Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
L85D — Without arms and legs: the crippled ploughman.
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 hero encounters a giant and a strongman (usually a ploughman) with one arm, one leg, or one eye. He was crippled by a character who turned out to be much bigger and stronger than him.
Berezkin category: Adventures: Monsters and evil spirits
This is of motif type Adventures and tricks and is part of group 10, Adventures.
L85 has 7 other sub-motifs
RelatedL85. The character has only half a body (vertically). See also L85C, "Half-chicken".
L85a. The character is born as half a person or becomes one as a result of an accident. He or she does not belong to a special category of mythical half-beings and usually regains physical completeness. See motif L85, cf. motif L112.
L85b. A pregnant woman curses the Sun, Rain or another powerful character. Because of this, the child is born physically disabled. He possesses magical powers and usually acquires a normal body.
L85b1. After ascending to the sky (meeting God, returning from the sky to earth), a physically disabled young man (usually with only half a body) becomes whole.
L85c. A character with half a body â a hen, a chick. Sometimes it is only a name, and the character's appearance is more anthropomorphic.
L85d. The hero encounters a giant and a strongman (usually a ploughman) with one arm, one leg, or one eye. He was crippled by a character who turned out to be much bigger and stronger than him.
L85e. The character is temporarily split vertically into two halves and then rejoined.
L85F. The character has only one leg (and one arm), which does not prevent him from moving. Unlike motif L85 (half-creatures), the character has a complete body, not divided in half vertically.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| A32I | 100.00% | A shepherd (shepherd and girl, shepherd and his flock, dogs) can be seen on the lunar disc. |
| B108 | 100.00% | An anthropomorphic character that has fallen apart into pieces turns into snow. |
| K156 | 100.00% | A girl pretends to be a man. To determine who it really is, flowers are placed under the pillow or mattress. If a man is sleeping, they will remain fresh, but if a woman is sleeping, they will wilt by morning (or if a woman is sleeping, the milk left under the bed will sour). |
| K77B3 | 100.00% | Goats encounter a wolf. One goat has one stomach, the second has two, the third has three, and so on. The goat with the most stomachs kills or scares away the wolf. |
| L65A2 | 100.00% | A man shoots off (damages) the finger of a demonic creature, and then sees that his sister, lying in her cradle, has lost her finger. |
| M199M | 100.00% | A man explains to a demon that the heavy objects lying by the roadside, such as a harrow or a millstone, are just things used by his grandmother or mother, such as a spindle or a comb. |
| M39A2E | 100.00% | Forgetting his name, a fool remembers it when he accidentally hears a word. |
| I87AB | 99.65% | 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. |
| L15A2 | 99.65% | The human body is tempered (in a furnace, etc.) to make it invulnerable, but one place remains unprotected. |
| M141A | 99.65% | In a gathering of various animals, one of the participants refers to the weakest as insignificant to the others and bearing an ugly name. That one is eaten. This is repeated several times, each time the weakest of the remaining animals is eaten. |
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
9 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 9 traditions: Lithuanians, Karelians, Abaza (Abazins), Abkhaz, Abkhazians, Ossetians, Ingush, Hui (Dungan) of Xinjiang, Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan (Dungan texts from Southern and Eastern China are clustered with the Chinese ones), Bashkirs, Uzbekistan
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