The Mythology and Folklore Database
I87F - Suicide of the Narts.
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Source Data from Berezkin's Analytics Catalogue, if using this data please acknowledge and link to it here:
Ю.Е. Березкин, Е.Н. Дувакин. Тематическая классификация и распределение фольклорно-мифологических мотивов по ареалам. Аналитический каталог.
Summary of Motif
Before modern humans, there lived others who differed in strength, height, nobility, or other qualities. They disappeared after committing suicide.Berezkin category: Supernatural objects, objects and creatures
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part group 5, Origin of human beings, ethnic groups, etiology of human anatomy, strange body configuration, ways of behavior, marriages before the establishment of the present norms
I87 has 13 other sub-motifsI87. The characters use an object belonging to the world of giants (a skull, an animal shoulder blade, a mitten) as a shelter. Cf. I87C: animals use an object belonging to the world of humans (a skull, a mitten, a sieve, etc.) as a shelter. I87a. A character of gigantic size turns out to be small in comparison with a character of even greater size, or the same character turns out to be small in some episodes and gigantic in others. I87a1. Two people engage in a dialogue, contradicting each other in their descriptions of the sizes of creatures and objects. I87a2. The antagonist names numbers from one to 7, 12, etc., the hero answers what each number corresponds to, and the antagonist is unable to refute him. I87aa. Describes a giant bull (rarely: horse): head in one field, body in another; a bathhouse on its tail, a lake on its back; people standing at its head and tail have to walk a long way to meet each other; etc. Usually the bull is killed and eaten (by people in Baltic-Finnish traditions and in Olonets antiquity; by birds in most southern traditions). I87ab. Strong men or a crowd of people cannot move the body of a dead animal or the leg of a motionless person, but a child or a woman can do it easily. Cf. motif B83. I87ac. Something huge gets into a person's eye, which he mistakes for a speck of dust. Usually, a bird carries away an animal or fish and drops a bone into the man's eye. It is difficult to find and remove (to do this, they get into a boat and float it inside the eye, throw a net into the eye, pull it out with oxen, etc.). I87ad. A giant hides a persecuted person in his mouth – usually (perhaps always) in a tooth cavity; or the person remains alive in the giant's mouth, hiding in a tooth cavity. Cf. motif M21a. I87b. When a character boasts of his strength, his wife or mother says that there is someone stronger than him. He sets off in search and meets a character who is much stronger than him. {ATU gives a definition of the plot (or rather, the first half of it) similar to ours, but some of the references given refer to our motif i87a, not i87b}. I87c. Animals use a small object belonging to the human world (skull, mitten, jug, etc.) for shelter or transportation. Cf. motif I87: characters use an object (skull, animal shoulder blade, mitten) belonging to the world of giants as a shelter. I87c1. A mouse makes itself a boat out of a small object. I87d. In the past, giants inhabited the earth. One of them finds a tiny human being and brings him to his father or mother. They usually say that such people will replace the current giants. I87e. After the present humans, dwarves will live on earth. I87f. Before modern humans, there lived others who differed in strength, height, nobility, or other qualities. They disappeared after committing suicide. Click here if would you like to see a distrbution map combining all of I87's motifs? |
Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns
| Motif | Similarity | Motif Summary |
|---|---|---|
| B33G | 100.00% | Horsemen or horses represent celestial bodies or different periods of the day. |
| I47A | 100.00% | The rainbow is associated with the wedding of a fox or jackal. |
| K181A | 100.00% | When a person puts their hand on a horse's back, it bends over and falls. This is a sign of heroic strength. |
| K73B7 | 100.00% | The hero saves the magical wife from her enemy at a time when both the future wife and the enemy have zoomorphic appearances. Later, the rescued woman becomes a woman. |
| L108G | 100.00% | The character is black and must sit in water until he turns white. The antagonist carries him away. |
| M39A5A2 | 100.00% | My husband found a treasure. He knows his wife will talk about it. In order not to believe her, her husband says, and the wife then repeats, that the judge suffered from the hail that fell at that time (soup spilled from the sky) (lost an eye, ulcers on his face). The judge furiously drives the woman away, the treasure remains with her husband. |
| N12 | 100.00% | A powerful character makes or tells you to make a cloak or fur coat from human beards and/or mustaches. |
| F87A | 99.91% | A snake crawls onto the clothes of a girl bathing, climbs down in exchange for a promise to marry him, and takes her to the underwater world. She is happy there and gives birth to children. Together with them, she visits her relatives. They call the snake out of the water and kill it. After that, the wife transforms her children and/or herself into birds. |
| K85 | 99.91% | The antagonist owns the fastest horse. The hero obtains an even faster horse (usually the brother or sister of this horse), which is the only one that surpasses the antagonist's horse and usually orders the antagonist to throw off his rider. |
| L110C | 99.91% | An elderly couple makes a child out of clay (wood, straw, dough). The doll comes to life and eats everyone it sees. Usually a goat (ram) breaks it, and those who have been swallowed come out alive. |
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Map of Motif Dispersal
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This motif has been recorded in 9 traditions: Germans: North (Low- and Central German dialects): Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, Pommern, Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony, incl East Frisia and Oldenburg), Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Thüringen, Saxony-Anhalt, Sachsen, Brandenburg, Rügen, Western Ukrainians, Ossetians, Tats, Kazan (Middle Volga) Tatars, Eastern Ukrainians, Northern Ukrainians, Scythians, Scythe, Russian Federation