative disguises, the sources do not record a standardized anthropomorphic or zoomorphic appearance.

Pikne is described as the controlling personification of lightning and an active weather-deity invoked to obtain rain. He is attested as possessing a magic instrument (referred to variously as a whistle or bagpipes) whose sounding was necessary, in the myths, for the gods' ability to aid farmers in securing rain. In one 17th-century account Pikne is recorded as protector of the river Võhandu, with a story that he withheld rain from people who built mills on that stream — an episode attested in a pastoral record rather than stated as a universal or perennial behavior. Medieval and folkloric practice included making animal sacrifices to Pikne so as to secure his favor for ploughing and harvesting.