I22b1. Birds die on the edge of our world.

.14.17.27.31.34.-.37.39.40.68.

Some of the migratory birds (shamans in the form of birds) die on the border of our world.

Arabs of Egypt, Arabic written tradition, Ancient Greece, Sami (western and eastern?), Swedes, Altaians, Teleuts, Mansi, Northern (?) Khanty, Northern Selkups, Tundra Nenets, Kets, Dolgans, Western Yakuts, Nanais, Nivkhs, Chukchi, Reindeer (?) Koryaks, Asian Eskimos, Central Yupik, Yurok, Paresi.

North Africa. The Arabs of Egypt [every year all the herons assemble on a mountain now called Gebel-et-ter; they thrust their beaks into a crevice in turn until they catch the beak of one of the birds; it remains and dies, the others fly away; this story is repeated by several Arab authors]: Maspero 1910: 10.

Western Asia. Arabic written tradition (al-Idrisi, 12th century) [In a mountain range there is a crevice to which on a certain day of the year myriads of birds gather; each one sticks its head into it and then flies back to the other side; when the crevice closes, one of the birds remains trapped and dies; the rest return after a year; this was well known in Egypt and is written about in many books]: Stang 1982: 27-28.

Balkans. Ancient Greece [Athen.4,325-6: "The Pleiades, like doves, bring ambrosia to Zeus, but one of them perishes each time, passing the Plankta, and Zeus replaces it with a new one]: Grimm 1883: 728.

Baltoscandia. Sami (western and eastern?): Napolskikh 1992 [barbmo – 'edge', i.e. apparently the place where the sky and earth meet]: 5; Toivonen 1937 [in winter, migratory birds fly to Loddaši œnnám, 'Bird Country', also known as barbmo-riika; there, little men hunt them, and do not break the bones of the eaten birds, but put them in a heap; two men visited them and fulfilled their request not to break the bones; the mistress of the migratory birds is Barbmo-akka; a crane leads the birds back from the warm country, reports to B. how many birds were born and how many died; having received the report, B. decides how many birds to keep for herself and how many to release into the world]: 100-103; Swedes [the swans were arguing about who would fly further; one flock refused to stop, even having reached the border of our world; but they froze, because it is very cold there; the flashes are when you can see how these swans beat their wings]: Balzamo 2011, No. 12: 22.

Southern Siberia - Mongolia. Altaians ["Maadai-Kara", verses 3088-3097, 3102-3107; two black rocks achilar-jabylar ("opening-closing") - the gate between heaven and earth; they crush many flying birds, running animals; a hero gallops through on a horse, only the horse's tail is cut off by the rocks ]: Surazakov 1982: 113; Teleuts : Dyrenkova 1949 [the sky at certain intervals of time either descends or rises; the shaman must have time to pass with the victim through the base of the sky, otherwise the firmament will crush him; at this passage lie piles of bones of animals and birds crushed here; the land beyond the base of the sky is called chyn j är , "the true land"]: 137; Funk 2005 [(after Anokhin 1912); Jöö-Kan (T'öö-Kan) lives on the land beyond the horizon and beyond empty space; on the way there the shaman passes the golden gates, which open and close themselves when Kama passes; beyond the gates of heaven is a field strewn with the dead bones of animals and birds; further on the steppe, lakes, a crack in the earth where "Mother of the world Enkei-Kan with two shining eyes" lives]: 167.

