Research source

THE CUCKOO, THE HERON, THE HEATHCOCK, THE PARTRIDGE, THE NIGHTINGALE, THE SWALLOW, THE SPARROW, AND

Date of account: English edition published 1872
Source: Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 2 (of 2)
Reference: Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 2 (of 2) · selected passage 129
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-25

Record summary

When the night is with the moon, instead of swallowing the hero, the bull-moon or fish-moon carries him or serves as a bridge for him

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

When the night is with the moon, instead of swallowing the hero, the bull-moon or fish-moon carries him or serves as a bridge for him. In Russian fairy tales the brown pike (which, on account of its colour, is called the chaste widow)[487] is now a form assumed by the devil in order to eat the young hero, who has become a little perch,[488] and now an enormous fish with great teeth, which slaughters the little fishes.[489] Now, instead, it serves as a bridge for Ivan Tzarevic, who is seeking for the egg of the duck which is inside the hare under the oak-tree in the midst of the sea;[490] now it is caught in the fountain (as the moon, soma, in the well) by the foolish and lazy Emilius, and because Emilius saves its life, it makes him rich by performing several miracles for him, such as that of the barrels full of water, of the trees of the forest, of the waggons or the stoves which move off by themselves, and finally that of the cask thrown into the sea, into which Emilius is shut with the beautiful daughter of the Tzar, and which comes to shore and breaks open.[491] Now the phallical pike with the g

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

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