Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
D13HH — Those who visit another world should not laugh.
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
OverviewA person visiting another world should not laugh or show surprise when seeing strange things. Those who break this rule will perish or suffer harm.
Berezkin category: Fire and Laughter
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part of group 8, Queer and monstrous beings, creatures, objects and loci, folk beliefs related to particular phenomena and objects.
D13 has 11 other sub-motifs
RelatedD13. A character loses their values (gives them away) and/or suffers damage/is healed/is transformed if they laugh or hear laughter.
D13A. To amuse the owner of fire or the Sun, others dance indecently, imitate copulation, display their genitals, or publicly relieve themselves.
D13B. Menstruation passes from men to women after women laugh at an old man.
D13c. Two companions or brothers live together. The older one has a wife, whom he hides. To discover her, the younger one, left alone in the house, makes her laugh.
D13d. One character tries to make another character, who is hiding somewhere in the house, laugh in order to find them.
D13e. Hunters perish because they laughed at the killed (and revived) animal.
D13f. Laughter causes the appearance or spread of fire or the sun. Usually, the owner of fire or the sun loses it after bursting into laughter.
D13g. When the character starts laughing, people see his or her scary mouth (lots of teeth, human flesh on the teeth); they kill the monster or run away.
D13h. Those who have entered the world of the dead should not laugh.
D13hh. A person visiting another world should not laugh or show surprise when seeing strange things. Those who break this rule will perish or suffer harm.
D13i. The character amuses the audience in order to identify the deceiver and thief by his broken tooth. The latter laughs and gives himself away.
D13i1. The characteristics of a character can be determined by his teeth. By laughing and showing his teeth, the character reveals himself.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| B2G | 100.00% | The chameleon walked on the ground when it had not yet hardened. |
| B98B | 100.00% | The Bat comes into conflict with other creatures in connection with someone's death or funeral. |
| B98C | 100.00% | The heavenly deity could have healed the bat's mother or child, but did not do so, and they died. |
| C30B | 100.00% | In response to the claims of an animal or spirit, a person offers to remove their traces from the field or to walk without leaving any traces. The spirit is unable to do so. |
| E1B1 | 100.00% | A man who has married an unusual girl is warned that she must not perform certain tasks or eat certain foods. Other members of his household ensure that the young woman breaks the prohibition, and as a result she dies or disappears. |
| E31B | 100.00% | Several women participate in reviving a dead man and argue about who did more to revive him. |
| F73A | 100.00% | The vulva is an unhealed wound on the body of the first women, or the first humans did not copulate because they thought that the vulva was a wound. |
| H1BB | 100.00% | One character refuses to resurrect another's beloved dog, and this conflict is linked to the loss of the ability to resurrect people. |
| H31 | 100.00% | God summons several characters, including man and the heavenly bodies, and makes man mortal and the heavenly bodies immortal. |
| H36I | 100.00% | The goat or sheep is to blame for the fact that man is mortal. See motif H36. |
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
6 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 6 traditions: Ganda, (Ba)Nyoro, Nyankole, Masaba (Gisu), Luia (=Luyia, Haya, Luhya, Bantu Kawirondo; incl. Vugusu, Maragoli), Sakata, Yambasa, Banen (Tunen), Yoruba; incl Ife), Nupe, Bini (Edo), Engenni, Chamba, Dakka, Kukuruku, Mandingo (Manden, incl San, Samo), Kagoro, Bambara (Bamana), Malinke, Kassonke, Diula, Fon
If you wish to get access to data for projects and research, then please contact us, we do our best to help
How to cite: Fielder-White, J. (2026). The Folklore Database. https://folkloredatabase.com
0009-0006-1672-4451
Where applicable, users should also cite the relevant original sources, catalogues, and classification systems, including Berezkin, ATU, Thompson, and other cited authorities, alongside the page accessed and the last time accessed.
Editorial annotations and database enhancements Š Jonathan Fielder-White licensed under CC BY 4.0. Berezkin-derived narrative and metadata licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Full rights information can be found here.
All rights are reserved in the database structure, selection, arrangement, metadata, classifications, software, interface design, and original editorial content.
Important: The Folklore Database expressly reserves all rights in relation to text and data mining, automated extraction, scraping, machine learning, dataset creation, and the training, development, validation, or improvement of artificial intelligence technologies or systems. No part of this website or database may be scraped, copied, reproduced, harvested, downloaded in bulk, or otherwise used for AI training or commercial data extraction without prior written permission.
Designed and Developed by Jon Fielder-White.
Š 2024â2026 Crecganford / Jonathan Fielder-White. All rights reserved.