N25. The path is a needle long. 29.32.
It issaid that characters spend a long time (days, weeks, months, years) on the road, but end up walking a journey as long as a grain, needle, or other small object.
Kumyks, Turks, Bashkirs.
Caucasus - Asia Minor. Kumyki: Ganiyeva 2011a, No. 137 (recorded by A. Akavova, s. Kostek, Khasavyurt District, 1941) ["They go {bowl, rooster, goby, awl, bar} a month, go a year, they have come a needle long"; from the commentary to the text: "The typical humorous formula of many Kumyk fairy tales, especially characteristic of storyteller A. Akavova"]: 321, 356; Ganiyeva 2011b, No. 53 (recorded by A. Akavova, the place is not specified) ["I drove {Tabulda} for a month, I drove for a year, I drove a needle long, finally reached one palace, stopped in front of the gate"]: 485; Turks: Dmitriev 1967, No. 1 ["You never know It walks, how much does it walk, does it go at night, does it go in the hills, does it go out of the blue, and now he looks back: he went only with a bag needle"]; No. 9 [episode of the beginning: "Then we got up, walked, walked, walked, walked, walked, walked, walked, you never know how long they walked, did they walk through the mountains, along the valleys, whether they walked out of the blue, six months - autumn - they walked, look! - the place with barley grain passed; they got up again, walked, walked, walked for a long time, - Padishah Chinimachin's gardens appeared, - they entered one"]: 46, 79; Stebleva 1986, No. 12 ["And Keloglan left without looking back. He walked, walked, along the valleys, through the mountains... It's been six months and one autumn... Look, he turned back, but all he went was barley grain... This is how he kept walking and noticing that something was glowing on the top of one mountain"]; No. 39 ["The next day, the uncle suggested to the middle daughter of the padishah: "Get ready, I'll take you today!" The girl agreed. You never know how much they drove, through valleys, plains, hills... We looked back, and all we did was drive the roads with barley grain. They finally arrived at that palace"]: 35; Kúnos 1901 (Anatolia) ["He went on and on and on, he went a short distance and he went a long distance, six months was he crossing a field; but once as he looked over his shoulder, he saw that for all his walking he walked no further than a barley-stalk reaches"]: 103.
Volga - Perm. Bashkirs: Barag 1988, No. 22 (Dyurtyuli, 1930s) ["He walked, walked, walked for a month, walked for a year, looked around - he walked a needle-length distance. And yet I finally got to a city"]; No. 25 (Burzyansky District of Bashkiria, 1939) ["They went by for a month, they walked for a year, they say, a needle-long path. They say that a lot of land was measured with our feet, and now we found ourselves near a house standing alone in the forest"]; No. 39 (Pervolotsky District, Orenburg Region, 1960) ["It took a month, a year went by, and he went a long way. I got to some house"]; [from the commentary to text No. 25: "... They say that a needle-length path is a traditional stylistic formula for ideas about space. Variants: a path as long as an axe;... as long as a fetter,... as long as a rolling pin"]: 146, 172, 271, 421.