K183. Which fish is it swallowed in? .20.42.62.
The character rips the bellies of aquatic creatures or looks down their throats to find the swallowed person or part of their body.
Tuvalu, eyak, carijona.
Micronesia-Polynesia. Tuvalu: Kennedy 1931 (Waitupu) [Punga and his younger brother Sema argue over who will have more wives; P. proposes to all women and gets consent; S. has to marry a covered with ulcers from head to toe Matinitini-ungakoa; P.'s wives laugh at her; she goes to her mother, who tells her to swim in the pond, she becomes beautiful in a red skirt; P.'s wives are shamed; give birth to 10 sons, wife S. gives birth to Tafaki and Kalisilisi; S. dies; T. and K. defeat P.'s sons in throwing darts; they go to look for their father; K. gets tired, falls behind; T. takes out his eyes, tells the fish not to eat them; sees black, then white, brown clouds; S. in the latter; T. learns about this when he sees his father's dental print on coconut; T. came back, did not find K.'s eyes, found them in two species of fish; since then, one has big eyes, the other has been caught on bait from flying fish eyes; K. became a fish after drinking salt water; T. also drank, became matapa fish (called tafaki on Niutao Island)]: 174-177; Koch 1966 (Niutao Atoll): 83-86 [Tangatakatoa - son crab; met a girl Falineolangi, they got married, they have sons Punga and Sena; F. warned T. not to be angry while fishing, even if the fish bite off the forest, but T. broke the ban; immediately birds flew in, forming a ladder, F. climbed it to heaven; T. died of grief; the brothers grew up, P. went to the village to look for a wife, did not find it; S. met an ugly and dirty girl in the last hut, promised to marry her; told her to come when he heard a faint scream; first P. shouted loudly, all the beauties of the village came running, P. married her; S. shouted softly, only an ugly girl came; her mother bought her in five lagoons and she became beautiful; S. realized that P. was going to kill him out of envy; warned his wife that if the waves turned red, he was dead; the widow gave birth to boys Kalisisi and Tofaki; P. killed everyone wives and took the wife of his murdered brother; the brothers grew up, sailed in a boat on the sea, T. died of thirst, K. tied his body to a log so that the fish would not eat it; the boat docked at the island of the dead; black and white clouds they say that they did not see S., red says that K. recognizes his father among the other dead by a dark mole on his head, tells him to grab him from behind and not let him go until S. stops resisting; S. found and T., but he has no eyes; S. told all the fish to open their mouths, saw his brother's eyes in the moray eel's mouth; the moray eel agreed to return them for promising that S. would make her big eyes; S. put T.'s eyes in, he came to life; everything three returned home, P. ran unknown where], 89-90 [the wife died during childbirth with the child; the husband smeared himself with fish giblets, lay down, the spirit came behind his soul at night; the man admitted that he was alive, but The spirit agreed to take him to the dead to see his wife; the perfume smelled, did not fully believe that the man was dead; he said he fell from the tree, but had not yet found the corpse, so he was not wearing burial clothes; the spirits agreed to wait until morning and then eat them; the man convinced them that morning was far away, the friendly spirit covered the sky with a cloud, and when it began to dawn, the perfume quickly disappeared; only stones remained in the square, coconut shells, pieces of wood; he threw everything into the fire, there was a lot of noise; then the man lived peacefully].
NW Coast. Eyak [the wife is angry with her husband, who goes to marry the daughter of Calm Weather's daughter; marries the youngest; the eldest buys it from her sister for herself in exchange for dentium shells; with this new wife, the man returns to the first; violates the ban on talking to her, the new wife returns to her father; the husband follows her, drowns; the father sends the slave to find the drowned; he rips open bellies to several fish, finds human bones in Dog Fish's stomach; the kneecap is missing, the father-in-law cannot revive it; then he puts his slave's kneecap on him, and he makes a kneecap out shells; lively marries Good Weather's youngest daughter]: Birket-Smith, Laguna 1938, No. 17:300-304 (=Johnson 1978:44-46; translated into Romanova 1938, No. 12:54-56)
NW Amazon. Carijona [Tukučimobi (The Sun) spilled water to make a lake; balsa wood carved two catfish (or whales); chips turned into all types of fish; grew a Hura crepitans tree, during the dry season, fish feed on its fruits; he turned into a fruit himself, let the fish swallow itself, went out through the gills; so he caught five; his brother Month tries to repeat the trick, swallowed by sabalo fish; T. rips open the bellies of many fish, finds and revives his brother; he decides to harpoon the two largest fish; T. tells the tench to be tied to a mighty tree; the month binds it to the common; the fish tear out the tree, swim to form the Caqueta River; the male swam along one coast, the female along the other, so there are many islands; T. throws stones trying to detain fish; this is how the rapids turned out; the fish dragged the Month into the sea, his swallowed by a sea turtle; T. catches the leg bone of the Month with a net; other bones scattered across the sky, became stars; both brothers went to heaven]: Schindler 1979, No. 1:48-54.