The Mythology and Folklore Database
F87A - The snake wife and her children: transformation into birds.
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Ю.Е. Березкин, Е.Н. Дувакин. Тематическая классификация и распределение фольклорно-мифологических мотивов по ареалам. Аналитический каталог.
Summary of Motif
A snake crawls onto the clothes of a girl bathing, 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 birds.Berezkin category: Gender and sex
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
F87 has 2 other sub-motifsF87. 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. F87a. A snake crawls onto the clothes of a girl bathing, 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 birds. F87b. 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. Click here if would you like to see a distrbution map combining all of F87's motifs? |
Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns
| Motif | Similarity | Motif Summary |
|---|---|---|
| K85 | 100.00% | The antagonist owns the fastest horse. The hero obtains an even faster horse (usually the brother or sister of this horse), which is the only one that surpasses the antagonist's horse and usually orders the antagonist to throw off his rider. |
| L110C | 100.00% | An elderly couple makes a child out of clay (wood, straw, dough). The doll comes to life and eats everyone it sees. Usually a goat (ram) breaks it, and those who have been swallowed come out alive. |
| K27Q1 | 99.99% | The hero is sent to bring lioness milk in a wineskin made from a lion skin (usually from a lion cub's skin). |
| K2A3 | 99.94% | The hero's companions leave him on the mountain, destroying the rope (chain) by which he climbed up or which he lowered down. |
| B33G | 99.91% | Horsemen or horses represent celestial bodies or different periods of the day. |
| I47A | 99.91% | The rainbow is associated with the wedding of a fox or jackal. |
| I87F | 99.91% | Before modern humans, there lived others who differed in strength, height, nobility, or other qualities. They disappeared after committing suicide. |
| K181A | 99.91% | When a person puts their hand on a horse's back, it bends over and falls. This is a sign of heroic strength. |
| K73B7 | 99.91% | The hero saves the magical wife from her enemy at a time when both the future wife and the enemy have zoomorphic appearances. Later, the rescued woman becomes a woman. |
| L108G | 99.91% | The character is black and must sit in water until he turns white. The antagonist carries him away. |
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Map of Motif Dispersal
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This motif has been recorded in 12 traditions: Vepsians, Western Ukrainians, Byelarusians, Belarusians, Karachays, Balkar, Tats, Kazakh, Kazan (Middle Volga) Tatars, Mari (Cheremis), Chuvash, Eastern Ukrainians, Northern Ukrainians, Russian Federation