Yu.E. Berezkin, E.N. Duvakin

Thematic classification and distribution of folklore and mythological motifs by area

Analytical catalogue translated by Jon F White

Introduction
Bibliography
Ethnicities and habitats

M123. A raven marries a goose. 40.-.43.

A bird of prey or scavenger (crow, owl, hawk, coyote) marries (or tries to do so) with a partner who (or whose brothers) are geese or other waterfowl. The marriage gets upset or fails.

Central Yupik (Unaligmiut and others) [Raven and Goose], Chugach [Raven and Duck], Northern Alaska Inupiate [Raven and Duck], McKenzie Estuary [Owl and Duck], Copper [Owl and Goose], caribou [Owl and Goose], netsilic [Raven and Goose], igloolik [Raven and Two Geese], Arctic [Raven and Two Geese], West Greenland [Raven and Goose], Labrador Eskimos [Hawk and Goose], Kuchin [Raven and Goose] Duck], Khan [Raven and Goose], Atna [Raven and Goose], Tanaina [Raven and Goose], Tanana [Raven and Goose], Upper Tanana [Raven and Swan], Tlingits [Raven and Goose], Khaida [Raven and Goose] absent)], curdalen [Coyote], Western sachaptine [Coyote and Sister Geese], ne perse [Coyote and Sister Geese], Kutene [Coyote and Sister Geese].

The Arctic. Central Yupik: Andrew 2007 [The raven marries the Black Goose; gives the bride a necklace, since then these geese have bright specks around their necks; the Raven is a liar, his wife left him]: 411; Ivanoff Brown 1987 (Norton Bay Unaligmiut) [The raven marries a waterfowl; everyone flies south in autumn, decides to accompany them for a while, turns back, falls into the water, ends up in the whale's belly; there is a lamp inside, he pokes it with a knife, it goes out; the whale's corpse is washed ashore, the Raven pecks a hole, goes out, eats to his heart's content]: 79-82; Nelson 1899 (Norton Bay Unaligmiut) [The Raven marries Goose; in the fall flies south with the Geese; when they see that he is tired, the Raven lies that he has an arrowhead stuck in his heart; the geese do not believe, the Raven falls into the water, has difficulty getting to the shore; asks Keith to open its mouth flies inside; inside, the beauty warns not to touch her lamp; the beauty is the soul, the lamp is the heart of a whale; the raven touches the lamp, the whale dies; the raven swims inside the carcass to the shore; forgets inside the whale fire drill; when people fresh a whale and find a drill, the Raven says it's a bad sign; people run away, the Raven takes all the meat for himself; looks for a jar of fat, meets Norka, they build porridge; the Raven; sends Nork to invite marine life to the festival; Seals come; the Raven says he should improve their eyesight by touching their eyes with his rod; glues their eyelids with resin; forgets about the seal at the doorway; he raises the alarm when another seal cries trying to open his eyes; the raven kills guests with a stick one at a time, only the seal in the doorway is saved]: 462-467; stranger [The raven gathers marry Duck; he was white, asked to make him as handsome as she was; Duck agreed, but then the kayak appeared, the Duck said he would not be able to finish the coloring; the Raven replied that let her just smear it with charcoal; The duck did it, dived into the water]: Birket-Smith 1953:64; Northern Alaska Inupiate (Noatak) [The Raven marries Duck, flies south with ducks in the fall; asks his wife and mother-in-law for his wife and mother-in-law carry; they get tired, throw it away; he descends into the whale's breath; it's light inside; his voice tells him not to eat dripping fat; he eats; when the fat runs out, the light goes out; it was fat from the whale's heart; the carcass nails to the shore , people cut it, Raven comes out; says that this whale has no giblets; he is silent that he ate them]: Hall 1975, No. PM 117:347-348; McKenzie's estuary [Owl wants to be the husband of a long-tailed duck; she ridicules and rejects him; {the lyrics consist of two songs; the first duck describes a good hunter husband, the second rejects an owl; probably an allusion to an unrecorded story}]: Ostermann 1942:74; copper [Owl marries Goose; in autumn Geese do not tell her to fly with them, because she will not be able to rest on the water at sea; but Owl does not listen; (the informant does not remember further)]: Rasmussen 1932:215-216; caribou [Owl marries Goose; Geese fly south in autumn; contrary to warning, Owl flies with them; Geese rest on the water, Owl flies above them; tired, sits on their backs; geese fly away, Owl sinks]: Rasmussen 1930b: 87-88; netsilic [Raven marries Goose; Geese fly south in autumn; contrary to warning, the Raven flies with them; geese rest, sitting on the water, the Raven hovers above them; charter, sits on his wife's back; he spoils her feathers, her brothers advise her to fly, the Raven stays drowning]: Rasmussen 1931:400-401; igloolik: Kroeber 1899, No. 13 (Smith Sound) [Drozdiha (snowbird), widowed, cries, the Raven offers himself as a husband, is refused; comes to the Geese going south, asks to take him with him, flies with them; Geese go down to sleep on the water, the Raven does not know how to swim, asks for permission sleep on Geese's backs; they get tired, throw him off, the Raven drowns]: 173-174; Rasmussen 1930a [The raven takes two Geese as his wife; they fly to their country in autumn; the Raven decides to fly with them; first hovers while they they rest, sit on the water, then sit on their wives; he spoils their feathers, their brothers advise them to take off, the Raven stays drowning]: 280-281; igloolik ("the whole Arctic") [people killed Raven's wife; Sparrow, Ptarmigan refuses him, marries two Geese, flies south with geese, gets tired, asks his wives to sit on the water, starts copulating with them; seeing the other geese leave, the wives leave the Raven; he drowns, turns into thousands of little black snails at the bottom]: Millman 2004:171-172; Polar Eskimos: Holtved 1951, No. 60 [The raven married two Geese; flies south with them in the fall; tries to sleep in in the air, then on wives; Geese fly away, the Raven falls, turns into many sea crows (pterypods that form plankton or silt)]: 92 (trans. Menovshchikov 1985, No. 197:408); Kroeber 1899, No. 13 (hall. Smith) [The Raven asks the Geese to take it with them; they sleep on the water, the Raven lies on them, they throw it off, he drowns]: 174; Labrador Eskimos [Hawk marries Goose; flies with Geese in autumn through sea; geese sleep on the water, it can't, it sinks]: Nungak, Arima 1969, No. 19:45; West Greenland [The raven marries Goose, although she warns that he is unlikely to be able to fly south with geese in autumn; In autumn, the geese sat down to rest before going across the sea, but the Raven continued to fly to show that he was tireless; a goose tried to support him in the sea, but he drowned]: Ostermann 1939:118-120.

