L17A. Eyes on the back of the head .11.13.-.17.19.21.25.27.-.32.36.

.41.-.43.46.48.50.52.64.72.

A character or creature has an eye or second pair of eyes on the back or back. Cf. motive L17b, "mouth on the back of the head".

Hussies, Baris, Irish, Phoenicians, Mountain Arapes, Mono, (Tuvalu), Bori, Maguindanao, Ancient Greece, Slovenes, Romanians, Karachays, Baluchis, Kafirs (Kati), Eastern Sami, Chuvash, Mordovians (Erzya), central (?) Yakuts, Kuchin, Taltan, Nootka, Klamath, Modok, Pawnee, Maidu, Western Apaches, Chorti, Juruna, Matako, Nivakle.

Bantu-speaking Africa. Gusii [four girls agreed to go with the boy; one noticed that he had a second pair of eyes on the back of his head under his hair; came back from the road; the same second girl, the third; the last Nyagemi reaches her husband's village, gives birth to him a child; his brother visits her, her husband's relatives eat him; mother N. eats him; the husband complains about his throat, N. asks him to open his mouth, throws a hot pebble there, the husband dies; she locks cannibal children in the house, sets fire to the house; leaves, carrying her child; on the way they meet cannibals, the child asks them for meat, the man's ear is cut off; N. asks the river to disperse, goes dry; waters close over cannibals and pursuers; N. and the cannibal child throws into the river; comes home]: Vinogradov 1984, No. G18:145-148.

Sudan-East Africa. Bari [Kidd's girl eats a decoction of tamarind beans made for her father; he tells her to go to the forest to collect pods; she climbs a tree, and animals gather under him at nightfall; The beast with the second pair of eyes on the back of its head says someone is in the tree; the animals take turns guarding; when the Beast's turn falls asleep, the girl runs home]: Katznelson 1968:263-270.

Southern Europe. The Irish [one-legged, one-armed and one-eyed fomors raid Ireland on four ships (50 men and 150 women); their leader is Chicol (Keichel) Grichenchos (ach); his mother has huge lips hanging on the chest, eyes on the back of the head; it is equal in strength to the rest of the army; according to one version, they were defeated by Partholon, according to another version, they fought for a week and there was not a single one killed]: Kalygin 2002:117.

Western Asia. The Phoenicians [Al has four eyes in front and back, two of which are always open and two are closed]: Tsirkin 2000:145.

Melanesia. Mountain arapesh [a man saw a marsalay (spirit), he had two eyes on his forehead, two on the back of his head; m. They came to the village, killed everyone; the woman remained in the menstrual hut and her little brother, sleeping in the same place; the woman put her axe under her, it lost its strength; m left]: Mead 1940, No. 26:370-371; mono (Shortland Islands) [the woman went out of the fire, she sent her two older children for the fire, warned me to follow "our path" and not along the Matairua trail ("two eyes", {I mean, apart from the usual two, a couple more behind}); from the fork they went along the M. Trail; she saw them with her eyes behind; she followed them to their mother; she took the baby, tore off his arm and leg, put him in the basket, killed his mother, took her and the baby, cooked it, ate it; people sent the children to sing for M., lured him to a trap pit, M. fell, men killed her]: Wheeler 1926, No. 50:50.

