μῦθοι Mythoi
Motif

Test of resourcefulness: carrying wolf, goat, and cabbage across stream. Man is to set across a stream, in a boat that will hold himself and only one other object, a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage. He must do this so that the wolf doesn't eat the goat, nor the goat the cabbage. Two solutions: (1) (a) take goat over, (b) take wolf over and goat back, (c) take cabbage over, (d) take goat over; (2) (a) take goat over, (b) take cabbage over and goat back, (c) take wolf over, (d) take goat over.

Tests. · Tests of cleverness. · Test of cleverness or ability. · view the constellation · filed as H506.3

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Scholars’ trail — 2references

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.

  • general *Bolte Zs. f. Vksk. XXXIII–XXXIV 38
  • general Fb "ulv" III 970a, "kål" II 354b.
Within the index

Filed under Test of resourcefulness.

Filed beside it
Test of resourcefulness: weighing elephant. Man puts him on boat; marks water-line; fills boat with stones until it sinks to same line; weighs stonesTest of resourcefulness: finding how many people are in dark closed room. Fills room with evil smell; men call each other by name and disclose numberTest of resourcefulness: putting thread through coils of snail shell. Thread tied to ant who pulls it throughTest of resourcefulness: to swing seventy girls until they are tiredTest of resourcefulness: not to sit at the foot of couch. Servant gives prince a lemon to place on it indicating which is head and which foot of couchTest of resourcefulness: to eat food without untying cloth containing it; hole torn in clothTest of resourcefulness: to get melon out of jar without breaking it. Melon is planted in jar made of unbaked clay. Jar is wrapped in a wet cloth so that it collapsesTest of resourcefulness: to cook rice without fire (in hot sand)Test of resourcefulness: to find relationships among three sticks: they are put in vessel of water; degree of sinking shows what part of tree each comes fromTest of resourcefulness: to discover how old, respectively, three horses are. Youth drops water on each; one jumps fifteen paces only, another twenty, and the last bounds in air and gallops
Carried in tale types

wander