Western Siberia. Mansi , Western (i.e. Northern?) Khanty [migratory birds fly to the land of morti-mā (Mansi), morta-mex (Khanty); it is separated by a curtain in the form of the edge of the sky; the wind sways it, only the most agile birds can slip under it; an old man and an old woman feed on the birds that are killed by the edge of the sky; the bones are thrown into the sea of ​​living water near their house; new birds are reborn from the bones; when they themselves grow old, they bathe and become young]: Karjalainen 1927: 26 (trans. Karjalainen 1996: 25); Napolskikh 1992: 8; Northern Mansi : Lukina 1990, no. 105 [see motif A4; where the sky hangs down, a rock with a hole; covered with an iron overhang; Peace-susne-humjumps through it like a pike, but the old man catches him in an iron net; tries to kill, but only beats himself and his wife, M. escapes; flies as a goose to the southern region; the Southern old woman killed and cooked two teals, M. ate them; she threw the bones into a lake with living water, the teals flew away; M. receives the daughter of the Southern old man and old woman; migratory geese and ducks are her dowry; putting on the skins of M. - a goose, she - a swan, they flew into our world through a rock with a hole], 106 (zap. A. Balandin, 1937, the village of Vezhakory on the Ob River) [water is everywhere; an old man and an old woman are in the house; an iron loon flew in, dived, surfaced, its neck burst, blood appeared under its neck, a piece of earth in its beak, stuck it between the logs of the house, flew away; the same second loon, dives three times, blood on its neck, stuck a piece of earth between the logs; the earth began to grow; the old man comes out three times, each time after three days; the third time there is dry land everywhere; the old man sends a white raven to fly around the earth three times; it returns after 3, 5, 7 days; the third time a black one, pecked a dead man; the old man told him from now on not to hunt animals, only fish or take blood for himself, when a man kills an animal and takes meat for himself; a tree grew in the backyard; the old man brought it with roots and branches, began to plane, cut his hand, the old woman sucked out the blood, told him to take the tree back; the old woman is gone at night, in the morning the old man finds her in a small house, she gives birth to a son there, they call her Taryg-pesh-nimalya-sov; T. hunts; every time he sees the devil in the ice hole; then he sees his reflection, he has a beard, he needs a wife; he found a house, got a horse from under the barn floor, washed it from manure, his mother gave him chain mail, a saber, a whip and a saddle; T. gallops to look for a wife, pierces an aspen leaf with an arrow; an old woman is in the house, she says that T. pierced a piece of her bed; that Num-Torum, his father, lowered his wife from the sky, and Paraparseh stole her; she gave the skins of a pike, a hawk, a mammoth, a hare and scissors; T. meets people grazing horses; people: we graze P.'s horses; T.: answer: we graze T.'s horses, otherwise the Fire King riding behind me will burn you with fire; the same - cowherds; T. arrives at P.'s house, he is not there, the woman tells him to hide in the moss; the winged P. descends onto the larch; the woman assures him that P. is dead, P. does not believe, flies away; T. pursues, wearing a hawk's skin; P. became an iron loon in the sea, T. - a pike; P. is a hare, T. - another hare; P. is a teal duck, T. shot him with an arrow, burned him in a fire; the horse carried him across the sky through Torum's fire, told him to hide in his nostril for this time; Kul is on the way, swallows everyone, the horse tells him to put on a mammoth skin, cut off Kul's nose and ears with scissors; Kul: now I will die; 30 aspens from one root grow in girth, strangle people with branches; the horse has disappeared, T. thinks about that old woman, she appears, breaks aspen trees, says that an eternal era of human life will come, but with these aspen trees this would be impossible; the horse orders to wrap him in birch bark, to grab the granddaughter of Kirp-nyolp-ekva; K. chases, grabs the horse, but only tears off the birch bark, cuts his hands on the saber; T. comes to his wife, with him, grabbing the horse's leg, is K.'s daughter; T. now has two wives, all the wealth of P.; in heaven T.comes to the old man, in the sled is a girl-Sun; T. offers to take her himself; looks down, sees people quarrelling, thought that he would kill them all, people die; the old man orders to resurrect them; he resurrected; the same in another place, where in the sled is a girl-Moon (or are these girls the daughters of the Sun and the Moon?); with two wives T. comes to the place where the earth and sky have come together; there is a hole, near it an old man, waiting for ducks, waiting for geese; T. tries to fly like a hawk, falls, dives into the lake like a pike, brings ducks to the old woman and the old man; the old woman cooks them, does not order the bones to be broken, puts the bones in the lake with living water, the ducks fly out alive; T. sleeps with their daughter; T. returned to earth with all his wives, there are now 5 wives; then gets another wife]: 258-272, 272-290;Kets [ Tom äm lives where the sky meets the earth in the south, near the "hole in the earth" through which migratory birds fly one by one into the warm sunny world; if they fly a little higher, they are scorched by heavenly fire, reminiscent of the northern lights; T. guards the hole and feeds on the best ducks and other birds]: Donner 1933: 85-86 (cited in Toivonen 1937: 108); Northern Selkups [(data from G.N. and E.D. Prokofiev); Ylynta kota - an old woman from the heavenly house, who plucks ducks and throws duck feathers to the ground, which turn into ducks again; lives in an iron house in a seven-pit swamp at the sources of the shamanic rivers, the Kedrovka River and the Orlina River; the house is guarded by half-men, half-bears; nearby live “heavenly birds” ducks and blacksmiths who forge iron pendants for the shaman’s costume]: Tuchkova 2004: 322-323; tundra Nenets [Numgymboy is a “star” god, one of the sons of the god Num, the ruler of one of the sacred lands that form the sky; the name can be interpreted as “Star Door” ( numgy-poy ); on the Lower Ob, his spirit-double lives in a roofless hut; birds flying over the hut scream and fall dead, which is why mountains of bird bones are piled up around it]: Golovnev 2004: 312-313.

