L58. A stingy man. (.11.) .20.37.43.48.52.55.61.65.
A person denies food to his immediate family or spouse; as punishment, he or his food changes its nature.
(Wed. Bantu-speaking Africa. Scythe [when hungry, Kenkebe's wife sends him to her father for food; he gives him 7 bags of corn {and, obviously, meat too}, sends his daughters to carry them; before reaching home, K. sends the girls back, hides grain in a cave, bakes cakes; brings home wild onions, which they eat when they are hungry; gives a piece of meat, says she cut it off from her leg; the wife cuts off her; the children say that meat and Father's cakes are delicious, but his mother is not; his wife watches him, lowers a stone by the cave, he rolls after K. everywhere, stops only at his house; his wife tells K. not to fool around anymore; he catches an antelope eland; you need a calf to milk her; K. eats it, dresses one of her dogs in calf skin (the other refused); one day she howls, the antelope understands the deception, chases K., his wife screams him to jump on a stone, an antelope breaks against a stone; they fresh the carcass, K. sends his son to cannibals for fire; tells them not to take meat from them; the boy takes it, gives it to the old woman, she cooks meat, the cannibals smell, chase as a boy; everyone hides; cannibals find and eat K. and the old woman in the house, they do not notice the boy, take K.'s wife to their place; she prepares beer for them, sets fire to the house where they drink, the cannibals burn down, a woman is saved]: Radin 1952, No. 79:292-295).
Micronesia-Polynesia. Satavan [mother asks son and daughter not to start a family until she dies; the son is still getting married; the wife is unhappy that he gives everything to his mother; when he tells his mother to take fish, she brings fish together lizard fish; mother prepares tarot, witches, gives it to her son; he eats, turns into a lizard; his wife runs away from it, rushes into the sea, both drown]: Mitchell 1973, No. 56:160-161; (cf. Vedau [wife stays at home with a small child; husband, returning from the site, promises to bring her food every time, does not bring her; she cooks pebbles, eats broth, a bunch of pebbles grow near the house; binds her to his digging sticks at his feet, makes wings out of coconut leaves, runs away into the forest, turns into a cassowary; her husband throws pebbles after her in vain; women are not allowed to eat casual meat]: Ker 1910:90-92); Pukapuka (Southern Tonga) [Tatamanu catches turtles, secretly eats liver, fat and a piece of meat, releases animals; when his wife gives birth, the children turn out to be turtles; T. confesses his greed, tells him to be buried not in his ancestral cemetery, but at a distance and in another grave of his turtle children]: Beaglehole, Beaglehole 1938.
Amur-Sakhalin. Udege people [Kote comes from hunting empty-handed; his wife watches him, sees him roasting hazel grouse; hits him in his eyes with a stone; at home asks what happened to his eyes, drives him away; he turns into a bird with red eyes]: Arseniev 1995 (2): 173 (quail in Lebedeva et al. 1996, No. 116:483).
(Wed. Subarctic. Atna: Billum 1979 [Wolverine marries one of Lisa's three daughters; brings beavers but does not share with his wife's relatives, insults them; Fox kills a deer (moose); Wolverine is full, falls asleep, Fox killed him by pouring boiling fat on his stomach; 5 Wolverines came, asked the victim's son where his father was crying; the fox, his wife and daughters climbed a tree, raised the stairs, shot 20 Wolverines with an bow]: 6-8; Tansy 1982 [Wolverine marries, gets beavers, does not share meat with his wife's aunt and niece; she secretly ties a rope to pieces of meat, her aunt pulls them to her home at night; Wolverine himself and his son everyone eats a whole beaver; his wife's brother kills a deer (moose), Wolverine hears bones being crushed in his home, but they say it's an old bone; in the morning Wolverine discovers that his wife's relatives eat meat, brings them dead beavers for the first time; after eating, he falls asleep; he is killed with hot fat on his stomach; buried; his relatives come, his young son learns that Wolverine has been killed; they kill Wolverine's wife and all her relatives]: 36-41).
