Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
F67 — An old woman pretends to be a man.
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
OverviewAn old woman lives with her (adopted) daughter, niece or daughter-in-law. She (supposedly) turns into a man, marries a girl or tries to do so.
Berezkin category: Gender and sex
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.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| M53D | 98.80% | The character pretends to be enemies coming; when people run away in fear, the character takes what the deceived people owned. |
| K8C5 | 98.67% | A zoomorphic character no larger than a fox allows itself to be swallowed by a bear and kills it by tearing it apart from the inside. |
| M61A | 97.59% | To get valuables, the character provokes a quarrel between their owners. When they start fighting each other, valuables fall out of their bodies and end up at the character's disposal. |
| M46 | 97.54% | Some creatures steal or own valuables. To return (get) them, the character turns into a small object, from contact with which a woman becomes pregnant, or into a baby. A picked up or born baby takes on its true appearance and steals valuables (including making the girl who picked it up pregnant, if that was his goal). |
| E30 | 97.49% | A man has no wife or a woman has no husband, and uses a wooden substitute as a spouse. |
| K52B | 97.42% | The hero comes to capture the daughter of a supernatural creature. He sees a slave breaking an axe (adze, wedge). The hero repairs the axe, and the slave helps him in return. See motif K52. |
| K43A | 97.32% | People leave a boy, a girl, a sister and brother, a young woman or young spouses alone and depart. Someone sympathises with those who have been abandoned and secretly hides fire for them. |
| M42A | 97.31% | The character (usually after losing his own eyes) inserts seeds or berries into his eye sockets and sees again. |
| B35 | 97.25% | The bear hastily puts his left moccasin on his right foot and vice versa, which is why he is club-footed. |
| K52 | 97.25% | A woman or young man who approaches the shore is carried away by predatory sea creatures to the bottom of the sea; a character descends to rescue the kidnapped person and brings him or her back with the help of cunning and shamanic powers. |
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
11 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 11 traditions: Chukchi, Aleuts, Iglulik, Polar Inuit, Baffin Land Inuit, West Greenland, East Greenland (Angmassalik, Kulusuk), Lillooet, Yurok, Hopi, Halkomelem (Snaymuk)
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How to cite: Fielder-White, J. (2026). The Folklore Database. https://folkloredatabase.com
0009-0006-1672-4451
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