Tibet is the Northeast of India. Bori: Elwin 1958b, No. 2 [=Elwin 1958a, No. 2:144-147; Tani is younger brother, Taki is older; Tani advises Taki to sacrifice a pig to the spirits by throwing it down the slope; takes it, he and his children fat; Tanya laughs at Taki; Taki tries to repeat the deception, but Taki heated a stone on the mountain and threw it down the slope, Taki grabbed him, burned him; Taki made a boat, said it was warmer to sleep in it at night; Tanya believed, Taki closed the lid tightly, lowered the boat down the river; Tanya asks the vines, then the reeds to stop the boat; the reeds stopped; asks the birds for help; two birds began to hammer, but broke their beaks; the bird Randang freed Tanya, he returned home; tied monkey bows and arrows to the tree, became a bird himself, started screaming that monkeys couldn't fish; they grabbed their bows but they couldn't tear them off; they got into a fight only three monkeys survived; after the fight, they had flat noses and sunken eyes; Tanya brought monkey meat and onions, his wife and children were tired; told Tanya that they were fat when he put them in a trough and poured boiling water; Taki did so, his wife and children became worms; Tanya began to swing on the vine; Taki wanted to too, saw sharp rocks under him; Tanya had a pair of eyes in front and back of her head; Taki promised to take it off from the swing if he gives him one pair; he looks at the back of his head, now Taki has two pairs of eyes; he has become Wiyu; so spirits see people, but people can't see spirits; Taki made Tanya's wife and children see fell ill and died; Tanya himself fell ill too; give him perfume as his wife Doini Aiye, daughter of Doini-Pollo (Sun-Month); after that he recovered, they have many children], 4 [=Elwin 1958a: 152; Sitking-Kedeng is the god of earth, living in the ground; he has two eyes in front, two on the back of his head, two on the side, so no one could kill him by coming unnoticed; once he married a frog, but she flaunted herself in front of the guests, he was hers kicked out]: 157-160, 166.

Taiwan - Philippines. Maguindanao [the brother of the first Sultan Buaya had a second set of eyes on the back of his head; he waited for all the women on the road; the sultan dug a well, said he was going to rush into it to escape the end of the world; the brother rushed earlier, the sultan ordered 40 men and 40 women to be followed as victims; the Sultan's brother turned into a huge crocodile in the Kabakan cave; people are there, petrified; Another cave was inhabited by people with eyes under their arms]: Eugenio 1994, No. 211:354.

The Balkans. Ancient Greece [from excerpts from the works of Ferekides of Athens (5th century BC): Hera placed her third eye on the back of Argus's head (Rgos & # 966; kalµn tn n n n kana tn n n pno & # 957; Haireta)]: Pherec. Fr. 66 Fowler; (cf. [the poem "Egamius", attributed to Hesiod, whose authorship is in fact extremely doubtful (probably in the first half of the 6th century BC): "Argus was assigned to Io's guardian, great and powerful, /Four eyes at who was watched, looking everywhere. /The goddess gave him uninterrupted strength: eyes/Sleep did not make him laugh, he was constantly on patrol" (trans. O.P. Tsybenko); the location of the eyes is not mentioned]: Hes. Fr. 230 Most = Fr. 294 M.-W.); Slovenians [Psoglavans can have only one eye in the forehead or one in the forehead and the other on the back of their heads]: Kropej 2012:201; Romanians (Bukovina) [Psoglavtsy had three eyes: one on the forehead, one on the top of the head, and the third on the back of the neck; people couldn't run away from them because the eyes on the back of their necks could see them]: Kotsui 2019:40.

Caucasus - Asia Minor. Karachays: Aliyeva 1994, No. 57 [Alaugan is the eldest of Debet's 19 sons, but is not yet married; she comes to the cave, there is an emegensha; she has one eye in her forehead, the other on the back of her head, a red bald head; he attaches to her chest, this prevents her from eating it; agrees to marry him off her daughter; at the wedding, sledges deceive emegens by squeezing fat out of the ground (they buried a wineskin of lime water), crushing powdered stones (they hid flour in her pockets); emegenes allow A. to take his wife away], 67 [Alaugan is so powerful that no woman can live with him; he comes to the emegens, shoots a plane tree in the sun; When they see this, they marry him; she devours her children; mother A. Gommahan throws an emegenshe puppy, takes the boy to the crevice of the glacier; A. finds him there, gives the name Carashahuay; K. notices that G. carries raw meat into a closed room; finds a double-headed meat there Emegensha with only one eye in her forehead; against her father's request, kills her]: 401-403, 421-423.

