Yu.E. Berezkin, E.N. Duvakin

Thematic classification and distribution of folklore and mythological motifs by area

Analytical catalogue

Introduction
Bibliography
Ethnicities and habitats

I23. Slamming door, K736. .15.29.39.40.42.43.

The

door of the house opens and slams by itself, pushing people in or out. See motive I22.

Southern Europe. Sardinians [the young man goes in search of the Beauty of the World; his father let him go; he went into the palace; there the old man explains how to get to the beauty: to praise the gate that closes and then open, as well as steps and doors; the young man comes to the king; he promises a daughter if the young man gets (him) the Beauty of the World; the beauty of the world in the third of the oranges; she stays with the young man because he immediately gave it's her fault; refuses the king and stays with the young man; the king dies of grief]: Aprile 2000:273.

Caucasus - Asia Minor. Georgians (east: Dusheti district) [the king grew old, sent his eldest son to the Qajas for the water of immortality; he came there with an army, the whole army became petrified; the same with his middle brother; the youngest with two comrades come to the old man, the old man sends to his older brother, the eldest to the oldest; the oldest teaches to put a scrap under a door that opens and closes, to slip on horseback; only a tail the horse was cut off; the young man met with the sleeping woman, left her a letter, took away three apples and the water of immortality; gives water to two older men to drink, and the youngest after he revives the petrified ones; the elders the brothers put the youngest to sleep, changed the water and apples; the king wants to execute him, the young man asks the servants only to cut off his little finger and bury his dog; the queen woke up, read the letter, told the king to send her someone who took away the water of immortality; the king sends his older brothers, she imprisoned them for bread and water; the king dug up the grave - there are the remains of a dog; ordered to look for a young man with his little finger cut off, he was found, sent to Queen, he correctly answers what was on the way; the queen calls him the husband and father of her son; the young man received both kingdoms, pardoned his brothers]: Kurdovanidze 1988 (2), No. 78:46-49.

SV Asia. Chukchi [a young man comes to a rich house to marry the bride; the door closes, crushing those entering; the young man slips through quickly, only a piece of his clothes is cut off]: Bogoras 1902:55:666.

The Arctic. Northern Alaska Inupiate: Curtis 1976 (2) [a young man rejects brides; takes a poor girl but she can sew well; his boat sticks to the land of perfume; the stone opens and closes the entrance to the house; the young man slips; lives with a spirit woman; she sends him back with a load of furs, etc.; he lives with his former wife and with a spirit woman who has settled with them; rich, becomes a shaman]: 181-183; Hall 1975, No. PM4 (Noatak) [Kupkuk travels, meets bad people, he has two dogs - brown bears; rocks hanging above the door fall on incoming people; K. pretends to come in, jumps back, rocks fall, he kills the owner with arrows; marries in another village; the wife warns that her people have a tyrichik, a long dragon with many legs, sharp horns along his back, tentacles with which he sends people into his mouth; K. kills him with a spear; people bring his mother T.; it is not clear whether this is the woman who revives him, or another one; K. throws the villagers into the mouth, cannot escape, rushes himself; it is light inside, many dead are swallowed; K. cuts the bone on his stomach, t., he exhales; K. comes out through his nose; the wolverine returns to his wife; she leaves the glove, K. turns into a little miñnuk in the little finger, becomes human; lives with his wife and her parents]: 117-125; netsilic [shaman hunts seals by the ice-hole; The month goes down, invites him to his sleigh, brings him to heaven in the village the dead; the walls of the passage to the house of the Month converge and diverge like a chewing mouth; the shaman slips; in another room there is a Sun woman sitting with a child in her arms, her lamp is hot; the shaman returns home]); Baffin's Land [people are constantly tearing the boy's clothes; his grandmother teaches him to become a seal, to lure hunters into the open sea; one Kiviuk escapes; sails to an old woman; a human head in her house teaches him to lay a flat stone; at night an old woman tries to pierce K. with her sharp tail, breaks it; the door in her house closes when K. tries to leave; he slips through, just the edge the clothes are cut off; K. comes to two women; the young husband has a piece of wood; brings her seals when she lets him go to sea; K. marries her, the piece of wood is jealous but powerless; the woman's mother kills her taking out her lice; puts on her skin; K. learns the change when he sees that his wife is unable to carry the seal he has caught; sails away in a boat, returns home]: Boas 1901b, No. 15:182-185.

