Saulė

In Latvian folk songs, Saule and her daughter(s) are dressed of shawls woven with gold thread and Saule wears shoes of gold.[7] She is also depicted in a silver, gold or silk costume and wearing a sparkling crown.[8]

She is sometimes portrayed as waking up "red" (sārta) or "in a red tree" during the morning.[9] Saule is also said to own golden tools and garments: slippers, scarf, belt, and a golden boat she uses as her means of transportation.[10] Other accounts ascribe her golden rings, golden ribbons, golden tassels, and even a golden crown.[11]

Saule is also described as being dressed in clothes woven with "threads of red, gold, silver and white".[12] In the Lithuanian tradition, the sun is also described as a "golden wheel" or a "golden circle" that rolls down the mountain at sunset.[13] Also in Latvian riddles and songs, Saule is associated with the color red as if to indicate the "fiery aspect" of the sun: the setting and the rising sun are equated with a rose wreath and a rose in bloom due to their circular shapes.[14][11][15][lower-alpha 1]

Saulė is portrayed dancing in her gilded shoes on a silver hill and her fellow Baltic goddess Aušrinė is said to dance on a stone for the people on the first day of summer.[17][18] In Lithuania, the Sun (identified as female) rides a car towards her husband, the Moon, "dancing and emitting fiery sparks" on the way.[19]

In a myth from Lithuania, a man named Joseph becomes fascinated with Aušrinė appearing in the sky and goes on a quest to find the "second sun", who is actually a maiden that lives on an island in the sea and has the same hair like the Sun.[17] In the Baltic folklore, Saulė is said to live in a silver gated castle at the end of the sea,[20] located somewhere in the east,[21] or to go to an island in the middle of the sea for her nocturnal rest.[22] In folksongs, Saule sinks into the bottom of a lake to sleep at night, in a silver cradle "in the white seafoam".[23][lower-alpha 2]

Saulė also drives a carriage with copper wheels,[25] a "gleaming copper chariot"[26] or a golden chariot[27] pulled by untiring horses or a "pretty little sleigh" (kamaņiņa) made of fish-bones.[28][29] Saulė is also described as driving her shining car on the way to her husband, the Moon.[19] In other accounts, she is said to sail the seas on a silver[30] or a golden boat,[26] which, according to legend, is what her chariot transforms into for her night travels.[21][31] In a Latvian folksong, Saule hangs her sparkling crown on a tree in the evening and enters a golden boat to sail away.[8]

Saulė's horses are also mentioned in several pieces of Baltic folklore. Her horses are said to be of white color;[21] in other accounts they amount to three steeds of golden, silver and diamond colors.[19] In Latvian dainas (folk songs), her horses are described as yellow, of a golden or a fiery color.[31] The sun's steeds are also portrayed as having hooves and bridles of gold in the dainas, and as golden beings themselves or of a bay colour, "reflect[ing] the hues of the bright or the twilight sky".[32] When she begins her nocturnal journey through the World Sea, her chariot changes into a boat and "the Sun swims her horses",[30] which signifies that "she stops to wash her horses in the sea".[33]

Scholarship points that the expressions geltoni žirgeliai or dzelteni kumeliņi ('golden' or 'yellow horses'), which appear in Latvian dainas, seem to be a recurrent poetic motif.[11]

According to studies by professor Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga and ethnologue Nijolė Laurinkienė, Saule is also depicted in folksongs as a "mother" (Lithuanian motinėlė, Latvian māmuliņa)[31] who comforts orphans, which is the reason why the sun takes time to rise.[34] In other folksongs, the personified female Sun is also associated with the color "white" (Latv balt-), such as the imagery of a white shirt, the expression "mīļā, balte" ("Sun, dear, white"), and the description of the trajectory of the sun (red as it rises, white as it journeys on its way).[35]