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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.
F - Gender and sex
| Ref | Title ▲ | Summary | Traditions | Narratives |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| f2a In f2 family | Improper birth. | The child deliberately leaves its mother's womb in an unusual way, making a hole in her body and often killing her. This is a sign of its malice and/or supernatural power. | 12 | 14 |
| F100a In F100 family | A chaste woman revives a man. | In order to revive a man or remove an arrowhead (bullet) from his body, a chaste girl or woman must touch (step over) the dead or wounded man. | 4 | 4 |
| F29 | A girl sits on the ground. | A girl (woman) sits on the ground and copulates with a snake, worm or eel that crawls out of the ground towards her. This usually happens when she is busy with housework (cooking, weaving, etc.). | 24 | 39 |
| F12 | A husband kills his wife with his lover's penis. | A husband kills his wife by inserting her lover's severed penis into her body. | 4 | 5 |
| F40b In F40 family | A man in a village of women. | A single man finds himself in a village of women. Usually, he is forced to satisfy a woman against his will, or each woman demands to have sex with him. | 62 | 78 |
| F100b In F100 family | A minor transgression by a chaste woman. | Thanks to her virtue, a woman is capable of doing what others cannot, but she succeeds only after she remembers a minor transgression she committed in her youth. | 3 | 3 |
| F28a In F28 family | A monstrous penis grows out of the ground. | A penis grows out of the ground or out of the water in a lake. Women summon it as needed. | 13 | 21 |
| F92 | A pair of pederasts. | A male character allows himself to be used as a sexual object. | 18 | 23 |
| F61 | A woman carries a trickster. | A male character pretends to be sick, weak, unconscious; a woman carries him on her back, he copulates or tries to copulate with her on the go. | 25 | 28 |
| F70f In F70 family | Accidental change of gender. | Finding themselves in a deserted place, people accidentally change their gender. | 11 | 16 |
| F45a1 In F45 family | Accidental conception by the wind. | A woman, against her will, conceives from the wind. | 7 | 9 |
| F51a In F51 family | Aggressive sister. | After incest is discovered, the sister openly demands her brother as her husband, turns into a monster, and kills people. | 6 | 6 |
| F45 | Amazons. | There are or were settlements where only women lived or live (cf. motifs F8, F45C). | 156 | 256 |
| F49a In F49 family | An animal teaches how to give birth. | A small animal (mouse, rat, rabbit, two-wombed animal, bird) explains how to give birth. See motif F49. | 12 | 8 |
| F99 | An infant copulates with its mother. | An infant turns into an adult man, copulates with his mother, then returns to his former appearance. | 8 | 10 |
| F67 | An old woman pretends to be a man. | An old woman lives with her (adopted) daughter, niece or daughter-in-law. She (supposedly) turns into a man, marries a girl or tries to do so. | 11 | 12 |
| F79 | Animal wives, B600.1. | The character successively marries various women of non-human nature, but each time (usually, except for the last) he is disappointed. | 14 | 20 |
| F76 | Animals teach love. | People learn how to make love by watching birds, fish or animals mating; animals teach people how to make love or arouse desire in them. | 26 | 36 |
| F5b In F5 family | Artificial bride. | The character (listed in square brackets in the list of ethnic groups) offers another woman. Not having one or not wanting to give her away, he makes a bride out of wood, snow, etc., turns an animal into a girl, sends a servant instead of his daughter, turns himself into a woman, or confesses to the lie when the trouble is over. See motif E8. | 26 | 40 |
| F9f In F9 family | Asmodeus. | Without the woman's knowledge, the demon regularly kills her suitors on their wedding night. | 38 | 44 |
| F28c In F28 family | Bear penis in the hands of an old woman. | A woman masturbates with the penis of a large animal that one of the men killed while hunting. | 14 | 18 |
| F96 | Becoming handsome. | A girl or wife rejects an unattractive man. He becomes handsome (usually after encountering a supernatural being), and those who treated him badly are punished. | 17 | 27 |
| F94 | Betrayal in the sky. | A man ascends to the upper world, where he can choose a wife associated with either life or death. | 10 | 10 |
| F52 | Bird's crest made of pubic hair. | The first ancestor bird puts pubic hair or part of a woman's genitals on its head; since then, birds of this species have had a crest. | 13 | 17 |
| F14A In F14 family | Birth from stone. | An anthropomorphic character emerges from stone. | 18 | 40 |
| F2 | Birth from the leg T541; V52. | The child is born from a tumour on the character's body, either placed there temporarily or emerging from blood that has flowed from a cut. | 111 | 171 |
| F11 | Biting penis. | The penis burns, bites, eats food. | 21 | 22 |
