Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
D13H — He who goes to the dead must not laugh.
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
OverviewThose who have entered the world of the dead should not laugh.
Berezkin category: Fire and Laughter
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.
D13 has 11 other sub-motifs
RelatedD13. A character loses their values (gives them away) and/or suffers damage/is healed/is transformed if they laugh or hear laughter.
D13A. To amuse the owner of fire or the Sun, others dance indecently, imitate copulation, display their genitals, or publicly relieve themselves.
D13B. Menstruation passes from men to women after women laugh at an old man.
D13c. Two companions or brothers live together. The older one has a wife, whom he hides. To discover her, the younger one, left alone in the house, makes her laugh.
D13d. One character tries to make another character, who is hiding somewhere in the house, laugh in order to find them.
D13e. Hunters perish because they laughed at the killed (and revived) animal.
D13f. Laughter causes the appearance or spread of fire or the sun. Usually, the owner of fire or the sun loses it after bursting into laughter.
D13g. When the character starts laughing, people see his or her scary mouth (lots of teeth, human flesh on the teeth); they kill the monster or run away.
D13h. Those who have entered the world of the dead should not laugh.
D13hh. A person visiting another world should not laugh or show surprise when seeing strange things. Those who break this rule will perish or suffer harm.
D13i. The character amuses the audience in order to identify the deceiver and thief by his broken tooth. The latter laughs and gives himself away.
D13i1. The characteristics of a character can be determined by his teeth. By laughing and showing his teeth, the character reveals himself.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| D9 | 91.48% | The raven or other large dark-coloured bird of prey is the owner, embodiment, spouse, provider or thief of fire, the sun or daylight. |
| E15 | 90.85% | People learn how to build boats and row from birds; a bird or part of its body serves as a model for building a boat. |
| B27A | 90.11% | The characters ponder what they should transform into and decide to become thunder and/or lightning. |
| M70A | 89.92% | A character on whom an old woman defecates or whose face blows the winds pierces her from below with a sharp object. See M70 motif. |
| F46 | 89.79% | At the beginning of time, two or more men (human-animals) had only one woman. |
| L33B | 87.41% | The character challenges someone who, at first glance, is unable to move (a stump, a boulder, fire) to race or roll over it. The challenged party sets off, crushes or burns the character, or runs away with their property. |
| L135 | 87.38% | A person leaves home and finds himself in unfamiliar places. His journey is marked by encounters with various strange creatures. In the end, he either returns home or leaves the earth for another world. (With an abundance of episodes, the story often either breaks off or does not contain the initial episodes explaining the reason for the hero's departure from home). |
| I60A | 87.06% | The Milky Way â a stripe associated with a longitudinal stripe on an animal's body. |
| B31 | 86.11% | A woman (usually after coming into conflict with a man or being left alone), or a man and a woman (spouses, lovers, brother and sister) turn into aquatic mammals. |
| H29 | 85.31% | A woman mates with an animal. The people of a hostile tribe originate from or derive their culture from the descendants of this union, from the relatives of the animal or from the children of the woman's brothers. |
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
9 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 9 traditions: Netsilik, Iglulik, Polar Inuit, Baffin Land Inuit, East Greenland (Angmassalik, Kulusuk), Bolivian Guarani: Chiriguano (including assimilated Chane Arawaks), Pauserna (=Guarasu), Guarayu, Tapiete, Iranxe, Paresi, Greenland
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