The Mythology and Folklore Database
K147 - The horse brings the hero's remains, and he is revived.




40 Myths, Legends and Folktales
40 Unique Narratives for Motif K147
19 Cultures & Traditions where K147 is told
110 Mythemes Indexed
7 Sub-Motifs of Motif K147


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 Motif Summary  -   Motifs with Simlar Dispersals  -    Map of Myth Distribution   -   List of Traditions  -   Myths



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 enemy dismembers the hero's body. The remains are tied to the horse's saddle, or the horse itself picks them up and brings them to friendly characters. They revive the hero.

Berezkin category: Adventures: Acts of heroes

This is of motif type Adventures and tricks and is part group 10, Adventures


K14 has 7 other sub-motifs


K14.  A person receives or buys simple advice, the meaning of which is initially unclear (travel with a companion, do not skip breakfast, etc.) and either follows it, achieving success, or violates it, getting into trouble.
K14a.  The antagonist orders the killing of the first person to arrive at the agreed place in the morning. The hero is accidentally delayed, and the antagonist himself or his wife or son are killed.
K14b.  A man is advised not to do anything until he is expressly asked to do so. He unwisely offers to let someone use his knife and is subsequently accused of a crime.
K14c.  Returning after a long absence and seeing signs that there is another man in the house, a man thinks that his wife has a lover, but does not rush to act and convinces himself that it is his own son or his wife's relative.
k14c1.  A man who has gone away to work sends his wife a pomegranate, unaware of its value. His wife finds treasures in the pomegranate.
K14d.  Testing his wife (household member, acquaintance), a man pretends to have committed a crime or performs incomprehensible actions that could be interpreted as a crime. Usually, his wife (friend) betrays him, and he presents evidence of his innocence.
K14e.  The sons do not care for their elderly father (rarely: the daughter-in-law does not care for her mother-in-law). He pretends to be hiding something. The sons believe that these are valuables that their father will leave them, and they begin to care for him.
K14F.  After his father's death, the son consistently violates his father's instructions. Having preserved material evidence of what happened, he presents it to those gathered, proving his father's rightness and/or his wife's wrongness.

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Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns

MotifSimilarityMotif Summary
L114B199.80%The character sequentially steals various items from the cannibal's house and finally catches or kills him.
K27R299.65%Task: bring objects (fruit, wood, water, etc.) that perform actions characteristic of humans (sing, dance, yawn, laugh, etc.).
K67A99.61%A character of low status annoys characters of high status. Learning of the intention of the characters of high status to drown him or his property (rarely: to strangle him), he arranges for one of them or their property to be drowned instead.
M19999.55%A man and a giant (devil, predator, robber) agree to test their strength by crushing a stone. The man squeezes a piece of cheese, an egg, etc., and the giant believes that he is facing a strong man. {ATU 1060 includes variants in which the character squeezes brains (guts, etc.) out of the ground, without specifying this in the definition; where we were able to verify this, we did not include such traditions}.
K15799.54%The character lures his opponents out one by one and cuts off each one's head as soon as they appear. Less commonly, a multi-headed opponent sticks out its heads one by one, and the hero cuts them off.
J62C99.54%In order to destroy the young man, the antagonist arouses in his sister (rarely: in him himself) a desire to possess wonderful objects, the attempt to obtain which is deadly dangerous. The young man sets off to obtain the objects.
M127B99.54%A character attaches a vessel or part of a vessel to their body, lowers it into the water, and the vessel pulls them along.
M83B99.49%Two (or more) characters agree to give food to whoever has the best dream. One talks about a feast he went to in a dream (or says he was in a different world), the second admits that he ate everything alone - he was sure that after the feast, the first one would not qualify for food (which someone who finds himself in a different world does not need food).
K33A99.42%Young siblings (most often a brother and sister) leave home. One of them (rarely: several brothers) accidentally breaks a taboo and is transformed into an animal (usually a hoofed animal) or (rarely) a bird; later, the spell is usually broken.
J32D99.37%The girl will be won by the one who, on horseback or by some other means, quickly reaches a hard-to-reach place (the top of a tower, a mountain, the upper floor of a palace, the top steps of a staircase, a bridge, the bottom of a chasm, jumps over a moat, etc.). Usually, the girl herself is located where the suitor must climb or (rarely) descend. In Italian versions, the hero wins tournaments.

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Map of Motif Dispersal

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This motif has been recorded in 19 traditions: Algeria Arabs, Oromo (Galla), Konso, Sidamo, Darasa, Bussa (Bassa), Kambata, Guji, Poles, Slovakians, Slovaks, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Balkarians, Romanians, Moldavians, Aromanians, Moldovans, Latvians, Western Ukrainians, 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), Ossetians, Nogai, Svans, Mingrelians (Megrelians), Laz, Georgians, Crimean Tatars, Karaims, Anatolia Turks, Bashkirs, Mordvins


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