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Berezkin/Duvakin Catalogue of Motifs
English translation, enhancements and additional metadata by Jonathan Fielder-White
Source: Berezkin and Duvakin's Analytical Catalogue · Original catalogue (Russian)
About the catalogue and its sources
Unless otherwise stated, narrative and tradition data comes from Berezkin and Duvakin's Thematic classification and distribution of folklore and mythological motifs by area (Analytical catalogue).
Original Berezkin/Duvakin catalogue (Russian)
The English translation uses AI assistance alongside manual verification. Errors may occur; consult the original source when in doubt.
B - Origins of the environment
| Ref | Title | Summary | Traditions ▲ | Narratives |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B42m2 In B42 family | The boastful and hasty. | The stars of the Big Dipper's handle are three hunters chasing a beast. Each has a distinct character (one is boastful, another is hasty, etc.). In Siberia, the hunters are identified with people of different nationalities, and in the North American Northeast, with birds of different species. | 15 | 14 |
| B46a1 In B46 family | The Big Dipper – robbers. | The stars of the Big Dipper – thieves or robbers. | 15 | 26 |
| B46b In B46 family | Seven Star Sisters. | Each of the seven main stars of the Big Dipper is a separate female character. {Included in the online database, but not in the correlation table in *sav)}. | 15 | 14 |
| B55 | Leaf fish. | Fish grow on tree branches or tree leaves turn into fish. | 15 | 19 |
| B56 | The crocodile's fiery tongue. | The crocodile/caiman is left without a tongue after swallowing or losing the fire (which it previously possessed); something associated with heavenly fire (lightning, sunbeams, etc.) emerges from the crocodile's severed tongue. | 15 | 17 |
| B59 | Dancers turn into the Pleiades, A773. | A group of people (usually children, brothers or sisters) play, dance, rise to the sky and turn into the Pleiades or another small constellation. | 15 | 20 |
| B64a In B64 family | Small bones: the war between fish and birds. | Fish and birds fight (usually by shooting arrows at each other). Since then, fish have had many small bones in their bodies and/or birds' legs have taken on their current form. | 15 | 18 |
| B8 | The frog hides the water. | The frog hides the water (usually drinks up a lake or river). Thanks to another character, the water returns to the body of water(s). (Among the Khan, Upper Tanana, and Varikho, the motif is not cosmogonic). | 15 | 30 |
| B84 | Mushrooms and growths (transformation of a cannibal). | After a demonic character (usually a woman who pursues the hero) dies, her flesh turns into objects found on trees - mushrooms, resin, fruits, cones. | 15 | 24 |
| B94 | Trees lose the gift of speech. | Trees (and animals) used to talk, asking people not to cut them down or kill them. | 15 | 25 |
| B100 | Obtaining sleep. | In the past or in a distant land, sleep was unknown; a certain character embodies sleep, possesses it or teaches how to sleep; sleep is a special substance. | 16 | 16 |
| B14 | The character creates river rapids. | In order to regulate the flow of the river in a certain way, the character creates rapids and waterfalls. | 16 | 18 |
| B28b In B28 family | Taming of things. | The inhabitants of the area where the hero finds himself are afraid of creatures that are tools, utensils, and plants that are now harmless. The hero easily defeats these creatures and usually transforms them into what they are now. | 16 | 32 |
| B2b In B2 family | The earth devours the dead. | The earth feeds on the people buried in it. See motif B2A. | 16 | 22 |
| B42r In B42 family | Orion's Belt: running after each other. | The three stars of Orion's Belt are three characters chasing each other. | 16 | 17 |
| B7a In B7 family | Spit-out water. | Someone possesses water or a drink. Another character swallows what is hidden, runs away and spits out what is hidden, making the water or drink available to everyone. | 16 | 23 |
| B91a In B91 family | Eyes: took and did not return. | A blind character asks another to lend him his eyes or to swap eyes, keeping his own eyes. | 16 | 27 |
| B102a In B102 family | Clouds – cows. | Clouds are associated with horned cattle, especially cows (and rain is their milk). | 17 | 21 |
| B116a In B116 family | Knowledge is stored in the stomach. | A person or animal eats a sacred book or its remains. During the ritual, this knowledge is actualised in oral speech, in the sounds of a musical instrument made from part of an animal's body, or in parts of an animal's body used for divination. | 17 | 23 |
| B116d In B116 family | The "book" as part of the stomach. | Part of the stomach of ruminants is called a "book". | 17 | 22 |
| B6 | Walking towards each other, they get married. | The first or only remaining man and woman move towards each other, going around a mountain, a pole or otherwise following a circle from opposite sides, and when they meet, they get married. | 17 | 24 |
| B86A In B86 family | Reaching for the moon in the sky. | People try to climb up to the sky to get the moon. (In brackets are traditions in which the goal of building a tower to the sky is the moon, but the task of getting it is not mentioned). | 17 | 19 |
| B116b In B116 family | The wet book. | A book containing sacred knowledge falls into the water at a crossing or gets wet in some other way. After that, the book disappears or the text becomes unreadable. Either the book is ruined (damaged) when it is dried. Or it is ruined while left unattended on the shore while the people who kept it are swimming; or it burns, although traces remain. | 18 | 20 |
