Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
L131B — Your children are burning: appeal to a bird or ladybird.
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
OverviewTo make a bird or ladybird fly away, they are told that the place where their home and/or children are located is engulfed in fire.
Berezkin category: Adventures: Monsters and evil spirits
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.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| B33F2 | 99.97% | At night, the fire goes out. The young man goes to look for fire and on the way ties up an old woman or an old man (usually a character responsible for the length of night and day). |
| B33C | 99.83% | The month on the border between winter and spring (usually March) takes (rarely: buys, steals) a few days from its neighbour. |
| M114D | 99.82% | A man eats boiled eggs and leaves without paying. Much later, he returns to repay his debt. The owner demands payment for the chickens that would have hatched from those eggs, become hens, laid eggs themselves, and so on. Someone comes to court and pretends to be boiling seeds for sowing. The judge agrees that chickens cannot hatch from boiled eggs. |
| K38E3 | 99.80% | Among three (less often two or four) loci or objects associated with materials of high but varying degrees of value, the highest belongs to precious stones (usually diamonds, but also glass and crystal). |
| K117C | 99.80% | When a character plays a pipe (violin, horn, etc.), people and animals begin to dance against their will. |
| N11 | 99.76% | The character wants to have a child or spouse who is as white and blush as snow (milk) and blood. |
| M29Z3 | 99.71% | The Gipsy (more often a female than a male) is an enemy overcome by the hero (heroine) or (rare) a weak failure |
| M163A | 99.70% | A man sells a cat (rooster) to people who do not know about cats (or chickens). Having received a cat or rooster, people do not know what to feed them and fear that they will eat people. |
| K61D | 99.68% | A young woman accidentally gives her fiancé, husband or mother-in-law the impression that she works a lot. To prevent the deception from being revealed, she or someone else makes others believe that women's work makes them ugly or turns them into animals. The husband forbids his wife to work. |
| I87C | 99.67% | 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. |
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
11 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 11 traditions: England, British, Bretons, Spain, Spaniards, 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, Czech, Czechs, Lithuanians, Western Ukrainians, Mordvins, Eastern Ukrainians, Northern Ukrainians, Germans: South (Upper German dialects): Alsace (Elsass), Baden-Württemberg, Bawaria, Swabia, Switzerland, Bohemia, Sudeten, Austria, Russian Federation
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