M187C. Race: Cancer/Crab – participant.
.11.15.-.17.19.20.24.26.-.29.31.32.
When racing, the crayfish (crab) defeats its faster opponent.
Tongan, Italians (Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Abruzzo), Irish, Germans (Pomerania, Brandenburg), Arameans, Reef Islands, Fijians, Yap, Ponape, Niue, Mentawai, Bajau, Koreans, Serbs (Bosnia), Bulgarians, Greeks (Lesbos), Russians (Tverskaya, Tambovskaya), Ukrainians (Eastern Slovakia, Galicia(?), Hutsulshchyna), Poles, Kashubians, Armenians, Turks, Danes, Lithuanians, Latvians, Lutsi, Estonians, Finns,
Bantu-speaking Africa. Tonga [a crab and a hare agreed to run a race; the hare fell asleep, but the crab, albeit slowly, reached its goal]: Fell 1925, no. 7: 21ff in Klipple 1992: 390.
Southern Europe. Italians : Dähnhardt 1912: 79 (Emilia-Romagna: 15th century, Piacenza) [a crayfish and a fox agree to run a race; crayfish: I give you a head start equal to the length of your body, tell me when you will begin; clings to the fox's tail, the fox admits defeat], 79-80 (Tuscany: Pistoia) [a wolf speaks disdainfully of a crayfish, they agree to run a race; the wolf: We will begin when I wave my tail; the crayfish clings to the wolf's tail, the wolf is exhausted, the crayfish is not tired, the wolf admits defeat]; Italians (Abruzzo) [the crayfish clings to the fox's tail and wins the race]: Del Monte Tammaro 1971, no. 1: 5.
Western Europe. Irish [fox and crab race; crab clings to fox's tail and wins]: Jackson 1936: 285; Germans (13th c.) [fox despises crayfish's slowness; they agree to race; crayfish clings to fox's tail, fox admits defeat]: Dähnhardt 1912: 80; Germans : Dähnhardt 1912: 80 (Brandenburg) [fox and crayfish race, crayfish clings to fox's tail, wins], 80-81 (Pomerania) [fox and crayfish (var.: hedgehog) race, crayfish clings to fox's tail, wins].
Western Asia. Arameans [a crab and a fox together gathered and threshed wheat; fox: whoever runs to the threshing floor first gets everything; the crab clings to the fox's tail, takes the wheat, the fox gets the straw]: Dähnhardt 1912: 78.
Melanesia. Reef Islands [a needlefish laughs at a hermit crab: it can barely crawl; the latter proposes to race; it places other hermit crabs in the race; when the needlefish calls out to its rival, it always hears a response from the one in front; it dies of fatigue, was washed ashore, and the hermit crabs eat it]: Nӕss 2006: 29–31; Fijians [a crane and a crab decided to race; the crane flew away, and the crab placed other crabs in the race; the crane fell into the sea from fatigue and drowned]: Dähnhardt 1912: 64.
Micronesia – Polynesia. Yap [a needlefish argues with a hermit crab about which is faster; the latter places another crab at the end of the race; the fish swims to the finish line, but the hermit crab is already there; when it swims back, it dies of fatigue]: Mitchell 1973, no. 11: 39-41; Ponape [a needlefish and a crab argue about which swims faster; they decide to swim to Kusaie Island; the crab places newt mollusks along the course; when the needlefish calls out to the crab along the way, the crab answers for it each time; the needlefish admits defeat]: Hambruch 1927, no. 44 in Permyakov 1971: 34-35; (cf. Palau , Kusaie , Truk , Kapingamarangi [“Race won by deception: relative helpers” is known throughout most of Micronesia with minor variations]: Mitchell 1973: 247); Niue : Polinskaya 1986, no. 143 [a plover and a hermit crab agreed that whoever reaches it first would become the master of the sea and the coastal lands; the plover fell asleep, and the hermit crab reached it; since then the plovers have been standing on the coastal rocks, they have no other land], 144 [the plover calls the hermit crab lazy, who suggests running from the forest to the reef; the plover meets a rat, a starling, a dog, and invites them to watch an amusing spectacle; when they come to the shore, the crayfish is already there, telling the plover not to go to the reef, but to settle on the coastal rocks]: 291, 291-293.
