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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F97a5 In F97 family | Snake is deprived of its limbs | Being responsible for breaking food tabou by humans, snake lost its limbs as a punishment | 0 | 0 |
| 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 |
| F80C In F80 family | The dead with genitals in their hands. | In the afterlife, women carry the penises of their lovers, and men carry the vulvas of their lovers. See motif F80. | 2 | 1 |
| F80D In F80 family | Genitals flew like geese. | Female genitals flew like geese. | 2 | 2 |
| 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 |
| F45C In F45 family | Men without wives. | There were men who lived separately from women. See also motif F8. | 3 | 4 |
| F54b In F54 family | Stuck feathers. | A young man or boy copulates with his mother or sister. This becomes known from the remains of paint or feathers with which he was covered during sexual intercourse. | 3 | 3 |
| F54c In F54 family | Recognised by nail marks. | A husband sees someone's fingernail marks on his wife's body and gathers the men to find out who left the marks. | 3 | 3 |
| F77C In F77 family | Penis-rope. | The character climbs a tree or descends a huge penis, which turns into a rope or vine. | 3 | 3 |
| F9f2 In F9 family | The cobra's hood in the wife's handbag. | A woman places a piece of flesh from her slain snake lover in her handbag and poses a corresponding riddle. If her husband fails to guess the answer, she has the right to kill him. The husband accidentally learns the secret and kills his wife. | 3 | 3 |
| 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 |
| F101 | Rival prevents childbirth. | With the help of magic, a rival or the spouse's mother tries to prevent a woman from giving birth. | 4 | 4 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| F80B In F80 family | Left unattended. | The vaginas were left unattended and became damaged. See motif F80. | 4 | 4 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| F20a In F20 family | People and dogs. | At first, people mated as dogs do now, but then it became as it is now. | 5 | 7 |
| F21 | Penis stuck in a tree. | While the character copulates with a woman, she turns into a tree or a rock. His penis gets stuck in her. | 5 | 5 |
| F28a2 In F28 family | Penises grow in the field. | The owner of the field, either intentionally or having misheard the question, replies that he grows penises. After that, penises grow in the field instead of crops. | 5 | 5 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| F75 | Siren and tapir. | A hunter sees a tapir summoning a woman who lives in the water with a secret signal; she emerges from the lake or river, and the tapir mates with her. The hunter himself summons the woman and becomes her lover. | 5 | 8 |
| F100 | Test of chastity (queen and maid). | A magic potion reveals that the only chaste woman is the maid, an orphan, etc. The king chooses the maid. | 6 | 6 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| F51d In F51 family | Ginseng child. | Ginseng roots – boys or girls who help the hero. | 6 | 8 |
| 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 |
| F85 | The Moon: women against men. | The moon/moon leads women in their confrontation with men or takes women away from men. | 6 | 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 |
| 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 |
| F28a4 In F28 family | Penises on plants. | The fruits or stems of plants are penises. | 7 | 7 |
| F45a1 In F45 family | Accidental conception by the wind. | A woman, against her will, conceives from the wind. | 7 | 9 |
| F47a In F47 family | Parts of the female body. | Men use each part of the body of a single woman for copulation, or each man takes a part of her body cut into pieces. | 7 | 9 |
| F78 | Toothy anus. | The character has teeth in the anus or a second head in place of the anus. | 7 | 7 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| F55a In F55 family | Placing on the naked body (demon and woman). | A demonic character persuades a woman to expose a certain part of her body, because that is the only place where a certain object should be placed. The demon kills the woman, tearing off that part of her body. Usually, the woman uses or names various locations, and the character rejects each one in turn until he finds the right one. | 8 | 15 |
| F56a In F56 family | Shavings in the fire. | To see a woman's genitals, a man throws something that flashes brightly into the hearth. The woman recoils, exposing her genitals. | 8 | 8 |
| F57 | Persephone picks a flower. | A girl or her father (rarely: mother) picks a plant (usually a flower) and as a result encounters a character with a non-human appearance and/or inhabiting the underworld. The girl becomes the character's wife. In some cases, the picked plant is the character's hair, but more often there is no direct association of this kind. | 8 | 13 |
| F77a In F77 family | Penis bridge. | A huge penis serves as a bridge. | 8 | 9 |
| F93 | Talking penis, D1610.6.2. | After a person performs a certain action, his penis begins to speak (often repeating what the person has said). | 8 | 4 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.