μῦθοι Mythoi
Motif

Water of life and death. One water kills, the other restores to life.

The dead. · Resuscitation. · Water of Life. · view the constellation · filed as E82

ask the rhapsode about this motif →

“The loon then flew with him toward its nest, and finally brought him to it, on a large cliff. After they had reached this, it began to fly again, and took him to a pond.??? The loon then dived with him, in order to make him recover his eyesight. It would dive and ask him whether he was smothering; when he answered that he was, it took him above the surface to regain his breath. Thus they dived, until the blind boy could see again.”

Tales of the North American Indians, Tale 74 · served from our shelf  receiptuncorrected OCR — being verified against the scan

Attested across traditions
In our texts — keyword-matched, unreviewed
Scholars’ trail — 4references

The index’s own references — the collections where scholars sighted this story-shape, tradition by tradition. Titles on our shelf are live links; the rest is the frontier, not yet shelved.

  • GreekFox 281 (blood of life and death)
  • IndiaThompson-Balys
  • N. Am. Indian*Thompson Tales 355 n. 279b.
  • general *BP III 31 n. 1
Within the index

Filed under Water of Life. Resuscitation by water.

Filed beside it
Resuscitation by bathingResuscitation by wet cloth over corpseResuscitation by water (in basket, overnight)Resuscitation by holy waterWater of death
Travels with
Well of life and death. Situated on one hand, kills; on the other, protects against disease. (Cf. E82.)
Keeps company with — shares receipted episodes
Basilisk. A mythical lizard or serpent whose hissing drives away all other serpentsWater of Life. Resuscitation by waterBlind Dupe. A blind man's arrow is aimed for him by his mother (or wife) who deceives him into thinking that he has missed his aim. She eats the slain game herself

wander