Subarctic. Khan [The Raven marries Goose; Geese fly south in autumn; the Raven goes with them, gets tired, comes back; now crows live in the north all year round]: Smelcer 1992:123; Kuchin: McGary 1984 [The raven dresses up, paints himself with his crap, looks handsome, sails to marry Duck, gets a wife, takes him away; the rain washes away the paint, the Duck nails his clothes to the boat, says she you need to go ashore; the Raven ties a rope to it, she cuts it off, runs away; the Raven tells others he's married but cooks his own dried fish]: 298-303; McKennan 1965 [Beautiful Duck's parents refuse to all grooms; the Raven dresses up, paints his clothes as if they were covered with beads; Ducks feed him well in the house; he sees a dog in the corner, asks him to be strangled before he starts eating; at night he leaves at home and pecks out the dog's eyes, his outfit was injured in the rain; in the morning everyone says that someone with three toes pecked out his eyes; everyone takes off the mocassins, the Raven quickly puts them back on, but the boy manages to notice his three-toed paw; the Raven replies that this is a lie; takes his wife; the paint from the Raven's suit is finally washed off; the wife quietly ties him to the boat, asking him to let her go ashore; The Raven ties a rope to her, she ties her to a tree, runs away, returns to her parents]: 92-93; atna [The raven marries a Goose; geese gather south in autumn; the raven can hardly keep up with them, the parking lots do not find suitable food, it weakens; the wife and her relatives alternately carry it on their backs; when they fly to the sea, they convince the Raven to come back; he agrees]: Smelcer 1997:63-64; tanana [ The raven marries a Goose; in autumn, the Geese fly south, the Raven with them; gets tired; first the Geese support him, then they abandon him; he makes an island out of a fin; (then the storyline shifts to other topics)]: De Laguna 1995, No. 8:111-112; Tanaina: Kalifornsky 1991 [The raven marries a Goose; tries to fly south with them in autumn, gets tired, carried first, then left, he tells the rock to rise out of the waters, sits on it; flies on, asks the whale to give him a ride, the whale hides under water; the other whale agrees; the raven climbs into his breath, bites from the inside, says he pecks parasites, tells him to swim out With all his might, the whale finds himself on the coastal shallows, dies; when he sees people, the Raven flies away; returns in human form, says that eating a dead whale is dangerous; people spy on the Raven in the form a crow bites a whale, drives a crow away, cuts a whale]: 93-97 (Ruppert, Bernet 2001:321-322); Vaudrin 1969 [Chulien (the raven) marries a Goose (species of geese with black heads, necks and legs are his descendants); In autumn, he also wants to fly south; first, geese help him, then get tired and leave him; he falls, tells the rock to be under him; Beluga whale offers to get into her breath, takes him to the shore; C. eats her fat, lies that the coast is still far away; the white whale jumps ashore, C. throws stones into her breath, she dies; people appear, he flies out, returns in human form; people say that something black has flown out Beluga whales; C. says that his relatives ate beluga whales under similar circumstances and all died; gets the foreman's daughter, eats beluga whales at night; people find fat on his mustache, beat him to deaths, thrown into the trash; the old woman cuts off his beak; Magpies defecate at C., he comes to life; creates enemies; covering his face with his hand, shouts that he must run and throw everything; finds a beak, hurriedly applies, now he's crooked]: 35-40; upper tanana: Brean 1975 [The raven marries Swans; flies with swans in the fall, his wife throws him off, he tells him to have a fin under the sea, turns it into island; leaves on the shore of the eye to see if the boat comes; the eye raises the alarm when it sees a fin; next time people take their eyes away; the raven catches up with them, takes their eyes, puts them back crooked; therefore crows have different eyes]: 63-67; McKennan 1959 [The raven marries Swans; flies south with her across the sea; gets tired, the swans leave him; he sits on a rock in the middle of the sea; grabs a big fish baby; promises return if the fish pulls stones from the bottom; makes them an island; tells them to bring moss, returns the child to the fish; moss grows, Alaska appears]: 190.