Iran - Central Asia. Baluchi [a newborn rips open her cattle's bellies at night; her brother has second eyes on the back of his head, he sees everything, asks her sister to be killed, they don't believe him, he leaves; he comes back, meets him on the way three blind girls sucking milk from three goats; sucks milk, they catch it; he kills buzlangs, brings magic leaves, restores girls' sight; leaves two dogs, tells them to let go if the feeder will be covered with rust; a dead city finds him at home, his sister leads his horse to drink, eats up one leg, his brother in fear agrees that he came on a three-legged horse; the same episode with the other legs, head, harness; brother asks his sister to bring water with a sieve, she tells him to hit the cup; the mouse hits instead of him, he runs away; the sister eats the mouse, chases; he throws one or the other gold supports for the hearth, the sister hesitates to pick them up; throws an antimony brush, she turns into a tree, he's at the top, she gnaws on the trunk with her teeth; he calls the dogs, they kill her sister, she says the bead in her throat should crush; with this powder he revives the dead]: Zarubin 1932, No. 4:52-60; kafirs (kati) [Diszani milked goats on the shore of the lake, she was attacked by a demon who had a second pair of eyes on his back; (var. at Morgenstierne: the demon came out of the lake in the guise of a ram); D. gave birth in the river, her son Bagisht became the master of the waters]: Robertson in Yettmar 1986:107-108.

Baltoscandia. Eastern Sami: Haruzin 1890 [the old man pulls birch bark, the Frog tells her to marry, otherwise he will stab her to death with scissors; they have sons Hewn Stump, Reindeer Yoke, daughter of Vostroeye; The frog and her children ate the old man and his old woman; she manages to tell her daughter to collect her 99 bones, hit Ostroeye, the hundredth bone will fall out, put it in a bag, run, a house will emerge from her bones; an old woman the daughter plays with the sun, embroiders a silver belt; stabs with a sleepy match Stump, Yoke, they lose their sight and hearing; the Eye has other eyes on the back of her head; The Frog and the Eye sew up an old woman's daughter in a seal's skin is thrown into the water; she ripped her skin with a knife, comes to a house with blood on the floor; she turns into a spindle; Ninas asks her to appear, promises to marry her; she opens; he says that Flashes are cutting here, gives a ball of thread, he rolls to his mother; The flashes scream, Ninas' wife is coming, but the Sun will soon take her; N.'s mother transports her across the river; at night she hangs a silver belt over the bed, N. believes that these are stars, although it's already a day; she goes out, the Sun grabs her hair, N. tries to hold her, dies; she gives birth to a daughter to the Sun; (more about the Sun's son-in-law)]: 348- 350; Czarnoluski 1962 [(artistic retelling of Kharuzin's text?) ; the wife warns her husband not to go to tear birch bark in the moonlight; Oadze jumps from his eye around his neck, tells her to marry, does not get off; her daughter Vostroeye jumps on his chest, on her son's feet Gorely Stump and Shaggy Mouse; O. and her children eat up the old man, his wife and daughter Akkaniidi; eat the old man and his wife; A. puts Hemp, Mouse to sleep, meets Sun's son Peyvalke; guard Vostroeye remains; A. does not notice that she has a third eye on the back of her head; O. and her children sewed A. in seal skin, threw them into the lake]: 50-67).

Volga - Perm. Chuvash [arçuri are imagined sitting on the edge of the forest, subduing three tall oaks; or his face is black, his ears and hair are long, two eyes in front and two in the back, three each arms and legs; reporter from D. Bolshie Toktashi, Atayev Volost, Kurmyshsky District, Simbirsk Province (now Shumerlinsky District): he saw the goblin himself with his mouth on the back of his head]: Enderov 1984:56.

Eastern Siberia. Yakuts (place of registration not specified; central ones?) [widower Oboruochchun and daughter Yuryumechchi Kuo ("beautiful moth") marries an old woman whose three daughters, in addition to their usual eyes, have three, two, one on the back of her head; Yu's cow tells her to lie in the grass, become a silver bird, fly into her left ear to wash her face, eat in her right ear; the stepmother sends her daughters to watch Yu, she puts her eyes to sleep, but the five-eye follows unnoticed, spies; the cow tells me when she will be slaughtered, take her eyes, ears, tail, hooves and skin, go east (from which two milk lakes will emerge, the sacred Aal-Luuk mas tree with eight branches, where the souls of people and animals hide, in cattle, house); marry the first man she meets; Haradyiktay Mergen comes to marry her when she comes to see her father; stepmother takes away her outfits, gives her three-eyed; seeing H., Yu in In the form of a bird, he flies up, swallows his saliva, which now gives birth to two boys, lives with them in his rich house (not with his stepmother); boys hide dishes and food, forcing their mother to say who their father is; they come to him, his wife pushes an old stove on them, they are buried; Yu comes, tells the truth, H. hangs a three-eyed eye; Yu pulls out living water as a bird, revives children]: Sivtsev, Efremov 1990:210-224.

