The Mythology and Folklore Database
C3 - The snake plugged the hole in the ark, A1853.1, (ATU 825).
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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
The snake (eel, frog) saved the ship (or the whole world) by plugging the hole from which water was pouring with its body.Berezkin category: Disasters
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part group 7, Etiology of plants and animals and of their peculiar features, particular animals as protagonists of cosmological stories, metamorphoses, weather and calendar
Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns
| Motif | Similarity | Motif Summary |
|---|---|---|
| M135A | 99.79% | A wolf (or, less commonly, another predator) approaches various (more than one type of) domestic animals (animals and humans) in order to eat them, but, agreeing to fulfil the request, remains hungry and is usually beaten. |
| L94B1 | 99.74% | A man receives a box (bag, horn, etc.) as a gift, which he must open only at home. Driven by curiosity, he opens it on the way, and everything that should make him wealthy (houses, livestock, etc.) spills out. The demon who appears agrees to return everything, but sets a condition, the severity of which the man does not immediately understand. |
| B33D | 99.73% | 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. |
| K27X1 | 99.72% | Having received a difficult task (usually: to bring an object or creature that has no specific characteristics, such as "something, I don't know what," "a strange wonder," etc.), the hero meets an invisible man who serves others; he is kind to him, and the man becomes his assistant. (This motif is certainly present in some texts of the ATU 465A plot, but it is not specifically highlighted in the definition). (Cf. motif K131B). |
| M114B1 | 99.68% | When answering the question of what is the sweetest (fattest, fastest, etc.), a clever person names abstract concepts and entities (while a foolish person names specific objects or creatures). |
| K64A | 99.61% | A man blinds a sleeping or immobile giant-cannibal and escapes from him. |
| M153 | 99.52% | A hoofed animal asks a predator to examine its hoof under various pretexts, and then kills or maims it with a kick. |
| K97 | 99.52% | A man prepares to kill a large bird, but does not kill it. When the bird later carries him, it pretends to leave him on a rock or throw him down. In doing so, it makes it clear how frightened it was. Either the bird first drops and catches the man, and later he makes her experience fear herself (the Volyn variant is slightly different). |
| K103B | 99.51% | A cow (goat) miraculously spins or weaves: it chews tow, turning it into thread, orders the yarn to be wound onto its horns, put into its ear, etc. |
| I136 | 99.48% | The rolling wheel (and the character riding on it) is a creature or weapon hostile to the hero (people) that he uses. |
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Map of Motif Dispersal
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This motif has been recorded in 23 traditions: France, Bulgarians, Balkarians, Macedonians, Balkarians, Croatians, Croats; Italians of Dalmatia (if the motif is absent among other Italians), Romanians, Moldavians, Aromanians, Moldovans, Latvians, Finns, 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), Abkhaz, Abkhazians, Nogai, Mingrelians (Megrelians), Laz, Armenians, Crimean Tatars, Karaims, Uyghur, Hui (Dungan) of Xinjiang, Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan (Dungan texts from Southern and Eastern China are clustered with the Chinese ones), Bashkirs, Mari (Cheremis), Chuvash, Udmurt, Khakas, Southern Selkups