Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
C25A — Cooking soup on the moon.
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
OverviewIn the sky, on the moon, somewhere outside our world, a character (usually an old woman) cooks soup. The fate of the universe depends on his (her) behaviour.
Berezkin category: Disasters
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part of group 2, Moon spots, stars, constellations.
C25 has 3 other sub-motifs
RelatedC25. If a certain event occurs, the world will be destroyed.
C25a. In the sky, on the moon, somewhere outside our world, a character (usually an old woman) cooks soup. The fate of the universe depends on his (her) behaviour.
C25b. In the sky, on the moon (rarely â on the sun), somewhere outside our world, a certain character spins, weaves, knits, embroiders or makes bast fabric.
C25c. A change in the configuration of a certain constellation (usually the Big Dipper) or its disappearance from the sky will signal a global catastrophe.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| M32A | 96.00% | character's insides or pieces of flesh fall out of his back. He eats them, mistaking them for regular meat and fat. |
| J27A | 95.62% | One of the babies is abandoned and lives in a river, forest, etc.; the other remains at home; after the abandoned brother returns home, the brothers kill their father or his men. See motifs J19, J25. |
| M29J | 95.04% | See the motives in square brackets. |
| J41B | 94.85% | The son returns, finds his mother, who was humiliated and tortured in his absence, and burns his tormentor and his men, summoning fire and heat with magic. |
| B42O1 | 94.49% | The Big Dipper is identified with the fisher (Mustela pennati). |
| M53B | 94.01% | Trickster claims he's carrying songs in his bag. See M53 motif. |
| H53 | 93.81% | The wolf participates in the creation of the earth or is the brother of the creator and/or conqueror of the demons of the underworld. He dies and/or is considered the first to die and/or becomes the lord of the land of the dead. |
| M61A3 | 92.97% | 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. |
| K1J | 92.85% | The abandoned one turns into a bird and returns home faster than the one who abandoned him. |
| A38A | 91.97% | The sun is caught in a loop made of a woman's pubic hair. |
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
7 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 7 traditions: France, Inland Tlingit, Tlingit, Algonquin, unspecified Algonkians of the Midwest (probably Old Algonquin), Sauk (Sak, Mesquakie), Fox, Kickapoo, Five Nations Iroquois (Seneca, Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga), Teton (incl Oglala)
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.