| B2c In B2 family | The earth as an anthropomorphic body. | The earth as a whole, elements of the landscape or fertile soil arise from the human body and (or) the earth (islands) are born of a woman. | 18 | 24 |
| B3d In B3 family | Worm excrement. | The earth is obtained by a worm; it arises from worm excrement, extracted from the worm. | 18 | 40 |
| B42mn In B42 family | A hunter chases the Big Dipper. | Only one character (rather than several) chases an animal (elk or bear) across the sky, associated with one of the circumpolar constellations, but not with the Pleiades or Orion. (In the Kalevala tradition, there is no identification with stars). | 18 | 42 |
| B48c In B48 family | Artefacts in the pike's head. | In the head of the pike there are (visible) tools used by people. | 18 | 14 |
| B52a In B52 family | The vulture creates dry land. | Flying over the world, a bird (usually a vulture) dries the earth after a flood with its wings or otherwise gives it its present appearance. | 18 | 17 |
| B74 | Red-eyed capercaillie. | The eyes of the capercaillie or black grouse turned red from tears. | 18 | 31 |
| B83 | Unliftable weight. | A character attempts to lift a small object or creature, which turns out to be gigantic and unliftable. Cf. motif I87ab. | 18 | 17 |
| B103 | Cornelian cherry. | The character thinks that since the cornel blooms earlier than other fruit trees, its fruits will ripen earlier than others. The character is mistaken and is left without fruit. | 19 | 25 |
| B125b In B125 family | A person going to a festival borrows someone else's organ. | A zoomorphic character goes to a festival and asks another to lend him a part of his body, which will make him look more attractive. | 19 | 20 |
| B41a In B41 family | Animals tell about the lives of their owners. | A dog or other domestic animal reveals details about its owners' lives that they would prefer to keep private; it is punished for this by losing its ability to speak. | 19 | 21 |
| B115 | Evergreen trees. | Conifers and some other trees and shrubs (small shrubs) became evergreen after the elixir of immortality was accidentally spilled on them. Cf. motif H6b. | 20 | 31 |
| B13 | The crossed riverbed. | A character deliberately or accidentally makes a riverbed by digging it out, drawing it on the ground or spilling water as he walks (cf. motif B13A: water rushes in the footsteps of a person against his will, he tries to run away from it). | 20 | 16 |
| B38c In B38 family | The raven and the loon adorn each other. | The raven and the loon paint each other. | 20 | 28 |
| B62 | Man and vulture. | Man believes that vultures live better than humans, changes his appearance to that of a vulture. The former vulture lives with the man's wife, and the man usually does not like his new life. | 20 | 30 |
| B72b In B72 family | An offended child becomes a bird. | A girl or, less commonly, a boy turns into a bird after his mother (father, guardian) refuses to give him water or food or otherwise mistreats him. | 20 | 17 |
| B79a1 In B79 family | The bird dropped the firmament onto the waters. | At the beginning of time, a bird flies and drops pieces of solid ground onto the water, from which land or an island emerges. Sometimes the substrate onto which the piece of solid ground falls is not precisely defined. | 20 | 22 |
| B81 | Dog with a gun. | The creator and his opponent consider whether to give the dog the ability to shoot (with a bow or a gun). | 20 | 22 |
| B28d In B28 family | Unrecognised transformer. | Not understanding who they are dealing with, the characters respond to the wandering Transformer that they are preparing weapons to kill so-and-so or a hiding place to escape from so-and-so. The Transformer kills them himself or turns them into animals. | 21 | 32 |
| B3 | Primary swamp. | At first, the earth is soft, resembling a swamp. | 21 | 26 |
| B33f In B33 family | The old woman-night unravels the yarn. | A certain character performs actions that determine the change from dark to light times of day. It always involves yarn, thread, rope, or fabric, which the character unravels or winds up, or with which the hero binds the entity responsible for the daily cycle. | 21 | 21 |
| B36c In B36 family | Fat animals. | Animals receive meat and fat rendered from a certain creature or obtained in some other way. Some received a lot, others remained thin. | 21 | 23 |
| B38b In B38 family | Two animals adorn each other. | Two quadrupeds (or a quadruped and another creature) adorn each other themselves or are adorned by someone else. | 21 | 30 |
| B51 | The Mosquito and Thunder. | Thanks to a deliberate lie, Thunder did not learn from the bloodsucking insect that it had drunk human blood. | 21 | 23 |
| B79a In B79 family | A bird laid an egg. | At the beginning of time, a bird flies, lays an egg or eggs, and various objects or creatures hatch from them. | 21 | 26 |
| B44c In B44 family | To be warm and light. | The characters argue about whether there should be darkness or light, cold or warmth on earth. See motif B44. | 22 | 23 |
| B44f1 In B44 family | The bear wants night. | In the dispute over whether the world should be light (warm), the bear is on the side of darkness (and cold); or the world is plunged into darkness because the bear hides the sun in his house. | 22 | 30 |
| B46a In B46 family | Separated star of the Pleiades. | One of the stars of the Pleiades was separated from the others (usually stolen by the stars of the Big Dipper and identified with Alcor). | 22 | 32 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.