Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
M114D — Boiled eggs: eaten a year ago, ATU 821B.
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 man eats boiled eggs and leaves without paying. Much later, he returns to repay his debt. The owner demands payment for the chickens that would have hatched from those eggs, become hens, laid eggs themselves, and so on. Someone comes to court and pretends to be boiling seeds for sowing. The judge agrees that chickens cannot hatch from boiled eggs.
Berezkin category: Adventures: Tricks and episodes
This is of motif type Adventures and tricks and is part of group 11, Tricks and competitions won thanks to deception, absurd and obscene behavior.
M11 has 4 other sub-motifs
RelatedM11. The character gives others food extracted from his or someone else's body or contaminated with bodily secretions, without revealing the source of the food.
M11a. The character gives others the fish extracted from his body.
M11b. A woman feeds a man with good-quality meat or fat, which she cuts from her own flesh or extracts from her body, and stops doing so when he learns about the source of the food.
M11c. Without harming himself, a male character cuts off, pierces, roasts, holds over a fire, etc. a part of his body (or his wife's body). The character cooks the meat, fat, etc. obtained in this way and treats his guest to it. This food is not perceived as unclean (cf. motifs M11B and M38).
m11d. The character makes food taste good by adding salt to it. Another character learns that the cook extracts this salt from his own body (it is contained in his bodily secretions).
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| K117C | 99.91% | When a character plays a pipe (violin, horn, etc.), people and animals begin to dance against their will. |
| K61D | 99.89% | A young woman accidentally gives her fiancé, husband or mother-in-law the impression that she works a lot. To prevent the deception from being revealed, she or someone else makes others believe that women's work makes them ugly or turns them into animals. The husband forbids his wife to work. |
| B33A1 | 99.89% | A person (animal, bird) teases or insults March or another calendar month and is punished as a result. |
| M154B | 99.88% | The husband (rarely: son) stays at home instead of his wife (mother), but does everything poorly and ineptly. |
| K38E3 | 99.87% | Among three (less often two or four) loci or objects associated with materials of high but varying degrees of value, the highest belongs to precious stones (usually diamonds, but also glass and crystal). |
| M203 | 99.87% | A supernatural being conveys a message to an unknown recipient through a passer-by. By fulfilling the request, the person provokes an unexpected reaction from another supernatural being (usually living in his house). Most of the material was collected by K.Yu. Rakhno. |
| K65F | 99.86% | Once in the locus of demons, a person sees them in their true form. Upon returning, the person sees the demon again, which ordinary people are incapable of doing. The demon blinds him. |
| I82G | 99.85% | Venus or another star (Arcturus, Sirius, etc.) is called the Shepherd's Star (the star of the Shepherd, Sheepherder, Cowherd, Swineherd, etc.). |
| N22 | 99.83% | fairy-tale text ends with a formula that says that if the characters are not dead, they are still alive. {Motive at work, more data}. |
| L131B | 99.82% | To make a bird or ladybird fly away, they are told that the place where their home and/or children are located is engulfed in fire. |
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
44 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 44 traditions: England, British, Bretons, Spain, Spaniards, Portuguese, Portugal, Basques, Catalan, Aragon, Sicily, Sicilians, France, Dutch, Flemish, Poles, Kashubians, Slovakians, Slovaks, Hungarians, Greeks (modern), Balkarians, Bulgarians, Balkarians, Macedonians, Balkarians, Croatians, Croats; Italians of Dalmatia (if the motif is absent among other Italians), Slovenians, Slovenes, Romanians, Moldavians, Aromanians, Moldovans, Lithuanians, Latvians, Livonians, Estonians, Finns, Vepsians, Swedes, Danes, Danish, Western Ukrainians, Byelarusians, Belarusians, Persians, Abaza (Abazins), Georgians, Armenians, Anatolia Turks, Azeris (Azerbaijanis), Kurds, Mari (Cheremis), Galicians, Icelanders, Eastern Ukrainians, Northern Ukrainians, Italians: Central (Toscana, Umbria, Marche, Lazio), Frisians, China
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