Subarctic. Kuchin [the older brother has two wives; he ties up the younger brother, lowers the deck into the sea; the young man asks the seagull to swim in front of him, the sea calms down, brings the deck ashore; the white wolf tries to gnaw through the fetters, the marten succeeds; the young man comes to a village where there are only dogs; there is meat there, but the smell of a dog makes it impossible to eat it; he enters the dark passage, sees the feathered skin of an eagle hanging, puts it on, flies to the village; children recognize eagle skin, pierce it; adults invite him to live with them; these people are dogs below the waist; the young man stays in the house where the girl marries her, his they feed mouse legs, mice are deer for them; local people do not know what sleep means; the young man falls asleep, others think he is dead; when he wakes up, he says that he has learned the secret of sleep in a dream; throws his eyes into the fire the hare, the people around him fall asleep; these people hunt polar owls, ask him to catch owls; he shot one, she fell into the house where his wife scratched her to death; the prepared mouse fell into the fire and burned down; dogs believe that the young man is to blame, tell him to leave; he comes to a deer hunter with second eyes on the back of his head and his skis curved at both ends to walk both ways; his with a sword he killed all dog dogs; the young man puts on eagle plumage again, flies over the sea, creates an island to rest if he wants; flies to his brother, who promises him one of his wives, but the young man grabs him for his hair, lifts it, throws it into the river, he drowns; the young man comes to his two wives, one has parasites caresses, the other has mice; he cleaned the women from them, slept with both; pierced his chest with one eagle feather, she gave birth to a boy; one day he went hunting, grabbed him by the heel, dragged him into the water and drowned by a huge pike; it was his older brother]: Petitot 1886, No. 5:56-67; taltan [the cannibal giant has a second a pair of eyes on the back of his head; a person puts roots in the giant's trap; he pulls, the roots hit him on the head; without satisfying his hunger, he tries all parts of his body, but each is sensitive; he it seems that the testicles don't have them; it cuts them off and bakes them, dies]: Teit 1921a, No. 70:349-350.

The coast is the Plateau. Klamath [four Goose Brothers die; fifth eye on both sides of his head; he kills the ogre]: Barker 1963, No. 6:61-65; modoc [brother and sister are orphans; brother's arrow gets stuck on tree; sister asks who she is; when he says, Wife pulls out an arrow, becomes his wife; he puts a comb on the bear's skin, if he falls, he is killed; raising orphans the old woman turns into a Bear, pursues, kills her grandson; the sister-wife places hot stones in the stream, the Bear swallows them with her mouth and ass, dies; taking the baby born, the sister-wife rushes into a fire; Kmukamts snatches a boy, puts it in his knee, asks his daughter to open an abscess, she pulls out a boy, his name is Aissik; he grows up and has five wives (chicken, crane, bird, fish , duck, tick); K. wants Stokoa (fish) for himself; puts his eyes on the back of his head, tells the spark to fall on S., sees her big vulva; asks A. to undress, climb the tree to the eagle's nest; tells the tree grow up; puts on clothes A., comes to S.; two butterfly sisters bring A. food and clothes, put them down to the ground in their basket; K.'s heart hangs around his neck; his grandson throws his heart into the fire; K. dies rises to the sky, covers it with resin so that it floods A. and his family; A. hides everyone under stones; the Hen sticks out his nose, the Crane sticks out his head; the nose turns black, the resin scraped off the resin from the head of Crane A., it remains bald]: Curtis 1976 (13): 210-212.