NW Coast. Tsimshian [a young man comes to marry the chief's daughter; the door in the house opens and closes, crushing the grooms; the young man sticks a piece of ice into her, she stops]; quakiutl: Boas 1895, No. XV.1 (nimpkish) [Gyi'i goes to marry a girl whose father kills suitors; sails in a self-propelled boat with feathers and wings of seagulls; sails to his aunt, who gives him three stone tiles tie them to the legs and buttocks; gives shells; G. gives these shells to a person who also helped with advice; he leaves them on the shore, since then there are shells to feed people; gave another person, then Same, but these are inedible shells; he sailed to four blind duck women, steals the roots they bake; each thinks the other has taken it, they fight; they smell it; G. spits in their eyes restoring sight; they tell him that a girl and her father are about to come; G. ties an octopus to her face to look like an old man; the girl takes him as a slave, her brother doubts; in the boat, the girl speaks an imaginary slave who should marry G.; G. throws off an octopus, appears in his form; the door to the girl's father's house slams shut, crushing the incoming ones; G. makes a false move and then slips through; father-in-law offers to sit down, G. ties his stones, they break the tips that killed other suitors; G. throws shells into the fire, the fire goes out; under the guise of salmon meat and berries, the father-in-law gives sisiutl meat and milk; G. pretends to eat, hides pieces under her clothes; gets a wife who gave birth in the morning; father-in-law calls to split the trunk, deliberately drops the wedge, asks for it; sees blood, but it turns out that G. jumped out and waits for his father-in-law in the boat; when they sail, G. throws coniferous needles and pieces of wood into the water, they turn into fish and dolphins, jump on his father-in-law, he dies; at the shore, G. revives him, his father-in-law admits defeat]: 135-137 (=2002:307-310); 1910, No. 16 [Kankilah marries the youngest of four daughters, Dvananalis; father-in-law asks to get a hammer that has fallen into a split log, takes out the spacers; blood splashes; K. is unharmed, brings a hammer; turns a rotten deck into a dolphin, who splashes water on his father-in-law, his face swells; K. and his wife return to their younger brother; he died; wife He jumps him off with living water, he comes to life], 35 [Kanekelak goes to marry Dzavadalis's daughter; meets blind geese and ducks, a blind woman; spits in their eyes, they see the light, give him instructions; he breaks the vaginal teeth of D.'s youngest daughter with his finger, marries her; slips through the door, which usually pinches grooms; thrown on thorns, turns into an ermine; sent to split (?) wood; D. takes alder juice for blood, fluff for his son-in-law's brains; K. returns with firewood; his father-in-law is carried in a boat, causes a storm, his father-in-law dies, K. revives him]: 195-199, 455-462; chickpea [young man rises to heaven; rubs the eyes of blind women with his penis, making them sighted; they teach him to overcome obstacles; the door jambs to the house of the Sun are jaws that close and then diverge; young man slips through the door; marries the daughter of the Sun]; bellacula: Boas 1898:73-83 [gutting salmon, the chief's wife finds a boy in one, raises her son, both grow up right away; Salmon brother tells him to scream as he approaches his hut by the shore; the human brother forgets, sees half-alive salmon on the floor; then a boat arrives, the man sails with it; they sail through the countries of Smelt, Herring, Candlefish; in Salmon country is jumped into a house whose door slams shut every now and then; Salmon eat seaweed, offer a boy and girl to a man; thrown into the water, they turn into salmon; the owners tell them to save bones and giblets, throw into the water; children are reborn, but the boy is limping, the girl has no eye; an eye and bone are found, thrown into the water, the children recover; Salmon's daughter does not tell her to go to bed with her; the man pokes stone, breaks vaginal teeth; she gives birth to a son and daughter; in the form of salmon, everyone returns to the human world; caught, man and wife take the form of human beings; man teaches how to throw fish bones into water; wife and children return to the salmon; a man rises to the sky with a pen; a woman gives him a bubble with a cold wind; the Sun 1) locks the person who comes in a hot cave, he opens a bubble around the icicle; 2) tells daughters to become mountain sheep, gives man arrows with tips made of coal; rams drive a man to the abyss, he descends with a feather, kills rams with his arrows; the Sun mourns children, man revives them; gets two eldest daughters of the Sun as his wife; 3) The sun tells them to check the top, a log falls on his son-in-law, he swims out with salmon; 4) The sun drops a hammer into the water, tells them to get it, covers water with ice, the son-in-law slips out the crack with a fish; 5) The sun tells you to get a bird (a partridge or similar to it); the son-in-law tells it to peck out his father-in-law's eyes; he admits defeat, his son-in-law restores his sight; a year later he goes home to earth, his wife goes down with him in the sun's rays (these are her father's eyelashes)], 103-108 [the son of a man named Nutsxoasenem loses all his property and his wife to his son Senxalolela; people leave the loser alone, only a friend secretly tells me where the fire is hidden; the snow extinguishes the fire; the woman tells the abandoned person to follow her, lets eat a strip of meat from her chest, restoring his strength; they approach the rock, the door to it opens and then slams shut; the young man slips; inside is a holiday, these people are Wolves; he marries the Wolf who saved him; she says he is not must smoke on her blanket; at first he does not know that this is a euphemism for infidelity; kills many mountain sheep, Wolves bring meat; he calls him to play ball, his wife says that her former husband was killed in playing time; The wolf is ready to gnaw the man's throat, but he throws the ball; no longer participates in the game; falls in love with a girl at the source; promises his wife that this is the last time; they go to live with his parents; his former wife meets him; the she-wolf takes her son, leaves; he looks for her, becoming a wolf; Bobrikha tells him to go under water; there he reaches the country of the Wolves; the son rejoices in his father, the wife believes that he loves her; he stays with Wolves].