The coast is the Plateau. Clallam [the fisherman lies to his family that his hand is swollen; eats all the fish alone; the wife sends his eldest son to follow his father; the father puts him on a log, lets him into the sea; the young man survives, returns rich, arranges potlach; turns his father into stone on it]: Gunther 1925:136-137; upper chehalis [Brother Spear catches fish and eats alone, and his sister collects fern rhizomes and, when she brings them, the brother comes to eat them; realizing that she is deceived, the sister leaves; where the sky meets the ground, she marries Salmon, she has a child; the Spear comes there; the old man calls the elk, kills, takes them out the skin carcass with the legs, tells the elk to leave, it (i.e. the skin with the legs) leaves; the sister's sister's sister Spear's sister's sister (her name is the End of the World) gives him a fraction of the berries, but there are many of them, you can't eat them all; at dusk salmon people enter the house to dance, everyone has an object in their hands for catching or cooking fish; so 5 types of salmon; The End of the World killed Sister's child Spears, cooked it, ordered not to throw it away bones; then the bones were covered with a handkerchief, the child came to life; like this every day; on the fifth day, the Spear hid his cheek bone with meat; the child could not be revived, he died; his sister told him to leave; he came to Thunder's house, that allowed the Spear to take his daughter; his father-in-law teaches the Spear to become Thunder, he fails, he is afraid that he will be killed, leaves; marries in another house, cannot get up in the morning, a board sticks to his back; the old woman separates Her, telling her to leave, are the Resin People; the Spear comes to the old man, he warns: when you meet another old man, you have to climb a dry spruce tree, its bark will fall on him, otherwise he will eat it; that old man is killed by bark, His spear burned; the giant offers his daughter, asks for help to defeat another who breaks his tops; the giants began to fight, the Spear killed both; comes to a blind old woman, blows in her eyes, she sees the light; warned to shoot first when the Puma meets; the Spear killed, burned the Puma; Wild Rhubarb screams that they will kill the Spear but do not recognize him; he turned them into wild rhubarb; his sister is waiting for the Spear at home; he turned into the flower that blooms in May, the children play with it; the sister has also become something]: Adamson 1934, No. 45:87-94; lower chinook [the girl does not know that her brother is secretly catching and eating salmon, feeding his roots; when he learns, turns him into a hummingbird; says he will no longer eat fish]: Boas 1894a, No. 17:188-189; katlamet [the girl's father rejects her suitors; passes her off as the leader of the Swans; she discovers that he secretly eats salmon, feeds her with crushed salmon bones; she returns to her parents, sings; first her relatives catch a lot of smelt, then the water is covered with ice; Swans they starve, they come to a woman; she gives them only smelt that has burned to the coals; they turn into swans, fly away, now eat reeds and roots]: Boas 1901a, No. 4:34-38; tillamook [woman quit a broken spear tip under the bed, he turned into her younger brother; she digs roots, and he harpoons the fish and secretly eats it, does not let it go to his sister; Blue Jay tells her about it; she offered her brother to look in his head, he fell asleep; she turned the roots into snakes, put it on him, left by herself; he woke up, drove away the snakes, went to look for his sister; she came to the house of the five Otter Brothers, became their wife; brother came, she gave him food, he ate everything, died, turned into a broken spear tip again]: Jacobs, Jacobs 1959, No. 24:88-90.
