Yu.E. Berezkin, E.N. Duvakin

Thematic classification and distribution of folklore and mythological motifs by area

Analytical catalogue

Introduction
Bibliography
Ethnicities and habitats

b79a1. The bird threw the firmament onto the waters.

.24.25.36.37.39.42.48.71.

At the beginning of time, a bird flies and throws pieces of firmament into the water, from which the earth's land or island emerges. Cf. motive B3e, "The Earth fell on the water".

Nicobars [saka drops island], dayaks [two birds drop pieces of firmament: earth and sky], tetum [two birds drop the ground], visayas [bird throws stones], mansaka [bird brings soil], Mansi [eagle drops the ground], China's Evenks [kite brings (and drops?) land], Kamchatka Evens [eagle drops land], Nanai [swans or eagle drop land], Udege [bird drops land], Chukchi [raven drops land], Tlingit [raven drops land], Haida [raven drops land], yokutz [falcon and raven drop land], kaingang [forest shepherds, ducks drop land], sheta [ibises and forest shepherds drop land].

Malaysia-Indonesia. Nicobars [there was an uninhabited island near the village of Kakana, people visited it to hunt; the Saka bird decided to carry it away, picked it up at night, carried it, dropped it into the sea at dawn, it fell, flipped over, it's now an island on the way to Chowra]: Roy 2001, No. 7:18-10; dayaki [there was water, two bird-like spirits, Ara and Iraq, swam on it; they dived, picked up from two lumps of water, the size and shape of a chicken egg each; from one A. created the sky, from the other I. created the earth; it turned out that the end of the earth extended beyond the edge of the sky; they squeezed the earth, valleys and mountains appeared ; trees and other plants grew on their own; A. and I. searched for a tree whose juice would resemble blood for a long time; when they found it, they could not turn the tree into a person; then they sculpted a man and a woman out of clay - Dayak ancestors]: Dunn 1906:16 (paraphrase pointing to the motif for diving into Zolotarev 1964:220; Hatt 1949:32; there is no diving motif in the original, lumps of firmament are picked up from the surface or from the water); tetum [water first; God in the sky sent two birds to fly above the water; lumps of clay adhering to their feet fell into the sea, turned into land; a man and a woman fell on it from the feet of the same birds; they were eaten demons; God turned birds into two rocks as punishment for not saving people; God threw a man with a dog on the ground; the dog told man to hide from demons inside the stone; opened in stone vagina, man climbed into it, the stone closed; God told demons to leave man alone and eat people only when there were many; later many people descended from heaven through vines, others arose from tubers and cereals]: Hicks 1984, No. 8:42-44.

Taiwan - Philippines. Visayas [a bird brings stones and throws them at Kaptan and Magauayan to stop their feud; these stones became islands of the Philippines]: Gaverza 2014:38; mansaka [when Taganlang worked, a bird flew to the edge of the world and brought soil to make land]: Gaverza 2014:38.

Western Siberia. Mansi [The winged god Kurk iki ("Old Eagle") carried luggage land; pieces of it fell, islands formed; on one of these islands, expelling Yalan-iki's forest spirit, Kurk iki built a nest]: Nettina-Lapina 1999:33-35 in Perevalova 2004:136.

Eastern Siberia. The Evenks of China [was only the creator of Purkan {from Burkhan}; tired of loneliness, he created a kite and sent it to look for sand and clay; the kite returned with a small piece of clay and sand; P. his flattened it, it stretched out and first became the size of an umalan rug, and then grew even more and became vast land; but it is deserted; then P. makes trees grow on the ground and appear rivers, seas, birds and fish, wild and domestic animals]: Varlamova, Dyakonova, manuscript; Evens (Kamchatka) [the land was only stones; the eagle flies to the ends of the earth, brings sand in feathers above the cat, scattered on stones, land was formed, forest, moss grew on it, deer appeared; since then, Evens have not killed an eagle]: Chadaeva 1982:60 in Shanshina 2000:33-34 (in Chadaev 1990:123 a little differently: sends an eagle and the Creator scatters the sand).

Amur-Sakhalin. Nanais: Laufer 1899 [there were three people: Shanwai, Shankoa, Shanka; there were three dives and three swans; three men sent three dives and three swans to dive to get land, stones and sand; the birds were under water for seven days; when they emerged, they carried land, stones, sand brought from the bottom in their beaks; where they flew, land, mountains, plains appeared; outlined riverbeds; when they flew to the sea, Amur flowed; three men made a man Kado and a woman Julcha, Mamilji's maiden; the people multiplied; it was three suns, too hot; K. went east, hid in a hole, shot the first and third suns, shooting at the second, missed; M. drew pictures on the stones while the stones were soft with the heat; decided that there were too many people, died to show them the way to the afterlife world; chipmunk, tumna (?) , the snake sleeps in winter, does not die; the rest are mortal]: 749-750 in Okladnikov 1968:163-164; Chadaeva 1990 [there was only a quagmire, an Enduri eagle flew over her; saw an old woman sitting on an island; that allowed a lump of land to be grabbed from her island; E. flew, threw lumps of land into the mud, land and mountains arose]: 150 (quoted in Shanshina 2000:28-29); Shanshina 2000:28 [there were water and sky; the crow flew to heaven to Ask the Sun to make the earth; the Sun gave a piece, the Raven swallowed it, flew back, belched it, a piece of the Sun fell too deep, opened the way to the boonie (the afterlife); people began to die; the crow turned black, burned on the way to the Sun; then Magpie flew, turned around, so not everything was burned; brought land, life, healing trees], 28-29 [(zap. Lipsky; the same in Sogti Tohala Earth, em 1986:32); at first there was water; the hadon bird was flying, saw that a mammildi bird was sitting below; the hadon sat next to him, took a tohala in its claws -land, took off, dropped, land formed from the tokhal that fell on the water]; Udege people: Lebedeva et al. 1998, No. 58 [the old man tells the girl and her younger brother to go to the singm (water a monster that looks like a snake or crocodile swallows people); the wind starts, they sit on the singma's back, then hide in his mouth; when they go out, they are on an island, the sea is around; sister suggests get married; the old man tells them to push the upper and lower millstones off the mountain in different directions; if they join, they can marry; their brother's millstone lay on his sister's millstone; they have many children; a bird flew over the water I saw an old woman standing on one leg on a small island; the bird sat down, the old woman drove her away; the bird grabbed the ground in its paws, flew, threw it, land was formed; the descendants of brother and sister settled them]: 323-327 ; Podmaskin 1991, No. 1 [an evil old woman lived on a tiny island in the middle of the sea; a sky duck descended there, lived there for seven years; on the eighth, the old woman drove her away; when taking off, the duck seized the ground, became scatter it in the ocean; this is how small and large islands arose]: 118.

