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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.
C - Disasters
| Ref | Title ▲ | Summary | Traditions | Narratives |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| c8aa In c8 family | Brother and sister give birth to humans. | At the beginning of time, or as a result of a catastrophe, the only human couple are a brother and sister. They marry and give birth to people. | 93 | 237 |
| c6h1 In c6 family | Earth was taken from the belly of an invertebrate. | The earth brought from the underworld was found in the belly of a worm or insect, from where it was taken. | 5 | 6 |
| c8f In c8 family | Salvation in a drum during the flood. | During the flood, a brother and sister float in a drum. | 6 | 11 |
| c8e In c8 family | Salvation in a pumpkin during the flood. | During the flood or at the beginning of time, people (usually a brother and sister) float in a large gourd. | 21 | 47 |
| c4a In c4 family | The Flood: Salvation on a Tree. | During the flood, those who climbed trees were saved. | 41 | 71 |
| C6i1 In C6 family | A mound of earth rises above the water. | There is water everywhere. Earth is raked up from the bottom into a mound, its top rises above the water and turns into dry land. | 3 | 3 |
| C30a In C30 family | A pound of flesh, ATU 890. | A man borrows money on the condition that if he fails to repay it by a certain date, he will have to give the lender a certain amount of his own flesh. The lender cannot cut off the flesh, because he is unable to fulfil the formally logical but essentially absurd demand made of him. | 46 | 30 |
| C32 | A ship made of nails. | Demonic characters will make a ship out of nail clippings. | 3 | 3 |
| C6h In C6 family | An insect brings soil. | The insect brings soil (from the bottom of the sea or from somewhere far away). | 6 | 10 |
| C33b In C33 family | Ancient windlessness. | The demise of the first race is associated with the appearance of wind. | 3 | 8 |
| C5b In C5 family | Animals sent on reconnaissance. | After a global catastrophe or during the creation of the earth, animals run around, making the earth large, reporting on its condition, or are sent to find out how large the earth is. | 35 | 47 |
| C33a1 In C33 family | Bird pecking at the liver. | A bird of prey flies to the chained character every day and pecks at his internal organs. The character recovers overnight, and the cycle repeats itself. | 4 | 16 |
| C10a In C10 family | Birds clinging to the sky, A2211.1. | During the flood, some birds save themselves by clinging to the sky with their beaks. Cf. A2211.7 ("During the flood, birds cling to the sky; their tails acquire their current colour"). | 15 | 19 |
| C6c1 In C6 family | Birds: successful and unsuccessful divers. | Two or more different birds (in Siberia, often a loon and a duck) successively try to retrieve something from the bottom. Only one succeeds. | 19 | 34 |
| C8 | Blood relatives give birth to people. | At the beginning of time or as a result of a catastrophe, the only human couple is a brother and sister (less often a mother and son, father and daughters). They marry and give birth to people. | 103 | 266 |
| C8b In C8 family | Brother and sister did not recognise each other. | A brother and sister (or mother and son) find themselves alone, without marriage partners. Both of them (or only the brother, son) refuse to marry, but do so after accepting each other (or the brother accepts the sister, the son accepts the mother) as strangers. They give birth to new people. | 15 | 41 |
| C34a In C34 family | Buried in the sand. | A supernatural character goes with people to catch fish or lives on the sand by the river; he is buried in the sand or thrown into the river, into a swamp, or otherwise persecuted. Usually, he himself or his father sends a flood. | 6 | 7 |
| C25a In C25 family | Cooking soup on the moon. | In the sky, on the moon, somewhere outside our world, a character (usually an old woman) cooks soup. The fate of the universe depends on his (her) behaviour. | 7 | 7 |
| C6e In C6 family | Diver – crab, shrimp. | A crustacean retrieves earth from under water or from the underworld. | 14 | 18 |
| C6b In C6 family | Diver – muskrat (beaver, otter). | The desired object is brought up from the bottom by a muskrat (rarely a beaver or otter). | 44 | 92 |
| C6a In C6 family | Diver – turtle/frog. | A turtle or toad (frog) brings a desired object from the bottom or from the underworld. | 38 | 45 |
| C30c In C30 family | Drinking the sea. | A man promises to drink the sea (to count how many drops of water there are in the sea), but asks his opponent to first separate the sea water from the water of the rivers flowing into the sea. | 13 | 13 |
| C21 | Drought. | During a severe drought, birds (and animals) go in search of the rainmakers and bring them back. | 6 | 6 |
| C6c4 In C6 family | Duck – a successful diver. | A duck or similar waterfowl dives and brings back a piece of earth, which turns into land (it is the only or the only successful diver). | 57 | 103 |
| C25 | Eschatological expectations. | If a certain event occurs, the world will be destroyed. | 97 | 151 |
| C1 | Falling sky. | In the past, a catastrophic shift in the layers of the universe occurred or will occur in the future. Among the variants (sometimes combined): the sky fell to the earth; the present earth or underground world swapped places with the sky; the earth turned upside down; it fell into the underworld; the layers of the universe successively collapsed onto the earth or will swap places in the future. | 28 | 41 |
