Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
I136 — The demonic wheel.
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
OverviewThe rolling wheel (and the character riding on it) is a creature or weapon hostile to the hero (people) that he uses.
Berezkin category: Supernatural objects, objects and creatures
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.
I13 has 5 other sub-motifs
RelatedI13a. A huge aquatic or celestial serpent, dragon, or snake-like creature with horns on its head.
I13b. A small snake, the snake has horns on its head.
I13c. Reptiles possess a treasure that humans take or try to take. Usually it is a crown, a precious stone, or horns on a snake's head.
I13d. A person enters the dwelling of snakes, spends a long time there, is released or escapes. While in the dwelling of snakes, he usually licks a stone that relieves thirst and hunger.
I13e. The snake agrees to let the man go on condition that he does not tell anyone about their meeting. Under threat of death, the man breaks his promise. The snake teaches him to drink a broth made from its flesh and takes revenge not on the man, but on those who forced him to break his word.
I13F. In autumn, a man falls asleep in a bear's den. When he wakes up, he thinks that the night has passed, but it is already spring. Usually, the bear gives him advice before parting.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| B110A | 99.95% | A character who is dragged along the ground or who falls from the sky turns into atmospheric phenomena. |
| K182A | 99.95% | A mighty warrior residing in a cave (or crypt, etc.) will eventually emerge into the light (to assist his people), or he could emerge but chooses not to. |
| M134B | 99.95% | When a predator is about to eat a person, the person asks to be measured first and strikes the predator with an (imaginary) measuring instrument. |
| B33D | 99.73% | An elderly woman embodies winter, is associated with snow, and/or at the border between winter and spring (autumn) there are several very cold days associated with a certain old woman. |
| K27X8 | 99.72% | Only the frog (toad) knows the way to the object that is unattainable for ordinary people, which the hero is looking for (and helps him get there). |
| L94B1 | 99.70% | A man receives a box (bag, horn, etc.) as a gift, which he must open only at home. Driven by curiosity, he opens it on the way, and everything that should make him wealthy (houses, livestock, etc.) spills out. The demon who appears agrees to return everything, but sets a condition, the severity of which the man does not immediately understand. |
| K2A3 | 99.68% | The hero's companions leave him on the mountain, destroying the rope (chain) by which he climbed up or which he lowered down. |
| M199L | 99.52% | When the giant blew, sneezed, etc., or let go of the bent tree on which the man was sitting, the man was thrown far away. The man says that he did it of his own free will (to show how he can fly, to repair the roof, etc.). |
| K27Q1 | 99.49% | The hero is sent to bring lioness milk in a wineskin made from a lion skin (usually from a lion cub's skin). |
| C3 | 99.48% | The snake (eel, frog) saved the ship (or the whole world) by plugging the hole from which water was pouring with its body. |
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
13 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 13 traditions: Kashubians, Slovakians, Slovaks, Romanians, Moldavians, Aromanians, Moldovans, Western Ukrainians, Cherkassians, Adyghe, Kabardin, Karachays, Balkar, Ossetians, Svans, Armenians, Komi (Zyrians and Permyaks), Eastern Ukrainians, Northern Ukrainians, Russian Federation
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