The Mythology and Folklore Database
K24C - An old man helps to obtain a bird wife, ATU 413.
Please log on to view the narratives.
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
A young man comes to an old man (less often – to an old woman), who teaches him how to get a magical wife by hiding her bird clothes. Usually, the young man gives away the clothes for the first time and lives with the old man until the girls fly back.Berezkin category: Adventures: Acts of heroes
This is of motif type Adventures and tricks and is part group 10, Adventures
K24 has 3 other sub-motifsK24. Women (rarely men) possessing magical powers and usually coming from another world (from the sky, from under water, they are winged creatures, bird-people, animal-people; rarely: a girl of higher social status than the hero) take off their clothes (feather coverings, etc.) or part of them. The character hides the clothes (one of them), forcing him (rarely her) to fulfil his (rarely her) desire. K24a. A man, usually of non-human nature, hides the clothes or sits on the clothes of an ordinary earthly girl. To get her clothes back, she is forced to enter into a romantic relationship with him. Traditions in which the character is a snake or dragon (ATU 425M) are marked with an asterisk*. K24b. A magical wife deceives her naive mother-in-law into giving her wonderful clothes or some other item that enables her to leave the human world. K24c. A young man comes to an old man (less often – to an old woman), who teaches him how to get a magical wife by hiding her bird clothes. Usually, the young man gives away the clothes for the first time and lives with the old man until the girls fly back. Click here if would you like to see a distrbution map combining all of K24's motifs? |
Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns
| Motif | Similarity | Motif Summary |
|---|---|---|
| K56C | 99.72% | A man loses his axe. A spirit or chief offers him a golden one, but the man says that the axe is not his and for this he receives axes of gold and silver as a reward. Another man deliberately loses his ordinary axe, seeking to obtain a golden one, but suffers a fiasco. |
| M78 | 99.57% | A tiny little man performs a series of tricks, mocks people he meets and opponents. |
| M136D | 99.55% | A person dreams of gradually becoming rich and forgets that this has not yet happened. As a result, he loses the initial source of future prosperity (breaks a jug, scares away a hare he was about to shoot, etc.) or senselessly causes harm to himself or others. |
| M157A4 | 99.49% | The character proves the absurdity of another's statements by claiming that he (or someone else) fished on a mountain, extinguished a fire with straw, sowed wheat in the sea, watched flying fish, etc. (or he himself imitates such actions). The absurdity of the statements stems from the incorrectly chosen locus or means for performing certain actions. |
| M113 | 99.44% | In summer, during the height of the heat, or constantly, birds of a certain species are not allowed to drink from ponds and springs. It is generally believed that they drink only rainwater and cry out, begging for rain. See motif M112. |
| M91B1 | 99.31% | A man is going to sell a pet skin. On the way, he gets big money by deception or by chance. Usually, upon return, a person says that he received money for the skin, after which others slaughter their livestock and try unsuccessfully to sell the skins for money they are not worth. (In India, the hero sometimes supposedly sells not skin, but beef, which is forbidden to brahmanas). |
| M39A3 | 99.28% | fool kills a man, throws him into a pond, well, etc. A clever man throws a goat there. A fool searches for a corpse in the pond, asks if the victim had horns, etc. Everyone is obviously crazy, and the murder charge has been denied. {The Buryat and Yakut versions may be recent Russian borrowings. The ATU 1581B definition also includes an episode where a human corpse was replaced with a goat carcass, but most of the texts that have been verified do not contain this motive}. |
| M196 | 99.22% | A husband and wife agree to award a small prize to the one who remains silent the longest. Both or one of the spouses continue to remain silent even when others mistake them for dead or commit violence against them. |
| H51 | 99.21% | The horse is a predator or is associated with God's enemy. |
| K100F2 | 99.17% | A captured supernatural character breaks his chains and escapes to freedom after being given water (or wine, etc.) to drink. |
See more...
Please log on to view the narratives.
Map of Motif Dispersal
Click here for a clustered map
Drag the map around by clicking and using the mouse, use the wheel to zoom
This motif has been recorded in 20 traditions: Northern Munda of Kharwar branch: Birhor, Ho, Mundari, Kol, Asur (including Agaria, Kol, Birjhia), Bhumij, Konds (Khonds; language is Kui, incl Kuttia, Konda-Dora), Koya; Pengo, Kannada, Lingayat, Halakki, Hindi-speaking peoples and casts (incl. Teli, Parahiya; incl. Chhattisgarhi) of Northern and West-Central India, Catalan, Germans: North (Low- and Central German dialects): Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, Pommern, Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony, incl East Frisia and Oldenburg), Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Thüringen, Saxony-Anhalt, Sachsen, Brandenburg, Rügen, Poles, Czech, Czechs, Hungarians, Greeks (modern), Balkarians, Estonians, Western Ukrainians, Karachays, Balkar, Georgians, Azeris (Azerbaijanis), Kurds, Eastern Ukrainians, Northern Ukrainians, Transylvanian Saksons, Russian Federation