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Motif · motif_rooster

Rooster

A male domestic fowl, drawn as one half of a paired foot tattoo. The National Maritime Museum records the pairing and the folk reasoning behind it: neither the rooster nor the pig can swim, so they were thought to get a sailor swiftly to shore.
Thin
Medium confidenceresearched

1 attested · 6 promoted1 source · T1

What the research says

motifs_seed
Category
animal
Common styles
american traditional
Common themes
maritime; protection
Placement behaviors
foot
Composition behaviors
paired with a pig, one on each foot

Provenance

1 resolved
  • Royal Museums Greenwich

    National Maritime Museum page. Verbatim: the word 'tattoo' is "derived from the Tahitian word 'tatau', meaning to mark"; a pig and a rooster tattooed on the feet were "said to protect a seaman from drowning"; a full-rigged ship, an anchor, a dragon and a shellback turtle each record a specific voyage or crossing. Establishes protective (apotropaic) intent inside the tattoo domain.

    museum · retrieved 2026-08-28

7 links

Associated with · 3

  • → outgoingMaritimeThemeThin
    strength 0.50promoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from motifs_seed.common_themes of motif_rooster ('maritime'). No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus. STRENGTH 0.5 set by the T11.11c rule: this pairing is asserted by ONE parent row's association column and by no second row; the pack's scale reads 0.5 as 'context-dependent'. Inputs are corpus counts only - no source count, tier or confidence is used.

  • → outgoingProtectionSubthemeThin
    strength 0.50promoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from motifs_seed.common_themes of motif_rooster ('protection'). No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus. STRENGTH 0.5 set by the T11.11c rule: this pairing is asserted by ONE parent row's association column and by no second row; the pack's scale reads 0.5 as 'context-dependent'. Inputs are corpus counts only - no source count, tier or confidence is used.

  • → outgoingFootPlacementThin
    strength unstatedpromoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from motifs_seed.placement_behaviors of motif_rooster ('foot') [class EP]. PLACEMENT AXIS. Typed associated_with, not placement_supports: the packs use placement_supports only as placement -> composition (doc 01 'forearm -> placement_supports -> vertical_composition'; specimen rel_0004), and model motif -> placement as 'anatomy_fit', which is not in the locked 14. The placement_ target prefix carries the axis. The cited source states this placement. No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus.

Can symbolize · 1

  • → outgoingProtection from DrowningSymbolThin
    strength 0.75researched

    MARITIME CONTEXT, and PAIR-DEPENDENT. Verbatim: "A pig tattooed on one foot and a rooster on the other were said to protect a seaman from drowning." The evidence is for the pair; a lone rooster is not covered by it.

Compatible with · 1

  • → outgoingPigMotifThin
    strength unstatedpromoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from motifs_seed.composition_behaviors of motif_rooster ('paired with a pig, one on each foot') [class EC+EM]; motifs_seed.composition_behaviors of motif_pig ('paired with a rooster, one on each foot') [class EC+EM]. Asserted by more than one parent value; deduped to one edge. Confidence is the LOWER of the contributing rows, not the higher. compatible_with is symmetric; recorded once, traversable from either endpoint. No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus.

Frequently used in · 1

  • → outgoingAmerican TraditionalStyleThin
    strength 0.50promoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from motifs_seed.common_styles of motif_rooster ('american traditional'). No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus. STRENGTH 0.5 set by the T11.11c rule: this pairing is asserted by ONE parent row's association column and by no second row; the pack's scale reads 0.5 as 'context-dependent'. Inputs are corpus counts only - no source count, tier or confidence is used.

Supports composition · 1

  • → outgoingBilateral PairCompositionThin
    strength unstatedpromoted · not an independent attestationresearched

    Promoted from motifs_seed.composition_behaviors of motif_rooster ('paired with a pig, one on each foot') [class EC+EM]. Source is the supporting concept, target the composition, mirroring placement_supports. No new fact: this edge restates a value already present in the corpus.