μῦθοι Mythoi
Motif
Scholars’ trail — 6references

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.

  • IndiaThompson-Balys
  • Africa (Gold Coast)Barker and Sinclair 172 No. 34
  • JamaicaBeckwith MAFLS XVII 284 No. 116.
  • general *Type 851
  • general BP I 188ff.
  • general *Fb "hest" I 598b, "ravn" III 23a
Within the index

Filed under Riddles based on unusual circumstances.

Filed beside 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 relativesRiddle: what does God do?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 holeRiddle: 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.)
Carried in tale types

wander