N40. The liver sank and the lungs floated away. (.30.34.)
The fairy tale or epic text ends with a formula stating that the liver sank and the lungs floated away (floated up, remained, etc.).
Turkmens, Teleuts.
Iran – Central Asia. Turkmen : A.K. 1875 (Mangyshlak) [“Let those we have spoken about sink into oblivion, just as the liver sinks in water; but we, like the lungs, float on top”]: 13; Stebleva 1969, no. 30 (place of recording not specified) [“And then the young man told the padishah everything that had happened to them. The padishah exclaimed: “Well done!” and arranged a feast for seven days and nights. If there was a liver, it sank to the bottom, if there were lungs, they swam across, and those who fell in love, they achieved their goal”]; no. 68 (place of recording not specified) [“The padishah liked the daikhanin’s speech, he became cheerful, gave him a hundred rubles and let him go. “She, the liver, sank, and we, the lungs, remained”]: 159, 341.
Southern Siberia. Teleuts (Kytmanovo ulus, Stepnoy Altai, 1976, from the storyteller-kaychy S.D. Kanzachakov, born in 1912) [the ending of the epic tale about “Altyn-Ergek riding a light-yellow horse”: “Immediately on his land - in his yurt / He arranged a toy. / He began to call relatives with letters / (And) with words. / While they drank and drank, ate and ate, / At this feast the skinny man’s ears / Became red. / The skinny dog’s tail stood up straight from satiety. / The bottom of the cauldron is broken, / The remaining people disperse, / The bottom of the dish is perforated, / All the people disperse. / At this toy all the people drank, / Although some said: / – Who drank at this toy? Who ate? / They gave me neither wine nor meat, / Enraged at them, / I, riding a white hare, / returned home. / They, like a liver, drowned, / I, like a lung, floated up and crawled out. / My story is over, / Let it be written down by you” (the last words are addressed by the storyteller to the collector, the Teleut K.I. Maksimov)]: Funk 2020: 126-129 (including the original in the Teleut language).
