Long ago, the place now occupied by Svitiaz was a broad meadow where herdsmen grazed their cattle. One day an unknown old man approached them. The storyteller explained that this was God himself appearing in the guise of a traveller.
A dog began barking at the visitor. The younger herdsmen urged the animal on, while the older boys and a girl drove it away. The old man led the younger children to a great stone and told them to lift it. They could not. He then levered it up with his staff, and water suddenly burst from beneath the ground. It rapidly flooded the meadow and spread into a great lake. The younger herdsmen, who had tormented the stranger, drowned.
The traveller ordered the older boys and the girl to follow him and never look back. They set off, but could not resist turning around. An island arose from the water at that place, while the herdsmen themselves became a sycamore maple and a linden tree.
The tale adds one more marvellous detail: if the maple is cut, blood is said to appear from the wood, and the same is supposed to happen to the linden. The folk narrative thus brings the lake, its island and the unusual trees together in a single story about hospitality, punishment and the prohibition against looking back.