The Mythology and Folklore Database
B33D1 - Days of the week – (demonic) characters.
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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
In narrative folklore, the days of the week (most often Friday and Wednesday) are special (female) characters with a more or less pronounced demonic nature.Berezkin category: The Origins of the Characteristics of the environment
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part group 8, Queer and monstrous beings, creatures, objects and loci, folk beliefs related to particular phenomena and objects
B33 has 14 other sub-motifsB33. There is a female character who embodies the wind or is considered the mother or mistress of the winds. B33a. Deciding that it has become (or will soon become) warm, the character believes that winter is over (most often an old woman goes to graze cattle), but dies from the cold or the cattle driven out to pasture perish. Cf. motif I84A ("The frozen son of God"). B33a1. A person (animal, bird) teases or insults March or another calendar month and is punished as a result. B33b. At the border between winter and spring, a bird (usually a thrush) flies away prematurely into the cold and dies, or raises chicks and they die or suffer from the cold. B33c. The month on the border between winter and spring (usually March) takes (rarely: buys, steals) a few days from its neighbour. B33d. 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. B33d1. In narrative folklore, the days of the week (most often Friday and Wednesday) are special (female) characters with a more or less pronounced demonic nature. B33e. The last cold month regrets that it did not come earlier or that it is too short. In that case, it would have frozen everyone. B33e1. It is said that the cold, which is stronger than anything else, can freeze boiling water, a foetus in the womb, etc. b33e2. The severity of the cold in early spring is said to break the horns of large hoofed animals. B33f. A certain character performs actions that determine the change from dark to light times of day. It always involves yarn, thread, rope, or fabric, which the character unravels or winds up, or with which the hero binds the entity responsible for the daily cycle. B33f1. By performing certain actions, the (old) woman determines the daily cycle. B33f2. At night, the fire goes out. The young man goes to look for fire and on the way ties up an old woman or an old man (usually a character responsible for the length of night and day). B33g. Horsemen or horses represent celestial bodies or different periods of the day. B33h. The sun has a mother who lives with him (less often with her) in the same house. Cf. motif K27x6b ("The character goes to the mother of the sun") Click here if would you like to see a distrbution map combining all of B33's motifs? |
Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns
| Motif | Similarity | Motif Summary |
|---|---|---|
| F9G1 | 100.00% | On her wedding night, the bride-heroine throws herself on her groom to crush him. |
| I100D | 100.00% | Stars are associated with kids. |
| K73B3 | 100.00% | A person who is asked to count the nuts in a barrel (taking them out one by one) accompanies his actions with a revealing story. |
| M171C1 | 100.00% | The character has only a bast shoe with him (or he pretends that he had a bast shoe). He asks for a place to stay for the night, and in the morning he claims that he had something more valuable with him. At each new place to stay, he continues to exchange something less valuable for something more valuable. |
| K57D | 99.99% | The prince marries the girl who fits the shoe. The girl cuts off her toes or heel so that the shoe will fit. |
| K56A4A | 99.96% | Left alone with the demon in the bathhouse (mill, etc.), the girl demands that he bring her new clothes, jewellery, etc., and while the demon is fetching them, morning comes. |
| M199N | 99.95% | A man offers a demon to fill his hat, bag, etc. with money. The demon does not notice that there is a hole in the hat and gives the man much more than he intended to give. |
| K18D | 99.90% | A young man releases or saves a fish (frog, snake, supernatural creature), it grants his wishes, and he marries a princess. {References to ATU are not entirely reliable. In particular, Uther 2004 includes a Corsican variant (Massignon 1984, No. 66), in which the main part of the plot is missing. References to Balkan variants probably correspond to the definition of the plot, since it does exist among the Bulgarians}. |
| M29Z2 | 99.90% | Being smart and witty, the Gipsy overcomes strong adversaries |
| F87 | 99.89% | The snake forces the girl to promise to marry him and takes her to the underwater world. She is happy there and gives birth to a son (or two sons) and a daughter. Together with her children, she returns to visit her relatives. They learn what words she must use to summon her husband from the water, summon him, and kill him. Seeing the bloody water, the snake's wife (rarely the snake himself) turns the children and herself into birds or trees. |
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Map of Motif Dispersal
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This motif has been recorded in 14 traditions: Germans: North (Low- and Central German dialects): Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, Pommern, Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony, incl East Frisia and Oldenburg), Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Thüringen, Saxony-Anhalt, Sachsen, Brandenburg, Rügen, Slovakians, Slovaks, Greeks (modern), Balkarians, Bulgarians, Balkarians, Romanians, Moldavians, Aromanians, Moldovans, Western Ukrainians, Byelarusians, Belarusians, Ingush, Armenians, Gagauz, Mordvins, Eastern Ukrainians, Northern Ukrainians, Russian Federation