Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
N9 — Who's coming closer?
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
OverviewTwo characters discuss the rider's approach. A person with a higher social status explains that what seems like crows are actually clods of earth flying from under the horse's hooves, and what seems like snow, cloud or fog is falling from his foam or his breath.
Berezkin category: Fabulous and epic formulas
This is of motif type Adventures and tricks and is part of group 13, Formulae.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| H7F2 | 100.00% | The character embodying death had a body visible to humans. Then death became invisible. |
| K27ZZ3 | 100.00% | The father or stepmother (werewolf) pushes/locks the sisters (the girl and her servants) into a pit. The heroine manages to escape and triumphs over her antagonists. |
| L108F | 100.00% | A character (girl, boy) finds themselves in water, and the antagonist lures them to shore by imitating the voice of their father, brother or sister. |
| N26 | 100.00% | said that the action took place when cultivated plants (wheat, cotton) grew on ice or salt. |
| I87AB | 99.83% | Strong men or a crowd of people cannot move the body of a dead animal or the leg of a motionless person, but a child or a woman can do it easily. Cf. motif B83. |
| L15A2 | 99.83% | The human body is tempered (in a furnace, etc.) to make it invulnerable, but one place remains unprotected. |
| M141A | 99.83% | In a gathering of various animals, one of the participants refers to the weakest as insignificant to the others and bearing an ugly name. That one is eaten. This is repeated several times, each time the weakest of the remaining animals is eaten. |
| C33 | 99.60% | A strongman-god-fighter is chained to a rock or a pillar for centuries. |
| I87AC | 99.55% | Something huge gets into a person's eye, which he mistakes for a speck of dust. Usually, a bird carries away an animal or fish and drops a bone into the man's eye. It is difficult to find and remove (to do this, they get into a boat and float it inside the eye, throw a net into the eye, pull it out with oxen, etc.). |
| A32I | 99.00% | A shepherd (shepherd and girl, shepherd and his flock, dogs) can be seen on the lunar disc. |
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
4 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 4 traditions: Ireland, Cherkassians, Adyghe, Kabardin, Karachays, Balkar, Ossetians
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How to cite: Fielder-White, J. (2026). The Folklore Database. https://folkloredatabase.com
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