μῦθοι Mythoi
Motif

Test 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 collapses.

Tests. · Tests of cleverness. · Test of cleverness or ability. · view the constellation · filed as H506.8

Filed across the traditions
  • India Thompson-Balys.
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 stones Test of resourcefulness: finding how many people are in dark closed room. Fills room with evil smell; men call each other by name and disclose number 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 Test of resourcefulness: putting thread through coils of snail shell. Thread tied to ant who pulls it through Test of resourcefulness: to swing seventy girls until they are tired Test 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 couch Test of resourcefulness: to eat food without untying cloth containing it; hole torn in cloth Test 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 from Test 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

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