Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
C33 — Prometheus (the chained strongman).
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 strongman-god-fighter is chained to a rock or a pillar for centuries.
Berezkin category: Disasters
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part of group 8, Queer and monstrous beings, creatures, objects and loci, folk beliefs related to particular phenomena and objects.
C33 has 3 other sub-motifs
RelatedC33. A strongman-god-fighter is chained to a rock or a pillar for centuries.
C33a. 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.
C33a1. A bird of prey flies to the chained character every day and pecks at his internal organs. The character recovers overnight, and the cycle repeats itself.
C33b. The demise of the first race is associated with the appearance of wind.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| M29Z | 99.76% | hero of the story is a character named “Beardless” or Aldar-Kose (Aldar is a “deceiver”, a braid is “beardless”). |
| H7F2 | 99.60% | The character embodying death had a body visible to humans. Then death became invisible. |
| K27ZZ3 | 99.60% | The father or stepmother (werewolf) pushes/locks the sisters (the girl and her servants) into a pit. The heroine manages to escape and triumphs over her antagonists. |
| L108F | 99.60% | A character (girl, boy) finds themselves in water, and the antagonist lures them to shore by imitating the voice of their father, brother or sister. |
| N26 | 99.60% | said that the action took place when cultivated plants (wheat, cotton) grew on ice or salt. |
| N9 | 99.60% | Two characters discuss the rider's approach. A person with a higher social status explains that what seems like crows are actually clods of earth flying from under the horse's hooves, and what seems like snow, cloud or fog is falling from his foam or his breath. |
| I87AB | 99.59% | 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 | 99.59% | The human body is tempered (in a furnace, etc.) to make it invulnerable, but one place remains unprotected. |
| M141A | 99.59% | 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. |
| M198A4 | 99.43% | Those who listened to the story must answer who they liked more: the husband who let his wife go to another man after the wedding, the robber who did not harm her, or the man who immediately sent her back to her husband. |
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
16 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 16 traditions: Ancient Greece, Setu, Western Ukrainians, Cherkassians, Adyghe, Kabardin, Abkhaz, Abkhazians, Ossetians, Ingush, Laks, Avar, Andi, Akhvakh, Nogai, Svans, Mingrelians (Megrelians), Laz, Georgians, Armenians, Eastern Ukrainians, Northern Ukrainians
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