SV Asia. Chukchi [Big Raven Kurkil and his wife live on a tiny piece of land in the void; the wife turns into a man, gives birth to two twin sons; they laugh at the father who is left a crow; K. decides to create land; flies to the horizon, the sky rubs against the ground; anthropomorphic creatures appeared there from friction from the dust; one of them tells K. create land; it defecates in the sky, its excrement falls, turns into islands and continents; K. pees when he reaches the ground, his urine becomes fresh, turns into rivers; he defecates again, mountains appear; trees grow on the ground; K. shatters chips from them, throws them into the water; pine trees turn into walruses, oak trees into seals; chips from dwarf cedar trees into polar bears, from stone birch - whales, from other species - fish, crabs, and other sea creatures; chips that fall to the ground - in land animals; at first there are only men, Spider gives birth to four daughters; companion K. marries alone, but they sleep apart; K. teaches them how to copulate]: Bogoras 1904 in Norman 1990:65-72

NW Coast. The Tlingits [The Raven flies above the waters; the Fish promises to marry him if he makes the ground; the Seal, the Frog agree to bring sand from the bottom, if he gives fur to the Seal, makes the Frog The guardian of the earth's treasures; the seal dives, gets sand-filled frog skin from the Frog; the Raven soars as high as possible, where the wind scatters the sand, the wind carries it around the world grains of sand fall into the water, islands grow out of them; Fish dries their hair for the first time, becomes the wife of the Raven, they are the ancestors of the Raven family]: Smelcer 1992:7-8; Haida: Boas 1916:575 [No. 112: The raven flies with the Geese; they throw it, it sprinkles sand, creating Rose Spit], 630 [The raven lives in the clouds, the world is covered with water; the raven hits the water with its wings, the splashes turn into stones on which it rests ; rocks grow, turning into Queen Charlotte Islands].

California. Jokutz [Falcon and Crow fly over the waters, decide to create land; Falcon flies to the west, Raven to the south, agree to meet in the south, meet decide to create land; Falcon flies south, Voronremenny ethnologists will one way or another see the world; everyone carries handfuls of land, throws grains down, hills grow out of them; the Raven asks why Falcon did not create mountains bigger; he replies that the Raven had more land with him]: Gayton, Newman 1940, No. 27:31.

SE Brazil. Kaingang [water flooded the ground, Mount Krinjijinbe remained; people from the Kaingang, Kayurukre and Kame groups swam, holding smoldering smut in their teeth to keep the fire; kayyurukre and kame drowned and penetrated inside the mountain, began to live there; the kaingang climbed the mountain, some of the trees on the mountain; the sarakura birds (forest shepherdess, Aramides saracura) began to sing, brought baskets of soil, poured them on the water, to them on ducks came to help; a plain arose; those who climbed the trees became monkeys; they began to pour the ground from the east, so the rivers flow westward to Parana; kayyurukre and kame climbed to the surface from different sides mountains; Kame's legs were injured, they were swollen, now their legs were big and kayurukre's legs were small; the shaman Kaiyurukre made jaguars out of coal and ash; when he made tapirs, there was only ash left; told them to eat meat; the tapir ears were small, the tapirs were asked again, the shaman was sculpting another animal, telling them to eat leaves and grass; by morning the shaman did not have time to finish the anteater, so he had no teeth; Kaiyurukre did good animals, including bees, and Kame bad animals so that they could defeat Kaiyurukre's created: cougars, venomous snakes, wasps; when they learned that jaguars were eating people, Kaiyurukre and Kame threw a log across the river; When the jaguars stepped onto the bridge, Kame pushed the log; got scared, let the parts go; kayyurukre, kame, and kaingang set rules for exchanging marital partners]: Borba 1904:57f in Koch-Grünberg 1921, No. 77: 209-212 (Russian lane. Siebert 1972:134-137; French retelling Ploetz, Metraux 1930:212-213); sheta [rain floods the earth with a flood; man asks birds to get a new one; sapakura (ibis) and sarakura birds ( forest shepherdess) bring some clay or soil in their beaks, throw it into the water; the earth dries up; where the earth fell, mountains appeared; before the flood, the land was smooth; Ducks showed man the lake where they swam girls; he grabbed one of them, married them; Sheta are their descendants]: Borba 1904 in Koch-Grünberg 1921, No. 78:212.