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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F64a In F64 family | Describes the future spouse. | Leaving or pretending to be dying, the character gives instructions to a relative regarding what he or she should do to get married, indicating a partner with certain characteristics, or the character indicates the place of a future meeting with this partner; or (Philippines) describes a person who should be accepted as a guest; comes himself under the guise of the person mentioned. See motif F64. | 58 | 10 |
| F43 | Disappearance of women. | The women of the community of the first ancestors kill or abandon the men. | 28 | 46 |
| F66 | False house. | In order to commit incest with his daughter, grandmother, sister (brother), father, grandson, brother (sister), the man pretends to be a stranger, or the husband takes on the appearance of his wife's brother so that she treats him as a blood relative. To do this, the character secretly moves to another house for a while, where the object of his desire mistakes him for someone else. | 13 | 13 |
| F70e2 In F70 family | Father tests his daughters or sons. | The father sends his daughters or sons on a difficult task one by one. At the very beginning of the journey, their courage is put to the test. Only the youngest son or daughter passes the test. Usually, the father stands in their way, taking the form of an enemy or a predator, but only the youngest son or daughter bravely enters the fight. | 17 | 20 |
| F35 | Feeding meat from a lover. | A character offers another person the meat of his sexual partner, and the other person, unaware, eats or cooks it. | 99 | 139 |
| F35a In F35 family | Feeding meat from a relative. | The character, unaware of this, eats or prepares meat (slowly kills) a member of his household (a relative, rarely a servant or spouse) or feeds it to his acquaintances, or uses its bones for household needs. | 182 | 295 |
| F51b In F51 family | Finds by the thread. | To find out the nature or location of a character's locus, another person secretly attaches a long thread to it and follows it. | 23 | 32 |
| F80 | First humans without genitals. | The first men and/or women have no genitals, then they acquire them. | 25 | 24 |
| F97 | Forbidden fruit: people become sexually mature, C621. | After eating certain foods, people become sexually mature and/or lose their body hair or skin. Cf. motif H56 (people become mortal). | 41 | 39 |
| F80D In F80 family | Genitals flew like geese. | Female genitals flew like geese. | 2 | 2 |
| F17 | Genitals out of place, A1313.3. | Human genitals were initially located, should have been located, or could have been located under certain circumstances not where they are now; either there were no genitals initially, or people did not know their purpose and copulated using other parts of the body. | 39 | 51 |
| F51d In F51 family | Ginseng child. | Ginseng roots – boys or girls who help the hero. | 6 | 8 |
| F70e In F70 family | Girl turns into a man, ATU 514. | A girl pretends to be a man, magically acquires male nature and lives with his wife. Cf. motif K137 (in Uther 2004, plot 514 mistakenly includes a Karakalpak text with our motif K137). | 45 | 35 |
| F18c In F18 family | Girls across the river, K1391. | The character sees a girl on the other side of the river and copulates with her in an unusual way (sends his penis across the river; turns it into a bridge for the girl to cross the river; into a dam that blocks the river in front of her; dives, swimming up to the girl underwater; sends an object into the girl's vagina). See motif F18B. | 28 | 26 |
| F27 | Girls and water spirits. | It is dangerous for girls or women to approach water (water creatures drag them away or swallow them; a girl who approaches water dies; she becomes pregnant by a snake; through her fault, a flood or other disaster occurs; water spirits themselves come to a girl who has her first period). | 49 | 86 |
| F98 | God and the cow. | A heavenly anthropomorphic deity descends to earth and mates with a cow. | 11 | 24 |
| F77B In F77 family | Hanging on the penis. | A man cannot free himself for a long time after copulating with his partner, as a result of which his penis ends up high above the ground. See motif F19, motif F21. | 4 | 2 |
| F6 | Hollowed-out vagina. | (The first) woman does not have a vagina at first. Usually, it is made for her by a bird, animal, fish, etc. | 23 | 32 |
| F41 | Husbands kill wives. | Ancestral men kill women who behave contrary to social norms. | 14 | 24 |
| F43c In F43 family | Husbands of women - animals. | The husbands of the first women, Amazons or single women are small animals - usually flying foxes. | 8 | 12 |
| F73 | Imaginary wound. | The character mistakes the vulva or anus for a wound. See motifs F73A, F73B. (In the traditions of South and Central America, it is impossible to distinguish local variants from European borrowings). | 59 | 59 |
| F84 | Imitation of chastity. | A guest or younger brother has sexual intercourse with the wife of the host or older brother. Wanting to demonstrate long abstinence, the character sprinkles ash on the head of his penis or smears it with fruit juice. | 4 | 5 |
| F72 | Imitation of rape. | A woman asks a man to tie her up before intercourse so that it looks like she is being raped. | 2 | 3 |
