Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
M147 — The fox runs ahead of the tiger.
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 weak animal tells a strong animal that everyone is afraid of him, the weak one, and suggests testing this. He walks in front of the strong animal, everyone runs away, and the strong animal believes that they are running away from the weak one.
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.
M14 has 1 other sub-motifs
RelatedM14. A man brutally murders his wife (rarely: children, fiancée, sister) and/or eats her flesh himself, or brings her flesh to her relatives (if he kills children, he brings the flesh to his wife).
M14a. To take revenge on his wife or her relatives for (allegedly) causing him offence, the husband roasts his wife alive. See motif M14.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| M99A1 | 99.41% | The character is going to pierce all the birds with their beaks (to string them on a rope) or cut them off altogether. |
| B116A | 98.44% | A person or animal eats a sacred book or its remains. During the ritual, this knowledge is actualised in oral speech, in the sounds of a musical instrument made from part of an animal's body, or in parts of an animal's body used for divination. |
| B72B | 98.20% | A girl or, less commonly, a boy turns into a bird after his mother (father, guardian) refuses to give him water or food or otherwise mistreats him. |
| E31A2 | 98.20% | The girl must be given to one of several men. She herself or someone else explains that one of the suitors can be called her father, another her brother (etc.), and only one can be her husband. |
| C6I | 97.73% | A zoomorphic character returns from the underworld covered in mud. He shakes himself off, or the mud is scraped off him, and earth emerges from it. |
| L42D | 97.73% | A man runs away from a cannibal across the ice, the cannibal pursues him, licks the blood spilled on the ice, his tongue freezes, he dies, or falls to his death after slipping on the ice. |
| M45A | 97.25% | A person is sleeping or pretending to be asleep or dead. Animals take him for a dead man - they mourn him, carry him to bury him, they are going to eat it, etc. A person beats the crowd and/or obtains benefits. |
| A12F | 97.18% | The stars fade because the moneylender demands that they repay their debt. |
| A37C | 97.18% | The character shoots an arrow into the sky, aiming to hit a celestial body or deity, but the arrow hits an obstacle blocking the target. |
| K33C1 | 97.18% | A character thrown into the water is transformed into a flower (usually a lotus). |
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
5 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 5 traditions: Koreans, Kazakh, Nenets, Sauk (Sak, Mesquakie), Fox, Kickapoo, China
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