Yuri E.Berezkin
AMERINDIAN MYTHOLOGY with parallels in the Old World
Classification and Areal Distribution of Motifs. The Analytical Catalogue
16. The Girl and her Pet. .39.-.43.49.50.52.55.57.59.62.65.73.
Disguised as a bird, small animal or insect, the hero lets himself be caught by girl to have sex with her or to steal crops or fire that her family possesses; to be caught by the girl's father to have sex with his daughter.
NE Asia.
Koryak (Chavchuven dialect) [Kuykynyaku flies as a raven, finds two sisters, tells his son Ememkut marry one;
E. puts on Raven's clothes, flies to the sisters; the older drives him away, the younger give him food; he does not eat; she thinks he is ill, takes him to cure him; he turns into man, marries her, brings to his parents]: Zhukova 1988, no.11: 41-42; Kamchadal: Jochelson 1951, no.41 [Kusklnaqu puts on his raven coat, flies over the sea to two girls who give him food; he comes back; now his son Ememkut flies; the younger sister feeds him, he does not eat, makes her a child; their brother comes,
E. turns into handsome man; the elder sister drives E.'s wife with her child away; the boy steals food for his mother from E.'s house;
E. catches him, wants to kill, he tells him who he is]: 250-252, 274-277; Menovschikov 1974, no.171 [as in Jochelson; E.'s father is Kutq; sisters live in another village; when
E. marries the younger one he brings her to his parents' home]: 513-514.
Arctic.
Inupiaq [see motif K27; Qajartuarungnertok turns into falcon, gets into snare; Umialik asks his stepdaughter to cook it, eats it, asks her to throw bones on the midden;
Q. turns back into man, marries her;
U. tries to kill him suggesting difficult tasks; is himself killed by
Q. after all]: Ostermann 1952: 246-253.
Subarctic.
Kaska [Beaver goes downriver, meets Shrew old woman; she helps him with good advice; he turns into bleubird, lets two girl to catch him; the older takes him to their bed, he turns into man; father-in-law boils him in a pot, he emerges as bird, comes back; father-in-law suggests him difficult tasks; then ascends to the sky, he is Sun; see motif K27]: Teit 1917a, no.1: 436.
NW Coast.
Kwakiutl [man's sweetheart pretends to die; he carries the coffin into the woods, cohabits with her in the coffin; man's slave sees her lover who comes to cohabit with her; man cuts her belly open killing her, takes the child; puts a bird mask, flies to the sky; a daughter of the sky chief takes the bird for a pet; he turns into man, marries her; her father spreads a death-mat for him, he does not die; his wife bears a son, throws him down to earth; he is Greedy One, quickly devours any food]: Boas 1910, no.17: 209-213; Nootka (Tlatlasikoala Newetee) [chief gets to know that his wife has paramour, is angry; wife pretends to die; people tell the chief that paramour visits her in her funeral house; chief kills her, puts her baby son with her corpse; the boy survives, chief adopts him; he finds himself a companion, they put flicker's clothes on, fly up to the sky; K.ants,o'ump's daughter comes after water, they let her catch them; in her room, turn into men, chief's son marries her; she warns him about sharp nails in K.'s room, he is not injured; she bears a son, it slips from her arms down into the sea; hero's father sends a slave to bring him; he grows quickly, is glutton, Omeatl (the Raven); devours all food supplies, goes away]: Boas 1895, no.XVIII/1: 170-171;.
Coast-Plateau.
Carrier [see motif J25; Dead-Woman's-Son and his cousin fly to the sky to court daughters of two chiefs; many men lost this way their lives; girls' names are Iksmandamlkut and Tsabol; Dead-Woman's-Son puts on chickadee, his cousin woodpecker skin; old Mouse-woman tells them how to fly through the opening between to moving cliffs; Woodpecker's feathers are slightly burned by lightning;
I. and
T. come to a spring, the false birds let them catch them; let them forget that they put the birds on their bosoms; at night boys resume human form; are recognized as husbands, kill a lot of game; boys bring their wives home to earth; people feast on meat brought by sky women in small bags]: Jenness 1934, no.11: 149-154; Comox [Sun's son makes a chain of arrows, ascends to the sky; turns into cuttle-fish; four sisters find it, he lets only the youngest to take him; they bring it to their father to serve as a slave; at night the youth takes cuttle-fish mantle off, marries the youngest girl; her father attempts to kill his son-in-law but is killed himself]: Boas 1895, no.2: 68-70.
Great Basin.