The coast is the Plateau. Chilcotin [Lendixchuks kills Groundhog; comes to his mother with his sons; she cries, the stone door of the house begins to slam shut; L. sticks his rod Ptox into the crack, together slips out with his sons; when he takes out the rod, the door cuts off his little finger; since then, his little finger is shorter than the rest of his fingers]: Farrand 1900, No. 1:12; comox [the old man owns fire, the door of his house opens and closes, killing incoming people; The deer puts a chip in his hair, jumps into the house when the door opens, sits by the fire to dry; the sliver lights up, it runs away, brings people fire]: Boas 1895, No. 8:80-81; snohomish [the cannibal carries the Loon man; he runs to Thunder and Flint; the door in Flint's house opens and slams shut all the time, cuts the cannibal into pieces]; upper chehalis [ The Bear and the Puma are the wives of Woodpecker, each with five sons; the Bear collects ripe blackberries, the Puma collects red blackberries; invites the Bear to look for lizards in each other's heads; the Puma has lizards in her hair, she eats them; on the fourth day she sucks the Bear's blood, on the fifth day she bites off her head; the Bear's children see Puma roasting their mother's breasts; the Woodpecker gives them strong arrows, and the Puma's children; the cubs are killed with their own with arrows, the Puma's children; the woodpecker sends the Cubs to their grandmother, tells them to follow the path where the paint is red; they follow the other, get to the Wolf, run away, come to their grandmother; she tells the Puma to enter the house backwards a slamming door cuts the Puma in half; the corpse is burned]: Adamson 1934, No. 26:43-46; tillamook [the house doors open and slam as fast as the woman inside the house speaks; the hero runs in, grabs meat, jumps out; a closed door touches his buttocks a little].