Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
B28C — Lice drag a person into the water.
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
OverviewLice grab a person and drag him into the sea.
Berezkin category: The Origins of the Characteristics of the environment
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part of group 5, Origin of human beings, ethnic groups, etiology of human anatomy, strange body configuration, ways of behavior, marriages before the establishment of the present norms.
B28 has 6 other sub-motifs
RelatedB28. Travelling from one locality to another, the character successively transforms people into birds and animals, into stones, sanctuaries (or transforms monstrous animals into ordinary ones), establishes cultural norms, determines the biological characteristics of creatures, the appearance of the locality, etc.
B28a. A character pinned to the ground by a rod, transported somewhere to the edge of the world and associated with an object that continues to influence people.
B28b. The inhabitants of the area where the hero finds himself are afraid of creatures that are tools, utensils, and plants that are now harmless. The hero easily defeats these creatures and usually transforms them into what they are now.
B28c. Lice grab a person and drag him into the sea.
B28d. Not understanding who they are dealing with, the characters respond to the wandering Transformer that they are preparing weapons to kill so-and-so or a hiding place to escape from so-and-so. The Transformer kills them himself or turns them into animals.
B28d1. Not understanding who he is facing, the man promises to kill the Transformer. The Transformer turns his weapon into deer antlers and him into a deer.
B28e. The Moon (alone or together with the Sun) transforms the original "incorrect" world into the one in which people now live.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| E4 | 96.67% | From mud on the skin (rarely: from under the fingernails), the character creates the earth, people or other creatures. |
| G23B | 96.21% | People from different ethnic groups arise from parts of the creature's body, or people from different groups receive their names (and characteristics) depending on which parts of the creature's body they have received. |
| M74 | 95.94% | A weak character regurgitates previously swallowed unusual food, or replaces his belching with a strong character's belching, or interprets his secretions as remains strong animals he ate. The strong believe that the weak are strong or have unusual abilities. |
| F72 | 94.87% | A woman asks a man to tie her up before intercourse so that it looks like she is being raped. |
| F55A | 92.58% | A demonic character persuades a woman to expose a certain part of her body, because that is the only place where a certain object should be placed. The demon kills the woman, tearing off that part of her body. Usually, the woman uses or names various locations, and the character rejects each one in turn until he finds the right one. |
| A37 | 92.50% | The character deliberately and by resorting to special means (usually shooting with a bow) strikes the sun or several suns or attempts to do so. |
| F90 | 91.47% | A brother and sister marry. When the children born of this union learn of their origins, the marriage breaks down (the children kill their parents, the father kills or attempts to kill the children, the parents commit suicide, the wife/sister commits suicide after the death of her husband/brother, the wife/sister leaves her husband/brother). |
| A12B | 91.41% | During an eclipse or at sunset (marked *), the luminaries are swallowed by a toad or frog. |
| F11 | 91.29% | The penis burns, bites, eats food. |
| M84B1 | 89.95% | A person enters a country from where fish come to people (and comes back). |
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
3 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 3 traditions: Oroch, Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka'wakw), Quinault
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.