NW coast. The Tlingits [The Raven marries a Goose, flies south with geese; he doesn't like their food, he kills the Goose, is abandoned by geese]: Boas 1916, No. 179:578; Haida [The raven is flying with Geese; they throw it, he sprinkles sand, creating Rose Spit; [there seems to be a text similar to Tlingit}]: Boas 1916, No. 112:575.

The coast is the Plateau. Western sachaptin [Coyote hears a noise like a duck is flying, something hits him in the eye, he has a hard time ripping it off, throwing it into the river (var.: the object consistently hits him in the jaw, face, forehead, mouth) ; cooks it for the fifth time and eats it; the object turns out to be a female vulva, the Coyote loses teeth; when going hunting, five Goose Brothers tell his sister to marry the first man who comes; the Coyote turns into handsome, forgets that he is toothless, cannot bite off meat; falls asleep, the girl sees that he has no teeth, she inserts mountain ram teeth in him; Coyote says that his teeth grow in his sleep; marries; The brothers are reluctant to hunt him, tell him not to make noise, he flies, he screams, everyone falls; next time they throw him off; when he falls, he screams, I am a feather! , but at the last moment he accidentally screams, Sook! , breaks; the wife puts her heart in the little finger, kills the brothers with arrows, the youngest two remain; the youngest tells the eldest to shoot his sister in the little finger, he kills her; both came to Cold's house, his daughter - Winter, they're naked; they went to Summer's house, married his daughters; Winter and her daughters came to fight, but Summer ruined the blanket, everything melted]: Farrand, Meyer 1917, No. 3:144-148; ne perse [Coyote turns into a handsome young man, comes to the sister of five hunting brothers; she gives him meat, he does not eat; falls asleep, she sees that he has no teeth, inserts mountain sheep teeth in him; the younger brother recognizes the Coyote, others do not they believe; the Geese brothers carried the Coyote by air, told him not to sing, he sings, they threw him into the river, told her sister that her husband was dead; she killed two older brothers with arrows, the younger two managed to kill her; In winter, the brothers are starving, they came to the Winter House, who has five daughters, the youngest Hlp-HLp; the other sisters brought food, but the father and youngest ate everything themselves; Warm Weather and his daughter live in another house, they fed the brothers; the brothers married five daughters of Warm Weather; the spears of Winter melted]: Spinden 1908, No. 12:149-152 (about the same in Phinney 1934:331); curdalen [Coyote came to a woman, she gave him meat; he has no teeth, he says he is tired, he will eat later; he sleeps, she notices that he has no teeth, inserts deer teeth in him; the woman's four brothers come, they are good hunters; the Coyote is going to go with them; they are Geese; they pick him up, flying across the lake; on the way back they tell him to remain silent, he screams, ooh, they leave him; his sister does not cook for them at home; finds a drowned Coyote, brings his skin and tail; directs his tail at his brothers, three fall dead; the youngest did not look, survived; brothers come to life; find a sister in a tree, she is a Squirrel; two tell her not to clap, to be silent; she doesn't listen; two others shot her]: Reichard 1947, No. 13:130-132; kutene [a hungry Coyote comes into the house; gets closer to the girl as her Goose Brothers come in and sit down; marries her; goes hunting with her brothers; on the way back they throw him off when people on the ground start shooting at them; Coyote marries Tresca; imitates her children when they steal bait from hooks; the fox catches him, he turns into a Coyote again]: Dyer MS in Reichard 1947:131.