Antanas Juška (; 16 June 1819 – 1 November 1880) was a Lithuanian Roman Catholic priest known for his lifelong study of Lithuanian folk traditions. For about three decades, he observed the Lithuanian people, their traditions, and recorded their songs and vocabulary. Juška recorded about 7,000 Lithuanian folk songs, including about 2,000 songs with melodies, and wrote a 70,000-word Lithuanian–Polish dictionary. These works provide a wealth of information of the 19th-century Lithuanian life. His works were partially published with the help of his elder brother Jonas Juška.
With the help of his brother Jonas, Juška attended Kražiai College and later transferred to the Vilnius Theological Seminary. He was ordained as a Catholic priest and later worked in various locations in Lithuania – Antazavė, Obeliai (1845), and Zarasai (1846–1849), Ukmergė (1849–1855), Pušalotas (1855–1862), Lyduvėnai (1862), Vilkija (1862–1864), Veliuona (1864–1871), Alsėdžiai (1871–1879). During the failed Uprising of 1863, he was arrested and imprisoned for nine months on suspicions of sympathizing with the rebels. He died in Kazan in 1880.
Juška collected Lithuanian vocabulary and folk songs directly from the people. He wrote down the songs as they were performed – i.e. preserving nuances of the dialects. At about 7,000 songs, it was by far the largest collection of Lithuanian folk songs at the time (previously, a total of about 800 Lithuanian songs were published). However, only about 2,800 of them were published and the rest were lost during World War I. Despite the Lithuanian press ban, with the help of professor Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, three volumes of Lithuanian songs (a total of 1,586 songs) were published by the University of Kazan in 1880–1882 and a collection of 1,100 wedding songs was published by the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1883.
Juška also wrote three dictionaries – 7,000-word Polish–Lithuanian (around 1854), 6,000-word Latvian–Lithuanian–Polish (1875), and 70,000-word Lithuanian–Polish dictionaries. The first two dictionaries were never published. His largest dictionary was prepared not based on words picked out from published texts but from the local vernacular. He recorded words in sentences and explained their meaning in Lithuanian and only then translated them to Polish (later, Russian was added so that the dictionary could be published). Thus, he wrote an explanatory dictionary of the colloquial language. After Juška's death, his dictionary was edited by numerous linguists, including his brother Jonas, Vatroslav Jagić, Jonas Jablonskis, Kazimieras Būga, but the work was very slow and only three volumes up to the word kuokštuotis were published in 1897, 1904, and 1922.
Biography Early life Juška was born in the village of , near Ariogala. His parents were landless Samogitian nobles – the family had to rent farms from others and frequently moved from one location to another. His elder brother Jonas attended a Bernadine school in Dotnuva and was admitted to Kražiai College where he earned a living working as a superintendent in a students' dormitory. Jonas educated Antanas and he was admitted to the third grade at Kražiai College. Jonas graduated in 1839 and enrolled into the Kharkiv University. Left without financial support, Antanas enrolled into the Vilnius Theological Seminary which provided free education including room and board. Juška graduated in 1843 and became a priest in Antazavė, Obeliai (1845), and Zarasai (1846–1849). In Zarasai, he witnessed a typhoid epidemic and helped nurse the sick and bury the dead. He was then reassigned as a chaplain of a school in Ukmergė where he worked until 1855.
It appears that Juška started his studies of the Lithuanian language in Ukmergė. He asked his students to bring him examples of local dialects, idioms, proverbs, etc. He also read and was familiar with the latest publications on Lithuanian language and culture, including works by August Schleicher, Motiejus Valančius, Simonas Daukantas, Friedrich Kurschat, Kristijonas Donelaitis, Ludwig Rhesa. His brother Jonas, encouraged by professor Izmail Sreznevsky, also became interested in the Lithuanian language, but he was more a theoretician while Antanas more a practician working in the field to collect words and examples from the living people. The two brothers closely cooperated in their studies; Jonas frequently visited Antanas in Lithuania during summer vacations. Sometimes it is difficult to determine which manuscript was written by which brother.
Antanas' efforts to collect samples of Lithuanian vocabulary and songs intensified after he was relocated to Pušalotas in 1855. He also described local wedding traditions (the Russian language manuscript is unfinished). In 1861, during a canonical visitation, bishop Motiejus Valančius visited Juška in Pušalotas and urged him to publish his materials. Juška renovated the church in Pušalotas in 1853, rebuilt burnt rectory in 1857, and built a stone fence around the churchyard and the cemetery. Due to conflicts with local residents over land rights, Juška was reassigned to Lyduvėnai in 1862. However, Juška did not want to be a pastor as he wanted to devote his time to the studies of Lithuanian language and culture. Therefore, after about half a year, he defied Valančius' orders and left Lyduvėnai for a monastery in Dotnuva. He was then reassigned to Vilkija. It is said that he tied drunkards to a post in the town center so that they suffered public humiliation.
