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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C39a In C39 family | The sky was patched up with ice. | A hole in the sky or a crack in the ground was plugged with a piece of ice, which is why it is cold in the north (north-west, north-east). | 1 | 8 |
| C41 | Why the sky is blue. | At first, the sky has no specific colour. After a character hangs a cloth on it or performs other actions, the sky acquires its characteristic colour. | 2 | 6 |
| C8a2 In C8 family | Stone lion. | The lion (often stone) helps to survive the flood. | 2 | 4 |
| C32 | A ship made of nails. | Demonic characters will make a ship out of nail clippings. | 3 | 3 |
| C33b In C33 family | Ancient windlessness. | The demise of the first race is associated with the appearance of wind. | 3 | 8 |
| C40 | Stones fall from the sky. | At first, stones fell from the sky and crushed people. | 3 | 4 |
| 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 |
| C22 | The Toad in Search of Thunder. | During a severe drought or global fire, birds and animals are sent to the thunder gods living at the edge of the world to bring rain. The last of those sent achieves the goal. The toad plays an important role in the action. | 4 | 3 |
| C30b In C30 family | Remove traces from the field. | In response to the claims of an animal or spirit, a person offers to remove their traces from the field or to walk without leaving any traces. The spirit is unable to do so. | 4 | 4 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| C39 | Repairing the sky. | When the sky split or partially collapsed, it was repaired. | 4 | 13 |
| C6g In C6 family | The diver – the boar. | The boar brings earth from the bottom and/or scatters it on the water. | 4 | 7 |
| 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 |
| C21 | Drought. | During a severe drought, birds (and animals) go in search of the rainmakers and bring them back. | 6 | 6 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| c8f In c8 family | Salvation in a drum during the flood. | During the flood, a brother and sister float in a drum. | 6 | 11 |
| C12a In C12 family | The Flood and the Dog. | The dog warns of an impending global flood or fire and advises what to do. | 7 | 10 |
| 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 |
| C2a In C2 family | The Woodpecker's Fire. | Two characters meet a woodpecker and receive an object from it, which causes the ground to catch fire upon contact. The stronger and smarter of the two characters escapes, while the weaker and stupider one is burned or burned to death. | 7 | 12 |
| C15 | The walled-up jaguar. | A monstrous jaguar (puma) is locked in a cave or tree trunk. | 8 | 15 |
| C2b In C2 family | The Burnt Moon. | The Sun and the Moon are caught in a fire. The strong and intelligent Sun escapes, while the weak and foolish Moon is burned or consumed, but the Sun revives it. | 8 | 10 |
| C35a In C35 family | The good advisor is punished. | A zoomorphic character gives wise advice concerning the state of the Sun. The advice is accepted, but the advisor is punished by the Sun or is henceforth pursued by the Sun. | 8 | 9 |
| C35b In C35 family | Frogs – enemies of the sun. | The frog (toad) prevents more than one sun from shining in the sky. | 8 | 11 |
| C37 | The sloth's catastrophe. | The sloth causes a global catastrophe or saves people from it. | 8 | 8 |
| C6i In C6 family | Stuck mud turns into earth. | A zoomorphic character returns from the underworld covered in mud. He shakes himself off, or the mud is scraped off him, and earth emerges from it. | 8 | 12 |
| C9a In C9 family | The Flood: people turn into aquatic animals. | During the flood or when crossing a river, those who drowned or were saved turn into aquatic or amphibious animals. | 8 | 16 |
| C16a In C16 family | The offended mistress of animals. | The offended mistress of animals or fish takes them and food supplies away. See motif H32A. | 9 | 1 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| C6c2 In C6 family | The punished loon. | Birds must dive to retrieve soil from the bottom, from which land will emerge. The loon cannot reach the bottom, refuses to dive, or tries to hide the soil it has retrieved (usually punished for this). | 9 | 10 |
| C36 | The Last Battle. | The gods and their powerful adversaries clash in a decisive battle that changes the fate of the world. See Bray 2000, especially pp. 360-361. | 10 | 10 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| C24 | The world is in danger of falling. | Someone is gnawing or chopping at the pillar supporting the sky or the earth; certain creatures are trying to destroy the barrier separating their world from the world of humans; if the work is completed, humans will perish. | 12 | 17 |
| C28 | Rash promise. | A demonic character takes possession of a valuable item without which another character (and people) will perish. The demon is tricked into returning the valuable item. | 12 | 14 |
| C31c In C31 family | The wise bat. | The bat turns out to be smarter and wiser than other living creatures. | 12 | 15 |
| C6f In C6 family | Retrieving a drowned person. | The characters attempt to retrieve a living creature or part of its body that has sunk to the bottom of the water. See motif C6. | 12 | 13 |
| C11 | Revenge of the insulted father. | A father with magical powers destroys people (all or many) who have insulted or harmed his son. | 13 | 16 |
| 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 |
| C6e In C6 family | Diver – crab, shrimp. | A crustacean retrieves earth from under water or from the underworld. | 14 | 18 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| C8c In C8 family | Son and mother give birth to people. | After a global catastrophe, at the beginning of time or when settling a new land, a woman and her son give birth to humans. | 15 | 21 |
| C33 | Prometheus (the chained strongman). | A strongman-god-fighter is chained to a rock or a pillar for centuries. | 16 | 42 |
| 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 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.