Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
M127B — Jug on a tail, ATU 68A.
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 character attaches a vessel or part of a vessel to their body, lowers it into the water, and the vessel pulls them along.
Berezkin category: Adventures: Tricks and episodes
This is of motif type Adventures and tricks and is part of group 11, Tricks and competitions won thanks to deception, absurd and obscene behavior.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| J32D | 99.77% | The girl will be won by the one who, on horseback or by some other means, quickly reaches a hard-to-reach place (the top of a tower, a mountain, the upper floor of a palace, the top steps of a staircase, a bridge, the bottom of a chasm, jumps over a moat, etc.). Usually, the girl herself is located where the suitor must climb or (rarely) descend. In Italian versions, the hero wins tournaments. |
| K85D | 99.73% | Covered with skins (coated with resin and sprinkled with sand, etc.), the mighty horse becomes invulnerable to the bites of other horses. |
| C33A | 99.67% | Throughout the year, someone tries to saw through or break the chain or rope that holds him or another character. On a certain day of the year, when the chain has become completely thin, it is restored to its former state, or the pole to which the chain is attached is reinserted into the ground. Cf. motif G8d. |
| K2A3 | 99.67% | The hero's companions leave him on the mountain, destroying the rope (chain) by which he climbed up or which he lowered down. |
| M199L | 99.66% | When the giant blew, sneezed, etc., or let go of the bent tree on which the man was sitting, the man was thrown far away. The man says that he did it of his own free will (to show how he can fly, to repair the roof, etc.). |
| K27Q1 | 99.65% | The hero is sent to bring lioness milk in a wineskin made from a lion skin (usually from a lion cub's skin). |
| K157 | 99.62% | The character lures his opponents out one by one and cuts off each one's head as soon as they appear. Less commonly, a multi-headed opponent sticks out its heads one by one, and the hero cuts them off. |
| F87A | 99.62% | 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 | 99.62% | 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 | 99.62% | 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. |
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
25 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 25 traditions: Arabs of Iraq, Iraqi, Czech, Czechs, Slovakians, Slovaks, Greeks (modern), Balkarians, Macedonians, Balkarians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Setu, Finns, Western Ukrainians, Uzbek, Sarikoli, Tajik, Cherkassians, Adyghe, Kabardin, Georgians, Armenians, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Uyghur, Komi (Zyrians and Permyaks), Eastern Ukrainians, Northern Ukrainians, Tunisia, Russian Federation
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.