L15g1. One family member kills another, knowing his secret. .13.15.27.

A person knows a secret on which the life of his loved one (husband, son, wife) depends, and after a quarrel he commits an act that is of little significance to an outside observer, but leads to the immediate death of another.

Darasa, Italians (Tyrol), Ancient Greece.

Sudan - East Africa. Darasa [a man went with others to war, but declined to take part in the battle; is afraid to return out of shame; God advises him either to commit suicide or to return to his wife, who has borne him a son; the man returns; the son grows up, goes with his father to war, the father is weak, returns home; before dying, makes a wooden staff, tells him to keep it; the son returns, marries; dying, the mother gives the staff to her daughter-in-law; the young husband fell out of love with his wife, she threw the staff into the fire; when it burned out, the husband died]: Jensen 1936, no. 34: 524-525.

Southern Europe. Italians (South Tyrol) [a poor young man and a girl from a rich family fell in love, but the groom's parents refused; the lovers went into the forest; the girl felt that she did not have the strength to return; the young man went further, promising to return; the girl was surrounded by witches; when the young man returned, they boiled her in a cauldron, began to eat her, putting the bones in the skin; the young man hid a rib; the witch made a rib from an elm tree and said: if anyone tells the girl that she has a rib from an elm tree, she will die; the girl came to life; she became ill, her parents allowed her to marry the young man; the wife became angry and quarrelsome; one day the husband could not stand it any longer and said that she had a rib from an elm tree; she died immediately]: Schneller 1861: 21-22.

The Balkans. Ancient Greece : Apollod., I, VIII, 1-3 [Meleager was the son of Oeneus, king of Elis; his real father was Ares. The Fates told his mother Althea: the child would die when the log now in the hearth burned out. Althea snatched the brand and hid it. In the autumn, Oeneus brought the first fruits as a sacrifice to all the gods, forgetting Artemis. She sent a boar to the outskirts of Calydon. Oeneus invited all the heroes of Hellas to take part in the hunt for it. The first to wound the boar was a girl, Atalanta. Meleager finished it off and gave the trophy skin to Atalanta. Althea's brothers were outraged that the trophy was given to a woman and not to them. (Since Meleager himself refused it, they are his closest relatives.) Meleager killed them. [Upon learning this, Althaea burned the brand, and Meleager died] (Apollodorus 1972: 12-13); Ant. Lib. [“Metamorphoses” of Antoninus Liberalis (2nd century), with a reference to the lost poem “Metamorphoses” of Nicander of Colophon (2nd century BC): “Oeneus, son of Portheus and grandson of Ares, reigned in Calydon, and by Althaea, daughter of Thestios, he had sons Meleager, Phereas, Ageleus, Toxeas, Clymenes, Periphantus, and the daughters of Gorgus, Eurymedes, Deianira, and Melanippe. When Oeneus was once sacrificing the first fruits on behalf of the whole country, he forgot Artemis, and in her anger she sent a wild boar, which ravaged the land and killed many. Then Meleager and the sons of Thestios gathered the valiant heroes from <all> Hellas to fight against the boar. They came and killed it. Meleager, dividing its flesh among the heroes, took the head and skin as an honorable spoil. But Artemis was even more angry because they killed her sacred boar and stirred up discord among them. Namely, the sons of Thestios and the rest of the Curetes demanded the skin of the boar, saying that half of the spoils belonged to them. Meleager took the skin by force and killed the sons of Thestios. For this reason, war broke out between the Curetes and the Calydonians, but Meleager did not go out to fight, blaming his mother for cursing him for the death of her brothers. When the Curetes were about to capture the city, Cleopatra, the wife of Meleager, persuaded him to help the Calydonians; having rebelled against the army of the Curetes, he himself dies, because his mother burned the brand given to her by the Moirai . For they had spun such a fate for him that he would live as long as the brand remained intact” (translated by V.N. Yarkho)]: II; Hyginus 2000, No. 171 [when Oeneus and Mars lay with Althaea, the daughter of Thestius, on the same night and Meleager was born to them, the Fates Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos suddenly appeared in the palace; they sang his fate: Clotho said that he would be noble, Lachesis that he would be brave, and Atropos that he would live until the brand was burned. When his mother Althaea heard this, she jumped up from her bed, extinguished the brand, and buried it, fatal, in the middle of the palace, so that it would not fall into the fire]: 206; Greeks : Uther 2004(2), no. 1187: 68.