Southern Ute [Bat turns into bat, hides between ribs a corpse of mountain goat; two sisters find him; he sits on their genitals; they permit him to copulates with them]: Lowie 1924, no.5 [girls name him nice bird], 25 [girls name him nice little animal]: 10, 51-52.
Great Southwest.
Navajo [transforms into bluebird; wren; butterfly; yellow bird; cicada to lure two sisters out from their house and make them his wives]: O'Bryan 1956: 158-159; Lipan [Beaver helps youth to dig irrigation ditch; Turkey shakes himself, corn of different colors, tobacco come down; the youth turns into cricket, girl picks him up, he turns back to man, marries her; her father asks him to kill bear, wold, puma, lion; he kills the animals, give corn and tobacco to his in-laws]: Opler 1940, no.1: 81-84.
Mesoamerica.
Sierra Totonac [see motif J4B; girl refuses marriage; a musician turns into flea, sticks to her dress, turns back to man in her back; four Thunders hear him playing violin, order to shoot him down; he is buried; woman bears a boy who dies; she buries him, corn grows on his grave; she makes bread of green cobs, it is bitter; she throws it into water; fishes eat it, Turtle saves a piece on her her back; it turns into boy; he grows, Turtle carries him to the bank; boy is Corn, revives every year]: Ichon 1969, no.III: 63-69;
Tepehua [girl catches the bird, hero marries her, steals the fire]: Williams Garcia 1972: 67-68; Nahuatl (Huasteca) [girl catches the starling, is impregnated and bears maize god]: Greco 1989: 177-179; Nahuat (Gulf Coast) [as in Nahuatl]: Law 1957: 345
;
Mixe: Miller 1956, no.2 [as in (3); only till the Vulture episod, now vulture's head is red], 3 [girl rejects a youth, he turns into bird, girl beats it, hides on her breast, becomes pregnant; afraid of her angry parents go into the forest; Squirrel suggests her to swing on a vine, cuts it off, she falls; Vulture extracts boy and girl out of her belly; the boy tells him to eat animals, not people; twins come to tjeir mother's parents; grooming grandfarther kill him, make a dummy, put insects inside; give grandmother his meat to eat; she beats the dummy, insects fly out; she pursues the twins; Agout hides them in her mouth; they throw hot stones into the mouth of cannibal serpent; monster brings them to the top of a cliff, they kill him with arrows; brother tells his sister to urinate vines, she urinates bananas; he urinates vines himself; transforms into forest animals people who have eaten bananas; burns the monster, gives Toad to throw its asjes into the sea; Toad opens the package, mosquitoes come out; twins transform him into toad; emergence of the Sun and Moon as in (4)], 4 [Maria spins, a bird sits on her spinning-wheel, she beats him, puts under her dress, bird pecks her breast, flies away; Ì. becomes pregnant; further as in (3); twins give their grandmother to boil and eat her husbands testicles; old woman pursues the twins; girl urines, road becomes slippery; Agouti hides twins in her mouth; they stay for a night at an old man; Serpent comes, they throw hot stones into its mouth; further as in (3) (Lorenzo opens the package with ashes, is turned into toad); people come together to choose the Sun, say to the boy that he is too weak; he asks the old man to dig a well, turns into Sun, is hot, only the old man has water; boy asks his sister to bring huarache that he has forgotten in the old man's house; ascend high into the sky; girl turns into Moon, stains are her brother's huarache]: 75-78, 79-85, 86-97; Yucatec [man shoots hummingbird, hero steals his daughter]: Thompson 1939: 138; Kekchi [as in Yucatec]: Becker-Donner 1976 [see motif F36; C'agua Sa'que (Sun) and C'agua Choc (Cloud) boys whose parentage seem unknown kill Shan Ni's monstrous husband Chishal; then her, trick her three sons into eating her meat; they turn into sparrow hawk, screech owl, taltuza (rodent, lives underground; not a mole); once CS's arrow goes far, he hears a cry; comes as a wind, sees a beautiful C'ana Po (Moon) who is frightened; tries to impress her as a great hunter with a goatskin full of ashes, fails, is ridiculed; causes her a toothache, visits as a colibri; the ache is easied in its presence; her father C'agua Aatan catches it for her with his blowgun; she keeps it near her to weave bird designs on her cloth; at night CS turns into man; they prepare to flee and 1) leave the spittle in the room to answer the father in the morning; 2) darken his telescope with achiote; 3) fill his blowgun with pepper; leave a small corner of the telescope free, CA sees them on the seashore; when he wants to shoot he starts to cough (origin of the cough); asks Juan Kaak, Thunder, to kill them with his drum; CS slips into the turtle, CP into the crayfish; the lightning stone destoys the crayfish, CP's blood runs into the sea; CS calls a water lizard to collect all the blood, dragonflies also help; it fills 13 receptacles; CS leaves them in the care of a certain person, goes to the 13 mountains and 13 valleys to ask for help; after 13 days something moves and moans in the receptacles; CS opens them; finds green worm (in the 1st), a poisonous snake (2), the toad (3), the boa (4), another poisonous