Riddles based on unusual circumstances.
Tests. · Tests of cleverness. · Riddles. · Riddles based on unusual circumstances. · view the constellation · filed as H790
Motif
Filed across the traditions
- India Thompson-Balys.
Within the index
11 finer motifs beneath it
Riddle: a fish was my father; a man was my mother. (Man eats magic fish and becomes pregnant; a girl is taken from his knee.) Riddle of the unborn. I am unborn; my horse is unborn; I carry my mother on my hands. (A boy who has been taken from his dead mother's body digs up the body of his mother and makes gloves of her skin. He rides on a colt which has been taken from a dead mare's body.) Riddle: seven tongues in a head. (A horse's head in which a bird's nest is found with seven birds in it.) Relationship riddles arising from unusual marriages of relatives Riddle: what does God do? Riddle: one killed none and yet killed twelve. (Horse is poisoned; raven eats of him and dies; twelve robbers eat raven and die.) Riddle: deaths from sleepiness, anger, and greed. Elephant sleeps before snake's hole. Snake bites elephant and kills it. Jackal eats hole in elephant and is caught inside. Snake can't get out of its hole Riddle: from the eater came forth meat and from the strong sweetness. (Swarm of bees and honey in lion's carcass.) Riddle of the murdered lover. With what thinks, I drink; what sees, I carry; with what eats I walk. (Queen has cup made from skull of her murdered lover; ring with one of his eyes; she carries two of his teeth in her boots.) Riddle: drink this wine which a bird took to nest. (Stork took bunch of grapes to nest; boy makes wine from them.) Formerly I was daughter, now I am mother; I have a son who was the husband of my mother. (Girl has nursed her imprisoned father through a crack in the prison wall.)
ask the rhapsode about this motif · search the shelf for “circumstances” · wander