Eastern Siberia. Dolgans [shamans turned into geese and flew through a hole in the sky; an old woman, the mistress of the universe, sat near the hole and lay in wait for the geese to fly by; one of the shamans dies because he thought badly of her; she orders that shamans not come this way anymore]: Popov 1937: 55 (retold in Anisimov 1959: 21); Western Yakuts (Bulun village, 1st Botulinsky nasleg, Zhigansky ulus, entry from 1924) [in the land of Khoro, where birds winter, there is an old woman who hunts birds with an iron spear; she supposedly captures a goose she likes with her spear; degie is an iron rod with a hook, used to capture fish; this old woman has a stone hat; She lives where heaven and earth come together]: Ksenofontov 1977, No. 184: 161.

Amur - Sakhalin. Nanai [far beyond the sea live small people Chakha-naini (chakha - "elbow"); the Chinese emperor sent a flock of geese to exterminate them, but this was unsuccessful, since the CHN, having bows and arrows in the form of needles, repel the attack of the geese, and the war continues to this day; in the summer the geese return to the Chinese emperor to rest; in China there is a large wall with gates that are opened for the passage of animals and birds several times a year; depending on the time of year, flocks crowd near the wall, waiting to be allowed through; the first to fly through the gates when passage is allowed is the imperial goose Elali (large goose, Anser Cinereus); once the gatekeeper did not carry out the order to open them in time, as a result of which a huge number of animals and birds perished; the keeper's head was cut off]: Shimkevich 1897: 137; Nivkh [a man reaches a place where the sky rises and falls evenly above the earth; the wind rushes into the resulting opening, swans fly there in the autumn; some are crushed, an old woman living nearby feeds on them; a man left home young, returned old]: Kreinovich 1929: 79-80 (German retelling in Toivonen 1937: 109).

NE Asia. Chukchi : Bogoras 1902: 1 [the passage in the form of crushed rocks is called the "ultimate boundary of heaven" or the "ultimate boundary of birds"]: 608; Bogoras 1939 [(=Bogoras 1907: 332); at the four corners of the world the rocks of heaven meet the rocks of the earth, sometimes striking them, sometimes rising; on the way to their world, migratory birds fly through the opening gap; those flying behind are crushed; the movement of the rocks is created by the wind; beyond the edge of heaven is the place from which all fur animals and wild deer came]: 42; Belikov 1982 [the wife disappears, Rorat sails in a boat to the crushed rocks between which birds fly; further on is the land of Kele; R. catches a stone ball, wounds his opponent with it; jumps from a height, gets the stone thrown into the sea, wins the race; gets his wife back]: 46-51; Koryaks [(probably according to Jochelson 1905 or 1908); in winter, geese fly away to another world through a small hole in the sky or through a crack between rocks; they must fly by in silence; as soon as a goose calls, the crack slams shut and the crushed goose falls dead; in the other world, the Goose (or Bird) Mother awaits the geese; the seagulls also have an Old Woman Mother far away in the sky; if she flew to earth, she would block out the sun and the sky; she asks the seagulls arriving for the winter how they lived on earth and why their beaks turned black; the seagulls answer that they lived poorly, pecking only coals; if the seagulls tell the truth, the Old Woman Mother will fly to earth and eat all the berries; The old gulls are afraid that the younger ones will blab, so they stay with them for the first few years to winter]: Toivonen 1937: 110-111.

Arctic. Asian Eskimos (Sireniki) [girls and boys play wives and husbands, one of them didn't get a husband, she took an old whale skull; the skull dragged her into the water; her eight brothers swim after her, following the birds; the birds overtake them twice; on the third day the brothers build a boat, which overtakes the fastest birds - the harlequins; the birds fly into the passage between the crushed rocks, the rocks bite them with their points, become covered in the blood of the birds; only the beams at the stern of the boat are damaged; in the whales' dwelling the old man suggests a competition; having turned off the light, he throws a whale blade, but the sister has previously hidden the brothers in a hole; the sister creates seagulls from pieces of a jacket of one of the brothers, sewn from seagull skins; while the seagulls attack the old man, the brothers take their sister away; the whale chases their boat; the woman successively takes off articles of her clothing, throws them to the whale; each time it plays with them, falls behind, stops chasing; the woman gives birth to a whale calf; it regularly brings whales to the people; people from another village kill it]: Menovshchikov 1985, no. 99: 238-241; central Yupik [migratory birds, in particular geese, fly south between two crowded mountains; weak birds die]: Gillham 1943: 1-16.

Southern Amazonia. Paresi [see motif F18A; women who have stolen sacred flutes reach a place where the edge of the sky hits the earth; shamans, turning into birds, fly there to another world ; one man has had intercourse with his wife before this, and is crushed]: Pereira 1986, no. 13: 231.