Ancient ✦ Wisdom ✦ Atlas

Motif family

Lament, Mourning, and Tragic Recognition

The expression of grief, loss, and tragic awareness. Includes mourning songs, laments for fallen heroes, the recognition of what has been lost, and grief as a transformative force.

49 traditions

819 occurrences

799 mapped motifs

10 sub-families

  • afro caribbean
  • amazonian
  • andamanese
  • arctic inuit
  • arthurian
  • australian aboriginal
  • biblical
  • buddhist
  • celtic
  • celtic irish
  • celtic welsh
  • chaco amerindian
  • christian apocrypha
  • comparative
  • confucian
  • daoist
  • egyptian
  • estonian
  • finnish karelian
  • fjort
  • germanic
  • gnostic
  • greek
  • greek roman
  • hawaiian
  • hindu
  • inuit
  • islamic
  • islamicate folklore
  • japanese
  • jewish christian
  • jewish pseudepigrapha
  • mesopotamian
  • micronesian
  • nahua
  • nahua maya inca
  • native american great lakes
  • native american northwest coast
  • native american plains
  • native american southeast
  • native american southwest
  • norse
  • persian
  • roman
  • shan
  • slavic
  • sufi
  • taoist
  • zuni

Conserved neighbors: death and transformation · sacrifice · hero journey

Sub-families · the next landing down

Lament for the Fallen Warrior

34 motifs

Mourning Kin

51 motifs

Cosmic and Natural Mourning

22 motifs

Tears, Transformation, and Memorialization

14 motifs

Death from Grief

20 motifs

Lost Heroic Age

14 motifs

Mistaken Killing and Remorse

16 motifs

Mourning Ritual and Funerary Practice

30 motifs

Fate and Mortality

16 motifs

Grief Imagery and Song

30 motifs

Not yet placed in a sub-family

552 motifs, showing the 60 most attested

Each motif link opens its evidence page: every tagged passage with its quote, and a path into the book where the passage lives.