Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
M66A — A mountain of excrement
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
OverviewAfter eating a certain food, the trickster leaves a mountain of excrement that is larger than himself.
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.
M66 has 1 other sub-motifs
RelatedM66. After eating certain foods frivolously or rubbing his body with his spine, the character suffers from itching, diarrhea, or an irrepressible eruption of intestinal gases.
M66a. After eating a certain food, the trickster leaves a mountain of excrement that is larger than himself.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| M75A | 99.91% | The character lures a veteran to avenge his fall from the sky. Either the (potauatomi) shovel drops the character or leaves him on top to avenge being lured and caught. |
| B42A | 99.85% | Hunters chase a bear across the sky and kill it in August-October. The bear's blood or fat falls to the ground in the form of dew or colours the foliage red. See motif B42. |
| L75 | 99.71% | One of two brothers is the embodiment of evil; at birth, he cuts open his mother's body, killing her. |
| M13A | 99.22% | A deity and a human meet so that the former can fulfil the latter's request. As a result, the human is turned to stone. Usually (except for the Squamish), one of the supplicants wants eternal life and is turned to stone. See motif M13. |
| F45A1 | 98.99% | A woman, against her will, conceives from the wind. |
| K104 | 98.99% | The youngest of the brothers stays at home, wounds a red swan or duck, and follows its trail. |
| M61A3 | 98.39% | The character tells each of two different species of fish how the other allegedly used to be hostile or offensive towards the former. Fish kill each other and the character prepares them to eat. |
| K69 | 97.47% | Several men walk towards the horizon to ascend to the sky and visit the Sun or another supreme deity. Usually, one or more of them perish along the way, while others reach their destination. They return by a shorter route than they came. |
| M53C | 97.25% | trickster, inviting birds to dance around him with their eyes closed, kills them one at a time and threatens to turn red at the one that opens their eyes; this is an empty threat, or for a bird that opens eyes and eyes have really turned red ever since. |
| H37B | 97.07% | One character gives another his power (usually a skunk gives his volley). The other wastes the resource unnecessarily to test its effect. Usually, when the need arises, the resource no longer works. |
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: Western Ojibwa (Chippewa), Menominee, Sauk (Sak, Mesquakie), Fox, Kickapoo, Winnebago, Iowa, Gros Ventre
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.