California. Maidu [the old woman put a bead in the basket, told her husband not to make a fire in the house; he lit it, the ground shook, a boy was standing by the fire; grew up, he has a second pair of eyes under his shoulder blades on his back; hears the sounds of dancing in the distance, enters the house, poisonous insects stuck to him, he rolled them into a ball, threw them into the fire, some of them escaped, the current ones come from them; he killed dangerous woodpeckers, chased a deer, who the sky, he climbed the rainbow, killed a deer, threw it on the ground, came back; the Coyote takes the guise of different people, runs ahead, every time asks the young man to share berries with him; he hides wasps in a ball of berries The coyote screams, runs away; the raccoon lived with the young man's grandmother, the young man invited him to travel; while his grandson was climbing the rock, the grandfather thought he was gone, burned himself in the fire, only one leg was left, the young man revived him; they enter to the house of the North-Wind Old Man, the grandfather slides, breaks his head; SSV offers to play with his eyes and hearts; the young man loses his grandfather's eyes and heart; comes out supposedly out of need; asks dust why lost, the dust tells the Sun to ask, the Sun says that CERV has a hole from one armpit to the other, through which it passes the dice; the Sun, with its heat, brings the fog to a vitreous state, the hole is clogged, the young man plays everything back, the grandfather comes to life; both return home, leaving the CER with one eye; the old woman on the rock offers to straighten the young man's back; with his second eyes he sees that she is going to crush him with a stone, dodges; she confesses that she killed all his brothers; he makes her lie down, kills her with a stone, returns to her grandmother; she and his grandfather die, he leaves]: Dixon 1902, No. 4:59-65.

The Great Southwest. Western Apache (White Mountain) [girl gives birth to twins from the Sun; they come to her father, get him a "blue sword" to fight monsters; an ogre with eyes on the back of her head kills people; brothers they cut off his head, it grew; killed him, hitting him in the heart; another ogre with eyes on the back of his head picks up people with a hooked stick; brothers send hot rain and hail on him for the fourth time they cut off the head]: Goddard 1919:110-113.

Mesoamerica Chorty [Cannibals live overseas with a second pair of eyes on the back of their heads]: Fought 1972, No. 25:355.

Eastern Amazon. Juruna: Villas Boas, Villas Boas 1973:143-146 [Uaiçá finds a tree that falls asleep; in a dream he gains knowledge; so several times; Sinaá tells him in a dream that it is enough; he becomes a shaman; he has a second pair of eyes on the back of his head; he sees his wife with her lover; watching them with his eyes on the back of his head, he comes up unnoticed, making his wife unable to leave her lover; she jumps into the river, dragging him with them, both turn into dolphins; his wife's brother and her other relatives try to kill him by coming up behind with a club; W. sees everything with his eyes on the back of his head, goes through the ground; next time he they lure her to the rock; but the club's blow splits it, W. hides again; says he will not return and teach Zhurun what he was going to do], 232-236 [Sinaá's father is a giant jaguar; like S. himself, he sees a pair of eyes on the back of his head; he conceived S. by sticking his penis into the hole where S.'s mother urinated; see motive J56 below.]

Bolivia - Guaporé. Takana [a worm mistress gives birth to a child with a worm body and a human head; a second mouth on the back of her head]: Hissink, Hahn 1961, No. 184:311

Chaco. Matako [the hawk Karancho has eyes on the back of his head; he sees a tree ready to bend down and grab it; hits a tree with a stick, killing it]: Wilbert, Simoneau 1982a, No. 169:269; nivacle [ The Cuckoo and the Mockingbird compete to see who will sing all night; the Mockingbird falls asleep, the Cuckoo sings, but actually sleeps, only his lungs sing; at dawn, the Cuckoo put the sleeping Mockingbird's leg into the fire; Ovenbird killed and fried Mockingbird; he came to life, became an ogre; sharpened his burnt leg, killed people with it; Fitsakajich called him to look for honey; climbed a tree; with eyes on the back of his head, saw Mockingbird about to hit him, broke off a branch; he shredded his sharp leg against the tree, people killed him; he became a mockingbird]: Wilbert, Simoneau 1987b, No. 184:449-430.