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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

Showing 51–100 of 198 · Page 2 of 4

Ref	Title	Summary	Traditions ▲	Narratives
F51c In F51 family	Provocative behaviour after incest.	Upon learning that her unknown lover is her own brother, the girl shows him her genitals or bare breasts, offering him what he so desired. After that, she runs away, and he rushes after her.	9	12
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
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
F9e In F9 family	Mice in the vagina.	Small mammals with sharp teeth are found in a woman's vagina.	9	14
F24	Cause of menstruation: bite.	Women lose blood when they are bitten by fish, snakes, etc.	10	11
F28a1 In F28 family	Jumping penis.	The living penis is a dangerous creature that attacks people.	10	11
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
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
F91	The worm grower.	A man finds or breeds monstrous worms to eat his wife.	10	19
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
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
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
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
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
F70f In F70 family	Accidental change of gender.	Finding themselves in a deserted place, people accidentally change their gender.	11	16
F98	God and the cow.	A heavenly anthropomorphic deity descends to earth and mates with a cow.	11	24
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
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
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
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
F14	Son of a man and a stone.	The hero is born as a result of the union of a man with a stone or rock.	13	33
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
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
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
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
F18d In F18 family	Long clitoris.	Female genitals were enormous in size.	14	15
F28a3 In F28 family	Pleasant for girls, dangerous for others.	A girl (woman) possesses an object that is pleasant (useful). Once in the hands of others, it becomes harmful (dangerous).	14	14
F28b In F28 family	Penis made of wax.	A woman uses a penis made of wax, wood, fruit or root. Usually her husband or male relative smears it with pepper, and the woman is maimed or killed.	14	18
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
F37	Calabash on the water.	To summon her lover, the character taps on a calabash placed on the water.	14	22
F41	Husbands kill wives.	Ancestral men kill women who behave contrary to social norms.	14	24
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
F70d In F70 family	The disgraced informer.	A girl pretends to be a man or a eunuch, or a girl hides a disability, or a man pretends to be a girl. Someone reveals a secret. At the last moment, the hero or heroine magically gets rid of the disability (acquires male or female nature), the informer is disgraced (executed).	14	14
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
F31	Snake egg.	A girl or woman becomes pregnant, without knowing it, by a reptile when she unknowingly touches a dead reptile or when a liquid that has leaked from the reptile gets inside her (usually when the contents of a snake egg accidentally flow between her legs).	15	19
F10	Teeth knocked out.	A woman has a second mouth (usually in her vagina) with sharp teeth. A man inserts or throws a stone, bone, stick, etc. into this mouth, knocking out the teeth or extracting toothy animals from it in this way.	16	10
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
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
F70c In F70 family	The castrated becomes a man (ATU 318).	A young man loses his male organ, but restores it with magic (and marries happily). Cf. ATU 750K. In ATU 318, this episode is described as one of many possible ones related to the theme of the unfaithful wife.	16	15
F28d In F28 family	Children are born from a wooden penis.	By masturbating with an artificial penis, a woman conceives children.	17	18
F3a In F3 family	Pregnant man.	A man carries a child like a woman.	17	17
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
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
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
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
F9b In F9 family	Piranha in the vagina.	A biting piranha in a woman's genitals.	17	27
F14A In F14 family	Birth from stone.	An anthropomorphic character emerges from stone.	18	40
F28	Monstrous penis.	There is a separate penis character with whom the first women, Amazons, or simply some woman copulate.	18	25
F30a In F30 family	Child-worm.	A woman nurses a worm (caterpillar, reptile, fish) instead of a child; people kill the monster.	18	27

Showing 51–100 of 198 · Page 2 of 4

Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.