nas,
Pehrkons, and Perkunos existed in Lituanian, Lettish, Old Prussian,
and that even the Mordvinians had adopted the name Porguini as that of
their thunder-god.

Simon Grunau, who finished his chronicle in 1521, speaks of three
gods, as worshipped by the Old Prussians, Patollo, Patrimpo, and
Perkuno, and he states that Perkuno was invoked "for storm's sake,
that they might have rain and fair weather at the proper time, and
thunder and lightning should not injure them."[249]

The following Lituanian prayer has been preserved to us by
Lasitzki:[250]

"Check thyself, O Percuna, and do not send misfortune on my
field! and I shall give thee this flitch."

Among the neighbors of the Lets, the Esthonians, who, though un-Aryan
in language, have evidently learned much from their Aryan neighbors,
the following prayer was heard,[251] addressed by an old peasant to
their god _Picker_ or _Picken_, the god of thunder and rain, as late
as the seventeenth century.[252]

"Dear Thunder (woda Picker), we offer to thee an ox that has
two horns and four cloven hoofs; we would pray thee for our
ploughing and sowing, that our straw be copper-red, our
grain golden-yellow. Push elsewhere all the thick black
clouds, over great fens, high forests, and wildernesses. But
unto us, ploughers and sowers, give a fruitful season and
sweet rain. Holy Thunder (poeha Picken), guard our
seed-field, that it bear good straw below, good ears above,
and good grain within."[253]

Now, I say again, I do not wish you to admire this primitive poetry,
primitive, whether it is repeated in the Esthonian fens in the
seventeenth century of our era, or sung in the valley of the Indus in
the seventeenth century before our era. Let aesthetic critics say what
they like about these uncouth poems. I only ask you, Is it not worth a
great many poems, to have established this fact, that the same god
Par_g_anya, the god of clouds and thunder and lightning and rain, who
was invoked in India a thousand years before India was discovered by
Alexander, should have been remembered and believed in by Lituanian
peasants on the frontier between East Prussia and Russia, not more
than two hundred years ago, and should have retained its old name
Par_g_anya, which in Sanskrit meant "showering," under the form of
_Perkuna_, which in Lituanian is a name and a name only, without any
etymological meaning at all; nay, should live on