| F49B In F49 family | In a distant land, they do not know how to give birth. | The hero comes to a people whose women do not know how to give birth. See motif F49. | 5 | 3 |
| F82 | Incest with mother-in-law, T417. | The son-in-law resorts to trickery to sleep with his mother-in-law, or the mother-in-law with her son-in-law. Usually, the son-in-law insists that his mother-in-law, rather than his wife, accompany him on a hunt. | 35 | 36 |
| F64 | Incestuous parent, T411.1.1. | The character is presented as another person in order to mate with a close relative in the descending or (less commonly) ascending line. | 81 | 121 |
| F64b In F64 family | Incestuous woman. | A woman pretends to be someone else in order to seduce her son, brother, daughter or grandson. See motif F64. | 14 | 20 |
| F62 | Incognito at a festival. | A (supposedly) sick (weak, unattractive, poorly dressed) character is left alone when others leave for the festival; he (she) arrives there later in the guise of a handsome man or beautiful woman; those who arrived earlier do not recognise him (her) and take an interest in him (her). (This motif is also found in texts containing the motif k57, Cinderella). | 112 | 198 |
| F69 | Indecent invitation. | A woman's husband (male relative) invites her through her children to come and make love to him; the invitation is made in a veiled form; the woman comes. | 9 | 8 |
| F83a In F83 family | Insult conveyed through children, ATU 36. | One character asks the children of another to convey an insult to their mother or father – usually announcing his intention to make love to their mother. {ATU data is included in the correlation table, but not in the text}. | 21 | 23 |
| F45a In F45 family | Intentional conception by the wind. | A woman or female animal conceives by deliberately exposing her genitals to the wind. | 19 | 41 |
| F28a1 In F28 family | Jumping penis. | The living penis is a dangerous creature that attacks people. | 10 | 11 |
| F80B In F80 family | Left unattended. | The vaginas were left unattended and became damaged. See motif F80. | 4 | 4 |
| F18d In F18 family | Long clitoris. | Female genitals were enormous in size. | 14 | 15 |
| F18b In F18 family | Long penis after forbidden sex. | After intercourse with a forbidden partner (incest, intercourse with an animal or spirit), a man's penis becomes so long that he is forced to carry it in a basket, etc. | 32 | 39 |
| F18a In F18 family | Long penis. | The penis of a male character is much longer than normal or becomes so. During intercourse, it usually crawls towards the woman like a snake. (Only texts with a focus on authenticity are included, not anecdotes). | 118 | 170 |
| F34b In F34 family | Lover of non-human nature. | A girl, woman or group of women voluntarily take as their lover a penis that exists as a special creature, snake, moray eel, lizard, worm, crab, large aquatic animal or aquatic monster, or large terrestrial mammal. People kill or maim the lover, the woman and/or her offspring, or she herself loses her human nature. The woman's behaviour is condemned. | 156 | 315 |
| F20 | Lovers stuck together. | After copulation, the man and woman are unable to break their embrace. | 40 | 40 |
| F59 | Man in woman: modelling the figure. | Pretending to be a woman, the trickster transforms part of his body, another character, or some object into a swaddled baby, female genitalia, or a female household item, or disguises an animal or object as a baby born to a new husband. | 22 | 26 |
| F63 | Man marries, K1321.1, ATU 1538*. | A male trickster transforms into a woman and gets married. In the end, he is exposed or runs away from his husband. | 64 | 74 |
| F8 | Meeting of men and women. | In the beginning (.55.60.67.73.) women and men lived separately from each other, then came together. Cf. motif F45 (Amazons). | 35 | 69 |
| F16 | Men and women: exchange of characteristics. | Men possessed biological characteristics that are now characteristic of women, or vice versa (beards, menstruation, breasts, childbearing). | 59 | 83 |
| F42 | Men leave. | Feeling wronged, men leave their wives or sisters. | 20 | 32 |
| F42a In F42 family | Men turn into birds. | In the community of the first ancestors, young men or boys turn into birds or bats and fly away. | 9 | 21 |
| F45C In F45 family | Men without wives. | There were men who lived separately from women. See also motif F8. | 3 | 4 |
| F9e In F9 family | Mice in the vagina. | Small mammals with sharp teeth are found in a woman's vagina. | 9 | 14 |
| F28 | Monstrous penis. | There is a separate penis character with whom the first women, Amazons, or simply some woman copulate. | 18 | 25 |
| F22A In F22 family | Names of body parts. | The character repeatedly asks the woman about the names and/or functions of her body parts until he reaches the genitals. | 8 | 11 |
| F47b In F47 family | New people in the same place. | In order to create new people (new women) to replace those who have been destroyed, the character leaves something (feathers or pieces of flesh) in each empty hut (in the hearth, in the hammock, in the village), from which new people (new women) appear. | 9 | 10 |
| F83 | News precedes the hero. | The character does something forbidden and indecent in a place hidden from prying eyes, and then asks people what's new. They reply that there is no news – except that so-and-so (the character) did such-and-such. | 28 | 34 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.