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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F65d In F65 family | The fake dead man: the wife doesn't believe it. | The character pretends to be dying and is left at the burial site. However, his wife (mother, aunt) finds out about the deception and provokes the supposed dead man, forcing him to reveal himself. | 10 | 25 |
| F49C In F49 family | The first humans do not know how to give birth. | In the beginning of time, women do not know how to give birth. See motif F49. | 27 | 7 |
| F9g1 In F9 family | The heavy hand of the bride. | On her wedding night, the bride-heroine throws herself on her groom to crush him. | 10 | 10 |
| F3 | The husband gives birth after eating what was intended for his wife (ATU 705A). | A man accidentally eats a magical remedy intended for a woman to become pregnant and gives birth to a child. The child comes out of a tumour on the man's leg, or in some other way, but the man remains alive. | 25 | 22 |
| F65 | The imaginary dead man. | To satisfy their secret desire, which involves breaking social norms (forbidden sex, refusing to share food with relatives), the character pretends to be dying, abandoned at the burial site. | 119 | 26 |
| F65b In F65 family | The imaginary dead man: eats alone, K1867. | The character fakes death in order to eat greedily alone. | 34 | 57 |
| F65a In F65 family | The Imaginary Dead Man: Meeting with a Lover, ATU 885A. | The spouse leaves the character at the burial site; the (pretend) dead person comes back to life and leaves to be with their lover. | 59 | 68 |
| F65c In F65 family | The imaginary dead man: the boy reveals the deception. | A man pretends to be dead (in order to marry his daughter or to be able to eat the meat of hunted animals alone). One of his younger children recognises their (adoptive) father or notices that the supposed dead man is alive (he runs away from the funeral pyre, laughs, etc.). | 22 | 12 |
| F54a In F54 family | The invisible scar (the husband turns out to be the son). | In her husband's appearance, the woman discovers signs that are not immediately noticeable, indicating that he has hidden his true nature from her and is not the right marriage partner (he is an animal, or her son, brother or father); or the husband discovers in the same way that his wife is his sister. | 16 | 18 |
| F85 | The Moon: women against men. | The moon/moon leads women in their confrontation with men or takes women away from men. | 6 | 5 |
| F74 | The naked man pretends to be dead. | Upon seeing a dangerous character, a man or woman undresses and pretends to be dead (or the character undresses the woman). Examining and sniffing the supposed corpse, the character finds what he takes to be a wound or signs of decay and leaves. | 32 | 30 |
| F40c In F40 family | The patriarch kills the boys. | An authoritative man systematically kills the boys born to his wives or his sister. | 16 | 23 |
| F28A5 In F28 family | The penis and vulva as separate beings. | The penis and vulva (in the singular or plural) are separate beings and characters. | 8 | 6 |
| F86a In F86 family | The pet is eaten. | The character cares for a fish, crab or other creature. Others watch the character, kill and eat his pet, or try to do so. | 17 | 18 |
| F9a1 In F9 family | The pike's mouth, ATU 1686A*. | A girl or young woman says (pretends) that she has a predatory mouth in her vagina. {Unlike variants characteristic of the circum-Pacific region, the corresponding texts do not suggest that the female womb is actually dangerous}. | 17 | 19 |
| F25 | The reason for menstruation: someone else's blood. | Women have been stained with someone else's or their own blood, or with blood-like paint, ever since women began menstruating. | 28 | 38 |
| F13 | The red penis of primates. | The genitals of humans or monkeys acquire their current shape and colour as a result of copulation with a girl who had a toothy womb or no vagina. | 8 | 15 |
| F88 | The scent of women. | Female genitals are initially fragrant or odourless, but then acquire an unpleasant odour (they do not acquire a fragrant odour). | 21 | 24 |
| F89 | The sister's cunning. | A sister and brother live alone. The brother refuses to commit incest. The sister resorts to cunning, as a result of which the brother mistakes her for a stranger and marries her. | 9 | 14 |
| F97a In F97 family | The snake loses its legs. | The snake is to blame for others eating food forbidden by the deity. For this, it is deprived of the limbs it once had. {The Efik variant may not be related to the biblical one, but the South Asian ones are most likely related. | 6 | 6 |
| F30 | The snake lover. | A girl or woman takes a snake, eel, moray eel, lizard or worm as a lover or spouse. People kill or maim the lover, the woman and/or their offspring, or she herself turns into a snake. Cf. motif K76B (the snake-husband becomes and remains a handsome man). See motif F29. | 139 | 246 |
| F32 | The snake son gathers fruit. | Small children or a single infant, who temporarily transform into adult men and/or emerge from their mother's womb, or a snake living in a woman's womb, climb a tree and help her gather fruit, bark, tree mushrooms, etc.; or a father discovers his daughter's connection with a snake when he climbs a tree to gather fruit for her. | 31 | 46 |
| F87a In F87 family | The snake wife and her children: transformation into birds. | A snake crawls onto the clothes of a girl bathing, climbs down in exchange for a promise to marry him, and takes her to the underwater world. She is happy there and gives birth to children. Together with them, she visits her relatives. They call the snake out of the water and kill it. After that, the wife transforms her children and/or herself into birds. | 12 | 26 |