Uprising of 1863 Close contacts with local villagers made Juška sympathetic to their plight. In 1863, he published a primer which was similar to other primers of the period except it lacked customary sample texts that instilled obedience to the nobility. There were rumors though there is no clear evidence that Juška assisted Antanas Mackevičius, one of the leaders of the Uprising of 1863, who was active in the area of Vilkija. In 1867, Juška's brother Jonas married Mackevičius' niece which only adds weight to the rumor. In July 1863, Russian soldiers searched the nearby manor in . They found 13-year-old son of the manor tenant Vincas Juškevičius transcribing Lietuvos katekizmas (Catechism of Lithuania) in which the rebels described their goals and ideology in the traditional question-and-answer format of religious catechisms.
Juška was arrested and imprisoned in Kaunas Prison by the Tsarist police as he was suspected as the author or at least distributor of Lietuvos katekizmas. He was further suspected of supporting the rebels, maintaining contacts with them, and encouraging villagers to join the uprising. Residents of Vilkija sent a letter with 72 signatures to , Governor of Kovno, asking for Juška's release. The Russian Academy of Sciences also sent a letter asking for his release as he was working on a much needed Lithuanian–Russian dictionary (in fact, he was working on a Lithuanian–Polish dictionary). The letter achieved its goal and Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky, Governor General of Vilna, approved Juška's release on 22 February 1864. Juška, in poor health, was released after about nine months in prison. He needed to be put under the supervision of a trusted person, i.e. a parson. Therefore, upon release, he was reassigned as a vicar to Veliuona, but Tsarist police continued to be interested in his activities.
Collection and publication of songs
Juška was not deterred by his imprisonment or the Lithuanian press ban which outlawed publications in Lithuanian printed in the Latin alphabet. He continued to collect and record samples of Lithuanian folk songs. If anything, he became more devoted to the task. He wrote down not only song lyrics but also its melody. To help him with that he would carry a musical instrument (likely a clavichord) or asked singers to come to his house where he had a piano. It is unknown what kind of musical education Juška had. Juška liked to attend various celebrations and ceremonies (e.g. weddings) so that he could hear the songs as they were naturally performed. Many singers felt uncomfortable and were reluctant to perform if asked to sing on purpose. To overcome this, Juška offered small gifts (e.g. a candy, ring, spoon) and even cash to compensate for lost time and work. In an 1880 letter, Jonas Juška wrote that they spend several hundred of Russian rubles collecting the songs. He also organized song contests among local women; he offered silk headscarf for the winner. While living in Veliuona, Juška collected some 5,500 songs (i.e. about 1,000 songs per year), wrote his largest ethnographic study on Lithuanian wedding traditions, and continued to work on a Lithuanian dictionary.
Due to increasingly poor health (he had a heart condition and asthma), Juška requested a transfer and a demotion so he would not be burdened by the daily tasks of a priest. In 1871, he was transferred to Alsėdžiai as an altarista. Juška continued to work with the people and collect songs but poor health forced him to live more sedentary life. In three years, he learned Latvian language and wrote a Latvian–Lithuanian–Polish dictionary which he sent to the Science Commission of the Riga Latvian Society in 1875.
When Jonas Juška moved to Kazan and became acquainted with professor Jan Baudouin de Courtenay in 1875, the brothers began working on publishing material collected by Antanas in earnest. To expedite the process, Antanas moved to live in Kazan in 1879. He also sought better medical care for his illness, but after thirteen months of work in Kazan, Juška died on 1 November 1880. By the time of his death only the first segment of his song collection was published. Jonas Juška then devoted the rest of his life to the publication of Antanas' works. Three volumes of Lithuanian songs were published in Kazan in 1880–1882 and a volume with 1,100 wedding songs was published in Saint Petersburg in 1883. He also worked on publishing Antanas' dictionary but it was slow work and only parts of the dictionary were published by the time of Jonas Juška's death in May 1886.
Memory
Both brothers were buried in a joint grave in the Arskoe Cemetery in Kazan. Antanas' tombstone was black with a Latin inscription; Jonas' tombstone was of white marble with a Lithuanian inscription. Antanas Mockus, who prepared Juška's songs for republication in the 1950s, proposed to rebury Juškas in Lithuania in 1952 but his efforts were refused until 1989. Governments of both Lithuania and Tatarstan had to give the appropriate permissions. A solemn mass was held at Vilnius Cathedral and the remains were transported to Veliuona where they were reburied in the churchyard on 3 November 1990. Jonas' tombstone was transferred from Kazan while Antanas' tombstone was recreated based on photographs as it was lost sometime before 1951.
In 1990, a museum of Lithuanian ethnic culture named after brothers Juškas was established in the former rectory in Vilkija where Antanas briefly worked in 1862–1864. In 1993, high school in Veliuona was renamed in honor of brother Juškas. A monument to Juška and three other priests who were also writers and lived in Pušalotas was unveiled in 2009. Streets named after Juška are located in Vilnius, Veliuona, and near Ramygala.
Works Folk songs