California. Yurok [wife and children eat only acorns; one day the wife pretends to be sleeping, sees her husband pulling dried salmon, oysters, etc. from under the stone; they quarrel, their children turn into birds and they fly away; the wife says that her husband will become the Long-Eared Owl, and she will become a basket that serves food to wealthy people (more precisely, a weaved duck, for which fir roots are used)]: Spott, Kroeber 1942, No. 30:239; viyot [The owl secretly eats meat, the family is starving; the wife finds its supplies, eats and feeds the children; turns her husband into an owl]: Reichard 1925, No. 17:171-173 (very similar text in Teeter 1964, No. 3:137-139); Karok [for wife and children; wife learns the truth, turns it into an appropriate bird, predicts what he will eat from now on]: Kroeber, Gifford 1980, No. A2 and H2 [Kingfisher eats salmon, brings children only tails; will eat mud; wife and children turn into plants whose roots or shoots they weave baskets (ferns, pine, hazel)], III25 [Long-eared Owl eats eels and salmon; will eat mice], III34 [Dipper eats salmon, brings only tails to children; will eat mud]: 237-238, 247-248; chumache [Coyote has sixteen sons; he eats all supplies alone, gets sick from overeating; sends sons one by one to announce his imminent death; the youngest declares him "loving"; Coyote is satisfied; geese come to mourn him; Coyote says you have to lower your heads to do this ; hits them with a club; only half escapes; Coyote eats all the meat alone again; his wife Frog closes the water sources; Coyote goes up the gorge to look for water; The frog suddenly lets water out; the Coyote draws a zigzag trying to escape (that's why Mission Creek winds), but is carried away by water into the sea; turns into laxux fish; each of the sons also experiences metamorphosis; the elder Veckum becomes bright lonely star]: Blackburn 1975, No. 31:204-207
(Wed. Big Pool. Northern payutes [Coyote secretly eats pignons prepared by his sister; pretends to weave nets and chew fibers, puts nuts in his mouth himself; his sister's children followed him, found him there is his excrement on the rock, there are remnants of nuts in them; he slipped on his own crap, went to the river in the morning to wash, but his ears were dirty, the children noticed; his sister caught him taking her nuts; he died of shame; his mother told him to shoot him in the nose with an arrow to check; he jumped up, ran away; his sister and children left; he then left too]: Kelly 1938, No. 13:403-404).
Mesoamerica Nahuatl (Mecayapan) [in ancient times, a son refused to give corn to his poor mother; the grains turned into chapulines and ate it]: Hernández Bautista 1974:1-10; Horcasitas 1978:183; chatino [son denies food to his mother; he, his wife and her relatives turn into locusts]: Bartolomé 1979, No. 15.4:29; juice [mother asked her son for corn, he promised to give it tomorrow, let the father come to the field; did not give it; the third time the father expressed the wish that all the corn would become locusts, and so it happened; the son told his wife about the incident, regretted his stinginess; the locusts ate everything corn in the neighborhood]: Sulvarán López 2007:163-164; Jacalteka [an old woman comes to her son; he tells his wife to hide chicken soup; mother leaves hungry; instead of chicken, the couple is found in a cauldron rattlesnake (snake origin)]: Montejo 1991:39-40; chol, chorti, kakchikel, mom [the rich man refuses to give anything to his widowed mother, she curses him]: Peñ alosa 1996, No. 3710:94; chol [after the young man took his wife, he drove his mother away; she caused various prawns to rain from the sky, they ate all the grain supplies; the son and daughter-in-law starved to death]: Garcí ; a 1988:64; pipili [son denies food to his mother; he, his wife and her relatives become worms that eat corn after the locusts have eaten them]: Schultze Jena in Bierhorst 1990:98.
The Northern Andes. Guajiro [man denies food to his wife and children, turns into a vulture]: Wilbert, Simoneau 1986 (1), No. 85:220-226
Western Amazon. Napo [a man eats meat himself, his mother-in-law answers every time, he did not kill anything; once he ate so much venison that he died; turned into a toad screaming in tree hollows]: Ortíz de Villalba 1989, No. 29:58.
The Central Andes. Quechua (dep. San Martin): Park 1981:63-64 [lazy man pretends to work in the field, asks his wife to warn him whenever she brings him food; wife watches him, sees him turn into a fly ( the origin of flies of a certain species); at night, a fly lays eggs in the mouth of a sleeping woman, worms eat it, she dies], 64-65 [as in (63-64); the husband turns into an edible caterpillar, the wife does not die]; dep. Ancash [a man does not feed his mother; his legs turn into snakes, he is burned]: Arguedas, Isquirdo Rios 1947 (Okros, Prov. Bolognesi): 128-129; Yauri Montero 1961 (prov. Corongo) [potato worms emerge from his remains]: 124; dol. Mantaro (dep. Junin) [does not give food to his wife; he is devoured by a condenado (dead man)]: Arguedas 1953:139-140.