The Mythology and Folklore Database
M114I - What do your relatives do? ATU 875(4), 921.
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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
When asked where her father, mother, brother, etc. are, the girl or boy answers in such a way that only an intelligent person can guess what is meant (father went to make an enemy out of a friend, mother went to make one out of two, etc.); or the girl explains the meaning of similar phrases uttered by others.Berezkin category: Adventures: Tricks and episodes
This is of motif type Adventures and tricks and is part group 11, Tricks and competitions won thanks to deception, absurd and obscene behavior
M11 has 4 other sub-motifsM11. The character gives others food extracted from his or someone else's body or contaminated with bodily secretions, without revealing the source of the food. M11a. The character gives others the fish extracted from his body. M11b. A woman feeds a man with good-quality meat or fat, which she cuts from her own flesh or extracts from her body, and stops doing so when he learns about the source of the food. M11c. Without harming himself, a male character cuts off, pierces, roasts, holds over a fire, etc. a part of his body (or his wife's body). The character cooks the meat, fat, etc. obtained in this way and treats his guest to it. This food is not perceived as unclean (cf. motifs M11B and M38). m11d. The character makes food taste good by adding salt to it. Another character learns that the cook extracts this salt from his own body (it is contained in his bodily secretions). Click here if would you like to see a distrbution map combining all of M11's motifs? |
Top 10 Motifs with similar dispersal patterns
| Motif | Similarity | Motif Summary |
|---|---|---|
| K107D1 | 99.82% | Waiting for his magical wife, the young man falls asleep. The wife cannot wake him up and leaves (this episode is often repeated). |
| M136B | 99.80% | A man cuts the branch he is sitting on and similar variants (cuts the rope he climbed up on; climbs onto a dry branch that breaks; climbs onto a tree that has been cut down in order to fell it). |
| M135 | 99.79% | Two ungulates – usually after the wolf agrees to share the meadow between them – gore the predator from both sides, killing or maiming it. |
| K27G4 | 99.76% | The character must complete all field work in an unimaginably short time and present the products of the new harvest. |
| K101 | 99.72% | A girl or boy disappears at night. Usually, the girl's clothes or shoes are worn out overnight, or the boy looks sick and tired in the morning. The girl or boy is followed and seen spending the night in another world. |
| K131B | 99.72% | Having received and then lost a magical object, the hero returns it with the help of a new one (a club, a box with an army, etc.), received in exchange for the first or obtained by the hero's brother. The episode may be repeated several times. |
| M136 | 99.70% | Some people do not know what to do with cutting tools; they try to use tools that are not suitable for these purposes instead. |
| K117B | 99.70% | The hero causes various people (and animals) to stick to each other (or to objects). |
| H52 | 99.69% | A man finds a land where there is no death. Having decided to visit his native places, he never returns to it. |
| B90 | 99.65% | There is an anthropomorphic patron, master or mistress of wolves; he usually gives instructions to the wolves on a certain day of the year. |
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Map of Motif Dispersal
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This motif has been recorded in 37 traditions: Arabs of Iraq, Iraqi, Fula (Fulbe, Fulani, Pular), Kashmiri, Hindi-speaking peoples and casts (incl. Teli, Parahiya; incl. Chhattisgarhi) of Northern and West-Central India, Assamese, Ireland, England, British, Bretons, Scotland, Scots, Picts, Scotti, Scottish, Portuguese, Portugal, Catalan, Maltese, Dutch, Flemish, Poles, Czech, Czechs, Slovakians, Slovaks, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Balkarians, Slovenians, Slovenes, Romanians, Moldavians, Aromanians, Moldovans, Lithuanians, Latvians, Finns, Karelians, Swedes, Byelarusians, Belarusians, 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), Abkhaz, Abkhazians, Svans, Georgians, Crimean Tatars, Karaims, Gagauz, Anatolia Turks, 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), Mari (Cheremis), Khakas, Italians: Central (Toscana, Umbria, Marche, Lazio), Frisians