| C8c1 In C8 family | Father and daughter give birth to humans. | At the beginning of time or after the destruction of the rest of humanity, a father and daughter (daughters) remain. They marry and give rise to humans or certain ethnic groups. | 6 | 6 |
| C19 | Finding the sun. | The missing, hidden, concealed or stolen sun (daylight) reappears. See motif C18 | 197 | 336 |
| C17 | Fire pit for people. | The men of the community of the first ancestors destroy most of the people and/or themselves on a pyre or in a fire pit. | 11 | 18 |
| C2 | Flood and fire. | The inhabitants of the middle world (in part) are destroyed (or will be destroyed) once by fire or drought, another time by a flood, or the world is flooded with a stream of fire and boiling water. | 163 | 319 |
| C35b In C35 family | Frogs – enemies of the sun. | The frog (toad) prevents more than one sun from shining in the sky. | 8 | 11 |
| C26 | Guardian at the edge of a foreign world. | Monsters are ready to invade our world from another, but a powerful character protects people from the invasion. | 31 | 28 |
| C8D In C8 family | Having had smallpox, they did not recognise each other. | A brother and sister survived the flood. They married after having had smallpox and therefore did not recognise each other. | 6 | 9 |
| C30 | Impossible condition. | In order to free himself from an obligation, the character sets a condition that is formally logical and uncomplicated, but in reality impossible to fulfil. | 60 | 68 |
| C8a1 In C8 family | Let the thread enter the eye. | Finding themselves alone and without other marriage partners, a brother and sister make their marriage possible by the occurrence of an incredible event: a thread far from the needle must enter the eye of the needle. | 6 | 11 |
| C31a In C31 family | Lights or fire promised to the devil. | The master (mistress) of the underworld receives (should receive) heavenly lights or fire. Due to a trick or accident, they are not given to him or are returned. | 9 | 11 |
| C18 | Luring the sun. | A character embodying or controlling the sun hides or is hidden. In order to restore or obtain light and warmth for the first time, the character's attention is attracted or distracted by songs, music, dances, unusual gifts, indecent or strange behaviour, offers of sex, food and/or alcohol. | 25 | 40 |
| C8a In C8 family | Millstones fall on each other. | Finding themselves alone and without other marriage partners, a brother and sister make it possible to marry each other by the occurrence of an incredible event. This event takes place, giving them a sign to become spouses. Among such events (alternatively or sequentially): 1) millstones rolling down from two different mountains fall on top of each other; 2) swords thrown from two mountains end up in the same scabbard; 3) objects thrown up join together; 4) smoke from two fires joins together (rising in a column); 5) two planted bamboo stalks join at the tops. See motif C8. | 16 | 44 |
| C27 | Monster under the ice. | The monster breaks the ice on a river or lake. Usually people walk on the ice, see a protruding horn (fin), and try to saw it off. The monster breaks the ice, and many people die. | 21 | 20 |
| C14 | Monsters destroy people. | During or on the eve of a global catastrophe (flood, darkness), animals or monsters attack people. (See motif C13A (rebellion of things: animated objects and/or domestic animals threaten people, attack them).) | 48 | 62 |
| C32A In C32 family | Nails (hair) will be needed by the soul in the afterlife. | Nails will be needed in the afterlife to save oneself (to climb a steep mountain, climb into the sky, build a bridge, etc.). | 9 | 15 |
| C32c In C32 family | Nails must be preserved. | Nails (and hair) have special significance for a person's fate, their soul or the world as a whole. (Compound motif). | 40 | 61 |
| C32B In C32 family | Nails – material for the devil. | Demonic characters will make something useful for themselves (and harmful to humans) out of nail clippings. | 11 | 12 |
| C30d In C30 family | Not to spill a drop of urine. | The character agrees that his locus will be contaminated with excrement, but only on condition that not a drop of urine is spilled. It turns out to be impossible to fulfil this condition. | 4 | 4 |
| C6d In C6 family | Obtaining land from the underworld. | Land (earth) is formed from a small amount of solid substance (silt, sand, clay, mud) that characters retrieve from the underworld (usually from the bottom of the ocean). | 109 | 233 |
| C6j In C6 family | Obtaining land in connection with the creation of man. | In the same narrative, the story of the creation of man and the attempt to prevent it follows immediately after the story of obtaining earth from the bottom of the sea or from the underworld. | 22 | 26 |
| C6 | Obtaining valuables from the underworld. | In texts with an emphasis on authenticity, characters dive or otherwise descend into the underworld to bring back to earth something desirable that is located at the bottom (deep below) (aka "The Earth Diver" motifs) (cf. fairy tale motif k27x9). | 188 | 439 |
| C29 | Overheard secret. | People (God) learn a secret by overhearing (spying on) a character talking to himself or his relatives (or performing actions that should be remembered). The knowledge gained is related to cosmogony or the acquisition of cultural values. | 29 | 43 |
| C38 | People will appear soon. | Characters from the time of creation say that real people will appear soon, so we must do this and that. | 19 | 23 |
| C12b In C12 family | People – descendants of dogs. | All people or individual ethnic groups, lineages, families are considered descendants of dogs (with which a man mated). | 29 | 56 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.