The Mythology and Folklore Database
I61A - The Milky Way – belt.




13 Myths, Legends and Folktales
13 Unique Narratives for Motif I61A
11 Cultures & Traditions where I61A is told
8 Mythemes Indexed
1 Sub-Motifs of Motif I61A


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 Motif Summary  -   Motifs with Simlar Dispersals  -    Map of Myth Distribution   -   List of Traditions  -   Myths



Source Data from Berezkin's Analytics Catalogue, if using this data please acknowledge and link to it here:
Ю.Е. Березкин, Е.Н. Дувакин. Тематическая классификация и распределение фольклорно-мифологических мотивов по ареалам. Аналитический каталог.



Summary of Motif

The Milky Way – the heavenly belt.

Berezkin category: Supernatural objects, objects and creatures

This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part group 2, Moon spots, stars, constellations


I61 has 1 other sub-motifs


I61.  The Milky Way is a trail of spilled milk.
I61a.  The Milky Way – the heavenly belt.

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Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns

MotifSimilarityMotif Summary
A32M100.00%The moon is called the "Gypsy sun".
A35B100.00%The character tries to cover the moon with resin (so that it shines less brightly).
B123100.00%A fly lands on the chest of the crucified Jesus. His persecutors, who intended to drive a nail into his heart, do not do so, believing that the nail has already been driven in.
B124100.00%Ever since a piece of flesh was torn from a person's foot, a hollow has formed between the toe and the heel.
B49B100.00%In the past, cows had more teats on their udders than they do now.
C32100.00%Demonic characters will make a ship out of nail clippings.
F101100.00%With the help of magic, a rival or the spouse's mother tries to prevent a woman from giving birth.
F57100.00%A girl or her father (rarely: mother) picks a plant (usually a flower) and as a result encounters a character with a non-human appearance and/or inhabiting the underworld. The girl becomes the character's wife. In some cases, the picked plant is the character's hair, but more often there is no direct association of this kind.
F87B100.00%A snake crawls onto the clothes of a bathing girl, climbs down in exchange for a promise to marry him, and takes her to the underwater world. She is happy there and gives birth to children. Together with them, she visits her relatives. They call the snake out of the water and kill it. After that, the wife transforms her children and/or herself into plants.
H52A100.00%Returning from the land of immortality, a person must not touch the ground. However, he dismounts from his horse to help an old man (old woman). Death, who has taken the form of an old man, immediately kills him. Rarely: at the last moment, the hero decides not to perform actions that are fatal for him.

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Map of Motif Dispersal

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This motif has been recorded in 11 traditions: Ancient Italy: Latins, Etruscans, Magna Graecia, Poles, Greeks (modern), Balkarians, Bulgarians, Balkarians, Slovenians, Slovenes, Romanians, Moldavians, Aromanians, Moldovans, Latvians, Western Ukrainians, Byelarusians, Belarusians, Russians: Central part of ethnic territory as in A.D. 1500 (Tver, Yaroslavl, Moscow, Kostroma, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Nizhny Novgorod, Ryazan, Tula, Kaluga, Smolensk provinces; in case of absence in other areas also Russians in Vyatka, Perm, Kazan provinces), Transylvanian Saksons


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