snake (5), all lizards (6); scorpions (7), dangerous small snake (8), the flies (9), the snake who has the evil in the tail (10), a snake (11), all other snakes (12), CP (13); but she is lacking her genitals; the mountain goat fails, the stag gets to open her legs; she is smelling so strongly that CS is afraid that mankind would fight about her; tells rat to pass urine there; they return home; CC and CP fall in love with each other; CS puts gall of turkey cocks who are quarrelsome into their food; they quarrel who is to bring water; CP goes to the river, does not return; CC cries, his tears become rain; brothers play buluc on a board put over a dark gorge; when CC jumps the third time the board bursts, he falls into the earth; today there are clouds rising from the gorges; his tears became the rivers that spring out of the ground; CP sits next to the river; vulture invites her to marry their king; carries her first up and then down to Xibalba, where Mausajcuink, the devil, lives who wanted to marry her; CS hears from the flies what has happened; asks the goat to borrow his skin; all the flies gather around his tail; Vulture comes to eat carrion, puts his head inside; CS catches his throat, makes him tell the news about CP; Vulture carries him to X.; CP laments loudly; CC sends toothache to
M. using 13 kernels and 13 needles; CP has to call CC as a great sorcerer; by blowing on his head 3 times, CC makes
M. sleep; CC and CP rise up to the sky; they cannot move; San Cosme brings flowers and smelling seeds curing them; they are the sun and the moon; when men and animals saw the two for the first time, 400 of them transformed into stars]: 122-124; Dieseldorff 1925: 4-5; Gordon 1915: 120-121; Shaw 1971: 153-155; Termer 1930: 490; Kekchi, Mopan [as in Yucatec]: Thompson 1930: 126-129; Lacandon [man turns into hummingbird near the house of the Master of the Underworld; the Master shoots him, his daughter picks him up; he turns into man at night; is recognized as son-in-law; is subject to tests]: Boremanse 1986: 87, 296; 1989: 77; Cakchiquel [girl catches hummingbird; every night he turns into man; her father recognizes him as his son-in-law, suggests tests to fulfill]: Redfield in Thompson 1977: 437-438; Cakchiquel [anthropomorphic father-in-law; no details]: Redfield 1946 in Thompson 1977: 437-438; Ixil [?Oyew ?Ac|"ch"\i god falls in love with Maria Markaao, the daughter of Mataqtani; turns into hummingbird; MM asks the bird to use as a pattern for her weaving; the two lovers spend night together in her room; in the morning
M. finds the door locked; sends a louse to investigate; it finds blood, drinks, fails to return; it is made to inhabit the streets forever, drink blood, eventually dies;
M. sends flea, the same (
M. condemns it to be useless and to keep people from sleeping); sends firefly, instructs to enter through the rood, light up the room; fireflies reports that MM is sleeping with the hummingbird in form of a man; is given light to use at night to see with; in the morning MM herself tells everything to her father; marries OA;
M. tells him 1) to grow corn, ayotes, chilacayotes, beans immediatly (
M. tells him to measure the land, to leave machetes there and go to sleep; an insect like ant does all the work; OA brings harvest to M.); 2) to build a house (there are no trees nearby; MM gives AO some milk of her breast to sprinkle it over a hill, to leave machete on the ground; when AO awakes, there are many trees; AO builds the house); 3) to build a sweathouse and find drywood for the fire (there are no drywood; MM tells to leave machete on the peak of a mountain there were many stones; AO awakes, finds dry wood); 4) M tells MM and AO to bathe themselves first, seals all openings of the sweathouse (a mole digs a tunnel out of the sweat house); the lovers escape, travel some distance; come to a narrow window; AO gets through, MM is too fat, can't; her father strikes her with a lightning bolt; AO gathers up her bones in his handkerchief, comes to his aunt, puts the bones into an urn, closes with a cover; instructs his aunt not to touch the urn; the aunt opens the urn to see what is inside; the bones turn into deer, rabbits, wild pigs, other animals; see motif B30]: Colby, Colby 1981: 181-183; Pocomchi [old man turns into bird, the girl asks her father to shoot it; bird turns into man at night, the lovers escape]: Mayers, McNeilly 1973, no.1 [turns into sparrow; =Mayers 1958: 4], 3 [into hummingbird]: 88, 92; Mestizos of Soconusco [daughter of poor woman rejects suitors; God comes as a poor man, is also rejected; comes as a small bird, she strikes him with a stick, then puts on her bosom; he revives, pecks her breasts, flies away; she bears twin boys, turns into the Earth; her mother wants to eat them, tells her many sons to kill the boys; sons are going to throw them into the barranca; ants tell them to jump themselves; one jumps, becomes shiny and hot, ascends to the sky as the Sun, burning his grandmother's face; she turns into Wind with black head, always tries to pursue him; another brother turns into the Moon; uncles jump too, becomes stars who are not able to grasp the Moon]: Navarrete 1966, no.1: 422-423.
