Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
F97A5 — Snake is deprived of its limbs
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
OverviewBeing responsible for breaking food tabou by humans, snake lost its limbs as a punishment
Berezkin category: Gender and sex
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part of group 7, Etiology of plants and animals and of their peculiar features, particular animals as protagonists of cosmological stories, metamorphoses, weather and calendar.
F97 has 2 other sub-motifs
RelatedF97. After eating certain foods, people become sexually mature and/or lose their body hair or skin. Cf. motif H56 (people become mortal).
F97a. The snake is to blame for others eating food forbidden by the deity. For this, it is deprived of the limbs it once had. {The Efik variant may not be related to the biblical one, but the South Asian ones are most likely related.
F97a5. Being responsible for breaking food tabou by humans, snake lost its limbs as a punishment
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| I88 | 95.38% | Describes a creature with several tails. |
| E9B | 94.61% | Before meeting the hero, his beloved (wife, helper) has the image of an elephant (elephant tusk). |
| F28A1 | 94.39% | The living penis is a dangerous creature that attacks people. |
| B93 | 94.29% | Once a year or once every few years, celestial beings or messengers of the gods meet among the stars. |
| L81D | 94.18% | Two cripples with different physical disabilities quarrel and fight, and as a result become whole and healthy. |
| M167 | 93.94% | In the dark, a person mistakes a tiger (lion, demon) for another person or a domestic animal (bull, ox). |
| I119A | 92.93% | Creatures shake the earth, either upon learning that there are no longer any inhabitants on it, or to check whether they are still alive, or to show that they themselves are still there. |
| H36G1 | 92.43% | When a bull (ox, cow) is ordered to convey certain instructions to people, he confuses them or deliberately distorts them. |
| A4A | 92.39% | So that people do not look at it, the Sun blinds their immodest eyes (usually with needles, which are its rays). |
| H3 | 92.06% | Death is sent to people as punishment for excessive sympathy for a dead animal or for funeral games, during which they bury an animal, tree, etc. |
See the 100 most similar distributions →
Map of motif dispersal
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Traditions
0 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 0 traditions:
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