Malaysia – Indonesia. Mentawai [brown monkey lures other monkeys into a trap; races a crab, which puts out many crabs in its place]: Loeb 1929, no. 14: 184–88; bajau [hermit crab challenges dwarf deer (plandok) to a race; places similar relatives at a distance; plandok, out of breath, finds itself outpaced, dies from the strain]: Evans 1913: 475–6.
China – Korea. Koreans [a fox went down to the sea, saw that a crab had many legs, suggested that they race; each time she saw the crab right behind her, because it had grabbed her tail; the fox left, considering herself defeated – after all, the crab had many legs]: Choi 1979, No. 35: 15.
Balkans. Greeks (Lesbos) [a crayfish and a fox work a field together, gather wheat; decide to give it to whoever gets to the threshing floor first; the crayfish clings to the fox's tail, gets the wheat]: Georgeakis, Pineau 1894: 95-96 (=Dähnhardt 1912: 79); Bulgarians [a fox challenges a hedgehog (crayfish) to a race; he clings to her tail and wins]: Daskalova-Perkovska et al. 1994, no. 275: 85-86; Serbs (Bosnia) [a crayfish and a fox agree to run a race; the crayfish clings to the fox's tail, the fox falls dead from exhaustion]: Dähnhardt 1912: 79.
Central Europe. Russians (Tverskaya, Kalinin, 1986) [the fox invited the crayfish to run a race; the crayfish latched onto her tail; at the finish line he tells the fox that he has been waiting for her for a long time]: archive of the Tver Regional Studies and Ethnography Center, sent by V.E. Dobrovolskaya; Russians (Tambovskaya) [the only known Russian version; the fox and the crayfish agreed to run a race; the crayfish latched onto the fox's tail, at the finish line he says that he has been waiting for her]: Afanasyev 1958(1), no. 35:52; Ukrainians (Hutsulshchyna) [seeing the hedgehog, the hare says that with such small and crooked legs he will not live long; hedgehog: I bet you a flask of vodka that I can overtake you; puts his wife at the end of the race and teaches her to say, when the hare comes running: I'm already here]: Berezovsky 1979, no. 98: 143-144; Ukrainians : Berezovsky 1979, no. 453 (location of recording unknown) [the fox makes fun of the crayfish's slowness, he suggests they race, clings to the fox's tail, she reaches it - the crayfish is nearby; she doesn't laugh at him anymore], 454 (Hutsulshchyna) [the fox to the crayfish: weren't you sent on Easter Friday, and you only arrived on Saturday? The crayfish: let's see who runs faster; clings to the crayfish's tail in your face; every time the fox turns around, the crayfish says he's here; the fox has admitted defeat], 455 (Eastern Slovakia) [the fox is about to eat the crayfish; the crayfish: overtake me first; the fox jumped, and the crayfish grabbed hold of its tail; he says that he has been there for a long time; the fox did not eat him]: 460, 460, 460-461 (among the parallels there is a reference to Dzvinochok. A Chasopys for Ukrainian Children. Lviv. Part 10. Page 159; since it was published in Lviv, Galicia is more likely than other regions); Poles , Kashubians [the fox and the crayfish compete in a race; the crayfish grabs hold of the fox's tail or places another crayfish at a distance, which answers the fox in his place]: Krzyżanowski 1962, No. 275: 76-77.
Caucasus – Asia Minor. Armenians [a crayfish and a fox worked a field together, gathered wheat; decided to give it to the one who runs down a mountain the fastest; the crayfish asks the fox to hit him with his tail so that he will know when to start running; clings to the tail, ends up on a pile of wheat]: Orbeli 1956, no. 69: 93 (= Dähnhardt 1912: 78-79); Turks [a tortoise, a crayfish and a fox decided to work a field together; the fox avoids working, and then offers to give the harvest to the fastest; loses both times: the tortoise places other tortoises along the course, and the crayfish clings to the fox's fur]: Dor 2002, no. 19: 61-62 (= Eberhard, Boratav 1953, no. 4: 29).
