Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
C12A — The Flood and the Dog.
Source data for narratives and traditions is drawn from Berezkin’s Analytical Catalogue. If you use this data, please acknowledge and link to it: Ю.Е. Березкин, Е.Н. Дувакин. Тематическая классификация и распределение фольклорно-мифологических мотивов по ареалам. Аналитический каталог.
Summary of motif
OverviewThe dog warns of an impending global flood or fire and advises what to do.
Berezkin category: Disasters
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part of group 7, Etiology of plants and animals and of their peculiar features, particular animals as protagonists of cosmological stories, metamorphoses, weather and calendar.
C12 has 1 other sub-motifs
RelatedC12a. The dog warns of an impending global flood or fire and advises what to do.
C12b. All people or individual ethnic groups, lineages, families are considered descendants of dogs (with which a man mated).
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| B65 | 98.00% | A mischievous character imitates other animal-people. As a result, his belly is torn open and his spilled intestines turn into vines. |
| L89 | 97.72% | One person, wishing to harm another, secretly gives him certain food to eat or a certain object to use. As a result, the other person dies (usually undergoing a metamorphosis). Cf. motif K82a. |
| B59 | 96.43% | A group of people (usually children, brothers or sisters) play, dance, rise to the sky and turn into the Pleiades or another small constellation. |
| J16 | 95.04% | The character perishes because, being forced to look for insects in the head of another, he refuses to chew insects, spits them out in disgust, or is suspected of doing so. |
| B27B | 93.56% | The characters ponder what they should transform into and decide to become a celestial object. |
| I70 | 92.85% | Trees or reeds grow on the back or head of a reptile. |
| F92 | 91.69% | A male character allows himself to be used as a sexual object. |
| L9A | 91.69% | The character's leg is crippled (intentionally or accidentally) or originally pointed. He uses the pointed bone for hunting, fishing or killing people. |
| F47B | 91.05% | In order to create new people (new women) to replace those who have been destroyed, the character leaves something (feathers or pieces of flesh) in each empty hut (in the hearth, in the hammock, in the village), from which new people (new women) appear. |
| M73A | 90.89% | Two (animal) persons compare their feces (with different purpose). One of them gets to exchange them |
See the 100 most similar distributions →
Map of motif dispersal
DistributionDrag the map to pan, use the scroll wheel to zoom — choose a texture or projection below
Traditions
7 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 7 traditions: Batak (Toba, Dairi), Oraon (Kurukh), Natchez (incl Avoyel), Cherokee, Ticuna (Tucuna), Mocovi; Kechua of Santiago del Estero with probable Guaikuruan substratum; Abipon, Toba (incl Pilagá)
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