The Mythology and Folklore Database
I87 - Skull cave.
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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 characters use an object belonging to the world of giants (a skull, an animal shoulder blade, a mitten) as a shelter. Cf. I87C: animals use an object belonging to the world of humans (a skull, a mitten, a sieve, etc.) as a shelter.Berezkin category: Supernatural objects, objects and creatures
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
I87 has 13 other sub-motifsI87. The characters use an object belonging to the world of giants (a skull, an animal shoulder blade, a mitten) as a shelter. Cf. I87C: animals use an object belonging to the world of humans (a skull, a mitten, a sieve, etc.) as a shelter. I87a. A character of gigantic size turns out to be small in comparison with a character of even greater size, or the same character turns out to be small in some episodes and gigantic in others. I87a1. Two people engage in a dialogue, contradicting each other in their descriptions of the sizes of creatures and objects. I87a2. The antagonist names numbers from one to 7, 12, etc., the hero answers what each number corresponds to, and the antagonist is unable to refute him. I87aa. Describes a giant bull (rarely: horse): head in one field, body in another; a bathhouse on its tail, a lake on its back; people standing at its head and tail have to walk a long way to meet each other; etc. Usually the bull is killed and eaten (by people in Baltic-Finnish traditions and in Olonets antiquity; by birds in most southern traditions). I87ab. 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. I87ac. 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.). I87ad. A giant hides a persecuted person in his mouth – usually (perhaps always) in a tooth cavity; or the person remains alive in the giant's mouth, hiding in a tooth cavity. Cf. motif M21a. I87b. When a character boasts of his strength, his wife or mother says that there is someone stronger than him. He sets off in search and meets a character who is much stronger than him. {ATU gives a definition of the plot (or rather, the first half of it) similar to ours, but some of the references given refer to our motif i87a, not i87b}. I87c. Animals use a small object belonging to the human world (skull, mitten, jug, etc.) for shelter or transportation. Cf. motif I87: characters use an object (skull, animal shoulder blade, mitten) belonging to the world of giants as a shelter. I87c1. A mouse makes itself a boat out of a small object. I87d. In the past, giants inhabited the earth. One of them finds a tiny human being and brings him to his father or mother. They usually say that such people will replace the current giants. I87e. After the present humans, dwarves will live on earth. I87f. Before modern humans, there lived others who differed in strength, height, nobility, or other qualities. They disappeared after committing suicide. Click here if would you like to see a distrbution map combining all of I87's motifs? |
Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns
| Motif | Similarity | Motif Summary |
|---|---|---|
| M114A | 99.60% | The character is offered to sew clothes or shoes from stone or iron, or to remove the skin from the stone. |
| I87AC | 99.44% | 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.). |
| L10A | 99.21% | A demonic character approaches a man's campfire. The man leaves a log in his place and hides. The character throws himself on the log, mistaking it for a sleeping man; usually, the hunter kills or wounds the demon. |
| I3A | 99.21% | During a thunderstorm, the character strikes with a whip – these are flashes of lightning. |
| L81B | 99.19% | The hero's rivals abandon him, cutting off his legs (usually leaving a sword at the entrance to his tent, and when the hero rushes out, the blade wounds him). |
| M153B | 99.18% | The wolf is killed or maimed after agreeing to a domestic animal's offer to ride it. |
| B73A | 99.15% | A girl (a young man, a girl with her brother; two little brothers) searches for a lost horse, cow, sheep and, as a result (alone or with her brother; both brothers), turns into a bird (usually a cuckoo) with a characteristic call. |
| H7F2 | 98.99% | The character embodying death had a body visible to humans. Then death became invisible. |
| K27ZZ3 | 98.99% | 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 | 98.99% | 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. |
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Map of Motif Dispersal
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This motif has been recorded in 14 traditions: Serbs, Monte Negro, Balkarians, Karelians, Scandinavians: early written sources ("Edda"; Saxo Grammaticus etc.); Gothland picture stones; Ancient Germans (Late Bronze Age in Scandinavia), 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), Abaza (Abazins), Abkhaz, Abkhazians, Karachays, Balkar, Ossetians, Ingush, Mingrelians (Megrelians), Laz, Georgians, Kalmyk, 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), Chechens