Baltoscandia. Finns : Rakhimova 2000: 174 [a fox laughs at a crayfish’s slowness; it proposes to race up a mountain; it unnoticed clings to the fox’s tail and wins]; Dähnhardt 1912 (Kivima, Kaari, Loppi) [a fox and a crayfish agree to race; the crayfish clings to the fox’s tail, the fox admits defeat]: 81; Danes [a fox laughs at a crayfish’s slowness; they agree to race; the crayfish unnoticed clings to the fox’s tail and wins]: Dähnhardt 1912: 81; Lithuanians [a fox laughs at a crayfish’s slowness; they agree to race; the crayfish clings unnoticed to the fox's tail, asks at the finish line why she took so long, the fox admits defeat]: Dähnhardt 1912: 81; Lutsey(zap. 1927) [an old woman answers a hare that she is looking for a shepherd for her three geese; a wolf comes towards her; old woman: how are you going to sing? the wolf howls; old woman: no, you'll scare all the geese; the fox sings a song, the old woman is happy; the fox ate the goose, the feathers are under the threshold; she says that she is being invited to a christening, she goes to the attic, there is a barrel of butter there; what did they call her? fox: The beginning; she ate another goose; again to a christening; they named her Half; she ate the third, again to a christening, finished the butter, called the mistress to a cold bathhouse and told her everything; the mistress hit her with a broom - it stuck, since then the fox has a tail; she pretended to be dead, a fisherman was carrying fish and picked it up; the fox threw it all off, eats, tells the wolf what she caught, lowering her tail into the well; the tail froze, the fox called the people, they ran to beat the wolf, the fox puts its head in the dough trough, ate its fill, its head is in the dough; tells the wolf that the brains have flowed out; the beaten one is carrying the unbeaten; wolf: how beautiful the woodpecker is; fox: I'll make you the same, climb into the haystack; she set the haystack on fire, the wolf burned; the fox carries bones in a sack, tells the man that it is money, she exchanged it with him for a horse; open the sack when you go beyond that blue forest; the fox killed the horse, eats it; says that if anyone runs to this horse meat faster than her, she will cry; a crayfish got caught on the fox's tail; when she ran up, it was already eating the horse meat; the fox had tears in her eyes; old woman: you will get well if you eat the meat of a 9-year-old bear; the fox goes, knocks on the fir trees, there is a bear on each one, she asks how old; 3, 6 - not needed; 9; Well, turn around; the bear turned around, fell down, the fox eats him; the fox tells those he meets that he is going to repent of his sins, asks what sins they have; the cat ate sour cream, the hare poisoned the sheep, the wolf ate the sheep, the bear killed the horse; the fox: let's cross the pit on a pole; the cat crossed, the rest fell down; whose voice is weaker, we will eat; they ate the hare, then the bear; the fox hides his entrails under himself, tells the wolf that he is eating his own; the wolf tore out his own, died; the fox ate the wolf, spring has come; the fox to the woodpecker: if you don't sprinkle sawdust, we will eat your chicks; the woodpecker sprinkled sawdust, the fox got out; the fox demands that the woodpecker make her laugh; the husband brings bread, the wife porridge with eggs; the woodpecker pretended to be wounded, they rushed to catch, the fox ate everything; asks for a drink; a woodpecker made a hole in a beer keg; asks to make her laugh; a father and sons thresh grain; a woodpecker falls on their heads; the sons wanted to hit the woodpecker, but killed their father; the fox laughs; climbed into the hole, asks the limbs what they were doing; everyone helped, only the tail got caught in the bushes; she stuck it out to the dogs, they pulled the fox out and tore her to pieces]: Annom et al. 2018: 289-298; Estonians: Kippar 1986, no. 275 (rare, but all over Estonia except the southeast) [a fox (hare) and a crayfish (frog, flea, snail) agreed to run a race; the crayfish (snail, etc.) latches onto the fox's tail and turns out to be the winner]: 167; Mälk et al 1967, no. 40 (Otepää) [in the heat the pond has almost dried up; the fox speaks disdainfully of the crayfish; the latter says that she is probably a better walker than a runner; the fox suggests that they run to the mountain, the loser will pay a golden stick; the crayfish latches onto the fox's tail, pretends to have come first; the fox pays the bet]: 86-87; Normann, Lätt 1968 [a fox and a crayfish agreed to run a race; The crayfish grabbed the fox by the tail and at the finish line said that he was tired of waiting for the fox; since then the fox and the crayfish have not communicated]: 87.
Volga – Perm. Komi [a fox and a crayfish are racing, the crayfish clings to the fox’s tail]: Korovina 2012, No. 275: 78.