The Mythology and Folklore Database
K12A - The stretched bow.
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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
An unrecognised hero arrives at a place where his bride or wife is to be given to another man or turned into a servant. Contrary to expectations, he manages to draw a tight bow (raise a spear), with which he kills his rivals.Berezkin category: Adventures: Acts of heroes
This is of motif type Adventures and tricks and is part group 10, Adventures
K12 has 2 other sub-motifsK12. The hero returns the woman whom his enemy or rival tried to take away from him. K12a. An unrecognised hero arrives at a place where his bride or wife is to be given to another man or turned into a servant. Contrary to expectations, he manages to draw a tight bow (raise a spear), with which he kills his rivals. K12b. The hero enters a world beyond the human world and marries there. His wife allows him to visit his former world, but on certain conditions. The hero breaks these conditions, which leads to (irreparable) misfortune. Cf. motif F94 (the hero betrays his fairy wife in her world); K25a6 (the hero visits his world together with his fairy wife). Click here if would you like to see a distrbution map combining all of K12's motifs? |
Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns
| Motif | Similarity | Motif Summary |
|---|---|---|
| N1 | 99.66% | The fabulous and epic texts start from the beginning, which states that today's huge objects were tiny at the time. |
| M91B | 99.52% | A person manages to fraudulently sell or exchange ash for gold and money. Others are unsuccessfully offering ash for sale. |
| M149B | 99.46% | A person says that in his stomach (in a box) there are dangerous creatures that he has swallowed (put in a box) and that they may come out. A predator that is about to eat (bite) a person believes this and runs away. |
| F100B | 99.45% | Thanks to her virtue, a woman is capable of doing what others cannot, but she succeeds only after she remembers a minor transgression she committed in her youth. |
| I27D | 99.45% | There is a certain black or red dog that (is associated with objects in the night sky and) negatively affects people's lives. |
| K138 | 99.45% | A person gains the ability to revive the dead by incarnating in their body. While they remain in it, their own body is dead. Another person takes the body of the first, leaving them with the body of an animal. |
| K155C | 99.45% | The father regularly weighs his daughter and learns of her pregnancy when she becomes heavier. |
| M188A | 99.16% | The character demands to be addressed as a ruler (usually sits on a pile of rubbish and demands to be recognised as king). One of the animals exposes him. |
| K109 | 99.11% | The hero is advised to ask supernatural characters for something insignificant (a puppy, a cup) in return for his service. What he receives turns out to be the daughter of a deity. Another character unsuccessfully tries to take the hero's wife away from him. |
| K27Z5 | 99.05% | Two men agree to marry their children if one has a son and the other has a daughter. The girl's parents do not fulfil the agreement. The boy grows up and finds his betrothed. |
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Map of Motif Dispersal
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This motif has been recorded in 26 traditions: Bhuiya (now Aryans, originally Munda; Rahman 1955: 203), Baiga, Bhaina, Bhumia (subgroup of Baiga, incl Bharia, formerly Munda, now speak Indo-Aryan languages of neighboring groups), Kachin (Singpho), Chak, Mikir (Karbi), Burusho (Hunza), Western Ukrainians, Abaza (Abazins), Cherkassians, Adyghe, Kabardin, Abkhaz, Abkhazians, Avar, Andi, Akhvakh, Kumyk, Terekemen, Tats, Georgians, 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), Turkmen, Kazan (Middle Volga) Tatars, Bashkirs, Tuvinians of Tuva, Tuvans, Tungus (Evenki): Baikal region, Evenks, Tungus (Evenki) of China (Solon, Birar, Oroqen, Manegir), Evenks, Tungus (Evenki): Russian Far East, Evenks, Salars, Southern Altai: Teleut, Eastern Ukrainians, Northern Ukrainians, Greece, Japan