| F5 | Brides for the first humans. | The character does not want to or cannot give all the suitors his daughters in marriage and turns them into girls of various animals. (Usually after the flood or at the beginning of time, men want to marry the only daughter of a deity or patriarch). | 23 | 21 |
| F9g In F9 family | Brünnhilde, ATU 519. | A powerful woman defeats and kills her suitors. The hero or his assistant defeats her (usually on their wedding night, subduing her with rods or a whip). The hero marries the heroine. | 60 | 46 |
| F49 | Caesarean section, T584. | Women had their stomachs cut open to remove the baby. Someone explains how to give birth or makes childbirth possible. | 76 | 106 |
| F37 | Calabash on the water. | To summon her lover, the character taps on a calabash placed on the water. | 14 | 22 |
| F24 | Cause of menstruation: bite. | Women lose blood when they are bitten by fish, snakes, etc. | 10 | 11 |
| F26 | Cause of menstruation: loss of sacred objects. | The transfer of sacred musical instruments (horns, trumpets) from women to men is associated with the onset of menstruation in women. | 6 | 10 |
| F23 | Cause of menstruation: sexual intercourse. | Blood spilled during sexual intercourse or artificial defloration at the time of creation is the reason why menstruation occurs to this day. | 23 | 27 |
| F15 | Character sticks his penis out of the ground, K1315.2.1. | The character sticks his plant-like penis out of the ground (provoking a woman to sit on it). | 14 | 16 |
| F4 | Child in a vessel, T561. | In the days of the first ancestors, children were conceived not through sexual intercourse, but in vessels, piles of earth, lumps of clay, etc. | 23 | 34 |
| F30a In F30 family | Child-worm. | A woman nurses a worm (caterpillar, reptile, fish) instead of a child; people kill the monster. | 18 | 27 |
| F36 | Children against the lover. | (Adopted) children of a woman or man kill the lover (or spouse of non-human nature) of their father or (adoptive) mother. | 41 | 35 |
| F28d In F28 family | Children are born from a wooden penis. | By masturbating with an artificial penis, a woman conceives children. | 17 | 18 |
| F50 | Children born multiple times. | Children have the ability to leave their mother's womb and return to it again. | 33 | 51 |
| F87 | Children transformed by a snake woman, ATU 425M. | The snake forces the girl to promise to marry him and takes her to the underwater world. She is happy there and gives birth to a son (or two sons) and a daughter. Together with her children, she returns to visit her relatives. They learn what words she must use to summon her husband from the water, summon him, and kill him. Seeing the bloody water, the snake's wife (rarely the snake himself) turns the children and herself into birds or trees. | 28 | 50 |
| F54d In F54 family | Conceives after drinking urine. | A woman gives birth to a boy after accidentally drinking animal urine, or a female animal gives birth to a boy after drinking a man's urine. | 4 | 5 |
| F45b In F45 family | Conception by the sun. | A woman gives birth to a son conceived by (the rays or light of) the sun. | 27 | 30 |
| F86 | Conditional signal. | A character calls another character of non-human nature (a mate or ward) with a conventional signal; the other character sees this, makes the same signal or utters the same words, takes on the appearance of the character they have come to replace, kills those who come out to meet them, or makes use of their sexual services. | 127 | 191 |
| F33 | Connection with a water creature. | A woman or group of women take a water animal or water monster as their lover. The husband(s), brother(s) or (adopted) children of the woman(s) kill or maim the lover and (in some cases) the woman(s). | 68 | 102 |
| F34 | Connection with terrestrial quadrupeds. | A woman takes a large land animal as her lover. Her husband, brother or (adopted) children kill or maim the lover and (sometimes) the woman herself. Sometimes there is mention of a group of women and their husbands. (Unlike motif K102, "The Demon's Mistress," the lover is not dangerous to the hero and plays a passive role, and the woman, if she becomes hostile and dangerous, does so only after the lover's death. Unlike motif K76, the woman and her husband/lover of non-human nature are clearly evaluated negatively). | 90 | 143 |
| F9e1 In F9 family | Dangerous animal in the vagina. | A woman's womb is dangerous because it contains a toothy or stinging animal (not just its mouth) or many such creatures. | 56 | 81 |
| F19 | Dangerous relationship with a frog. | After copulating with a frog, a man's penis is crippled (unless otherwise stated: it becomes long, see motif F18A). | 11 | 16 |
| F9 | Dangerous woman. | For various reasons, sexual intercourse with a woman is deadly dangerous for a man, or so it seems to him: Teeth, blades or sharp stones in the vagina or on the inside of the thighs; the vagina is a toothy mouth. See motif F9A. | 62 | 66 |
| F70e1 In F70 family | Daughter in the role of son, AT 884B. | An old man needs a son to do men's work. (Only the youngest) daughter takes on this task (successfully passing the test set by her father), pretending to be a man. | 38 | 42 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.