Northern Andes.
Kogi: Preuss 1926, no.9 [girl catches the bird; hero steals girl and crops (mainly tubers)]: 202-208; RD 1985(2), no.6 [man catches the bird; hero steals his daughter], 18 [girl catches the bird; hero makes love with her, steals coca from her father]: 38-39, 60-61; Guajiro [hero changes in a small eagle and lets himself be caught by a girl; he is gentle with her and ferocious with her lover (no continuation; there is a mixture if Indian and European storie in the whole text)]: WS 1986(2), no.29: 557.
Southern Venezuela.
Piaroa [hero turns into paujil bird to attract attention of the man and his daughter; steals the man's clothes and gets the girl in exchange]: Boglar 1977, no.13: 268-269; Yanomami [girl catches the bird, hero steals the girl and the water, returns water in exturn into be recognized as son-in-law, gets the peach palm from father-in-law]: Polykrates 1966-1967: 268-269.
Guiana.
Pemon [girls catch the bird, hero sleeps with them]: Armellada 1973, no.51: 141-143; Arekuna [girl catches the bird, hero marries her]: Koch-Grunberg 1924, no.34: 112-113.
NW Amazonia.
Tariana [three brothers turn into birds; when the girls catch them, they turn back to humans, have sex with them]: Bruzzi 1994: 119; Tucano? [as in Tariana]: Bruzzi 1994: 212; Cubeo [pregnant woman falls from the river band, drowns; Vultures extract alive boy Homanihiko from her womb; he decorates himself with feathers and monkey hair, sits on Vulture's back, flies to the place of his father; sits on a post guised as an owl; his grandmother lies in guise of anaconda; he blows tobacco on her, she becomes a woman; asks him to kill Jaguar who had murdered his father; he cuts a tree, Jaguar comes, he kills him with poisonois arrow; the same with another jaguar;
H. and his grandmother come to Vultures' garden; Vulture girl comes to bathe;
H. turns first into baby, then into bird, the girl takes it, it turns back to man; grandmother prepares cashiri, Vultures comes to dance;
H. kills them, kill his grandmother cutting her in two; kills Grasshopper-, Monkey-, Ant-, Wasps-, Deer- and other animal-people); Kuai and Mianiko toibo are H.' brothers;
M. has no head, eyes on the breast]: Koch-Grunberg 1909-1910(2): 159-162; Bora [man eats a bird, breaks a bone, water pours out, floods the earth; hummingbird breaks the dam created by father of a girl; lets her to catch him, she puts him to warm near the fire; he steals fire, flies away]: Wavrin 1932: 141; Witoto [girl asks her father to catch the bird, hero impregnates her under a worm disguise]: Yepez 1982: 63-64; Andoque [hummingbird steals fire from the girl's father]: Landaburu, Pineda 1981: 69-70; 1984: 76-77.
Central Andes.
Huarochiri (Lima dep.) [girl catches the grasshopper (?); he turns into man, makes love with her]: Salomon, Urioste 1991, ch.31: 139; Pachacamac (Lima dep.) [youth's and girl's parents are enemies; lad turns into bird, girls catches it; she bears a child, her father wants to kill her; she flees; her lover runs after her; he seems to be ugly; she and her baby turn into islands]: Arguedas, Izquierdo Rios 1947: 41-42.
South Brazil.
Mbya [girl catches the owl, hero impregnates her]: Cadogan 1959: 71.