| F87b In F87 family | The snake wife and her children: transformation into trees. | A snake crawls onto the clothes of a bathing girl, climbs down in exchange for a promise to marry him, and takes her to the underwater world. She is happy there and gives birth to children. Together with them, she visits her relatives. They call the snake out of the water and kill it. After that, the wife transforms her children and/or herself into plants. | 12 | 14 |
| F68 | The supposed dead woman dresses up as a man. | A woman pretends to be dead or actually dies. Her (former) lover comes to her grave. She goes with him, trying to avoid exposure, puts on men's clothes, but is eventually recognised. | 4 | 5 |
| F93a In F93 family | The talking penis and the mother-in-law. | A man's penis begins to talk incessantly, falling silent only after his mother-in-law takes it in her hand. | 6 | 3 |
| F58 | The trickster and women. | The character spends the night with a group of women, concealing his nature and/or intentions. In the end, he is either identified and punished, or he slips away to continue his mischief. | 59 | 63 |
| F60 | The trickster heals the girl. | A girl or woman falls ill. A character comes to heal her. The treatment consists of him copulating with her or attempting to do so. | 23 | 26 |
| F53 | The ugly husband. | An unattractive man marries, but hides his face. When he is seen, the marriage is dissolved. | 26 | 32 |
| F73a In F73 family | The vulva as a wound (first humans). | The vulva is an unhealed wound on the body of the first women, or the first humans did not copulate because they thought that the vulva was a wound. | 6 | 6 |
| F95 | The wife of one of the brothers. | Two companions or brothers live together. One has a wife, whom he hides. The other suspects her existence, destroys her, or tries to get a wife for himself. | 10 | 12 |
| F91 | The worm grower. | A man finds or breeds monstrous worms to eat his wife. | 10 | 19 |
| F29a In F29 family | The worm is scalded with boiling water. | To kill a woman's lover, who has the appearance of a worm or snake and crawls into her vagina from under the ground, boiling water, resin or hot coals are poured on him. | 12 | 17 |
| F78 | Toothy anus. | The character has teeth in the anus or a second head in place of the anus. | 7 | 7 |
| F9a In F9 family | Toothy womb. | There are teeth, blades or sharp stones in a woman's vagina or on the inside of her thighs; the vagina is a toothy mouth. (Only texts with a focus on authenticity are taken into account, not anecdotes). | 114 | 204 |
| F90 | Tragic incest. | A brother and sister marry. When the children born of this union learn of their origins, the marriage breaks down (the children kill their parents, the father kills or attempts to kill the children, the parents commit suicide, the wife/sister commits suicide after the death of her husband/brother, the wife/sister leaves her husband/brother). | 24 | 33 |
| F1 | Transformed man. | The first woman, female deity, or female animals were originally men (males) who then changed their gender. | 41 | 60 |
| F54e In F54 family | Unintentional killing of a father. | Not knowing who is in front of him, a young man kills his father. | 45 | 28 |
| F55 | What do you want? | Not understanding what her interlocutor of the opposite sex wants, a woman or girl names or shows various objects and body parts. The interlocutor is satisfied when she names or exposes her genitals. Cf. motif f55a. | 22 | 25 |
| F82a In F82 family | What the owl cries about. | In order to lure a forbidden marriage partner into their hammock, the character cries out in the voices of birds and animals or interprets their voices in their own way. | 4 | 4 |
| F48 | Why women are different. | Individual women differ physically because the pieces of flesh divided from the first woman were not identical, or because the males who copulated with the first woman were animals of different species. | 4 | 5 |
| F5a In F5 family | Woman from a tail, ATU 798. | God was going to make Eve from Adam's rib. The rib was stolen by a dog (cat, fox, monkey, devil). God (or an angel sent by him) chased after the thief, grabbed him by the tail and tore it off. God made Eve from this tail. Either God first made a woman from edible material and the dog ate this figure. He had to make a new one from Adam's rib. Or God cut off Adam's tail and made Eve from it. | 23 | 24 |
| F7 | Woman from the underwater world. | A man catches, grabs, meets, or receives a woman associated with the aquatic-chthonic world (a fish, mermaid, snake, crab, seal, etc.) and takes her as his wife. Cf. motifs E26 and K25. | 145 | 224 |
| F46a In F46 family | Woman in a tree. | Men (human-animals) discover a woman at the top of a tree and copulate with her there. | 10 | 14 |
| F38 | Women and secret knowledge. | Women were the keepers of secret knowledge, shrines, or ritual objects that are now forbidden to them; they attempted to regain this knowledge or these objects. | 65 | 135 |
| F43b In F43 family | Women hide underground. | Leaving the men, the women of the community of the first ancestors hide in a hole underground. | 5 | 11 |
| F43a In F43 family | Women kill men. | In the community of the first ancestors, women kill, attempt to kill, or transform men. | 19 | 28 |
| F39 | Women's time. | In the past or in distant lands, women dominated men, were the active party in marital relations, and engaged in male activities. Men engaged in female activities. Later, the situation changed. Either women missed the opportunity to gain superiority. See motif F38. | 57 | 61 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.