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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.
H - Paradise Lost
| Ref | Title | Summary | Traditions ▲ | Narratives |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H18a In H18 family | The puppy releases the animals. | The owner of the hunting animals hides them underground; one of the first ancestors turns into a puppy, which is picked up by the owner's children, and releases the animals. See motif H18. | 0 | 0 |
| H32C In H32 family | Lost abundance: the wronged spouse. | The woman's husband has a non-human nature and possesses magical knowledge and values. He is wronged, he leaves, and his knowledge and abilities can no longer be used by humans. | 1 | 1 |
| h36k In h36 family | Trees try to destroy people. | Trees try to prevent humans from appearing on earth, fearing that they will cut them down. | 2 | 2 |
| H49A In H49 family | Husband, wife and innocently killed dog. | A man does not understand that a dog or cat wanted to save his wife or preserve her honour and kills the animal. | 2 | 2 |
| H7h In H7 family | Death follows man. | Despite the warning, man goes to where Death is at that moment. Death enters his body or follows him, and since then, people have been mortal. | 2 | 9 |
| H28c In H28 family | Mosquitoes bring back wives. | The character creates blood-sucking insects to influence the behaviour of a mating partner. | 3 | 4 |
| H36g2 In H36 family | The beetle distorts the message. | When a character, who later became a dung beetle, was ordered to convey certain instructions to people, he distorted them. | 3 | 3 |
| h7g2 In h7 family | Escape from death from land to water. | Knowing that Death is approaching, a person hopes that it will seek him on land, so he settles on the surface of the water or under the water. But Death finds him. | 3 | 4 |
| H12a In H12 family | Dead wife haunts her husband. | The wife dies, the husband comes for her, or he kills her himself for adultery; she turns into a monster and haunts him. | 5 | 9 |
| H1bb In H1 family | They did not spare the dog. | One character refuses to resurrect another's beloved dog, and this conflict is linked to the loss of the ability to resurrect people. | 5 | 5 |
| H28b In H28 family | Mosquitoes made from animal wool. | Shorn hairs on animal skins or ash and smoke from burnt skins covered with wool turn into blood-sucking insects. | 5 | 6 |
| H38 | The owner of the valuables comes to retrieve them. | A supernatural character changes appearance and comes to the hero's children (less often to the hero himself). Unaware of the trick, they hand over the magical object they have obtained to its former owner, and the character disappears with it. | 5 | 5 |
| H54c In H54 family | Crucified eyelids. | The character's eyelids are crucified so that he cannot close them, or he does so himself on the advice of another. | 5 | 7 |
| H24g In H24 family | Woman in a vessel. | A woman returned from the other world or obtained there disappears when a man opens the vessel in which she is kept prematurely. | 6 | 8 |
| H34d In H34 family | A piece bitten off the sky. | A zoomorphic character climbs or attempts to climb up to the sky or the moon to bite off a piece of them. | 6 | 8 |
| H6c2 In H6 family | Living water in the land of darkness. | At the edge of the world lies the land of darkness. Those who want to obtain living water or gold strive to get there. | 6 | 7 |
| H7f In H7 family | Death asks who is there, ATU 332C*(1). | God gives instructions that certain categories of people must die and suffer. The character who receives the instructions, caring for the people, passes on other orders to the executors. | 6 | 9 |
| H12b In H12 family | The dead feed on excrement. | In the afterlife, the dead or demons feed on excrement. | 7 | 11 |
| H1f In H1 family | People learn to bury the dead. | People learn how to treat the dead by observing the behaviour of crows. | 7 | 5 |
| H36h In H36 family | Unsuccessful jump (frog and death). | Creatures, including a frog or toad, must cross an obstacle. This does not go as planned and results in humans becoming mortal. | 7 | 9 |
| H36j In H36 family | The lark betrays man. | The lark is to blame for the fact that man is mortal. | 7 | 9 |
| H44a In H44 family | Heaven and Earth divide children. | Two characters, one associated with the sky or water, and the other with the earth or the world of spirits and humans, divide the child they have given birth to or the people they have created. Usually, the sky (water, spirit) takes the imperishable part, and the earth (human) takes the perishable part. | 7 | 23 |
| H55a In H55 family | Two under one blanket. | Finding himself in another world, a man sees a husband and wife trying to cover themselves with a single blanket, which is not big enough for them, or they do not have enough room for two on the bed. See motif H55A. | 7 | 9 |
| H7i In H7 family | Old Age, Hunger, Illness. | Old Age, Illness, or Hunger are special characters, but Death is not mentioned. | 7 | 9 |
| H24a In H24 family | Bag of stars. | Opening the bag, the character releases stars that rush chaotically into the sky. | 8 | 12 |
| H24e In H24 family | Scattered seeds. | Having brought the seeds of humanity into our world, the character drops or prematurely opens what he has brought. (Sometimes this explains the inequality of people and disorder in society). | 8 | 16 |
| H32b In H32 family | Lost abundance: the offended child. | A girl and/or boy, who are the children of a deity, come to live with humans, leading to an abundance of food/resources. Due to the hurt they have caused, the children return to their own world, and human life becomes difficult or meagre. | 8 | 2 |
| H37a In H37 family | Jumping over firewood, lighting a fire. | A character gives another the ability to easily light a fire. The latter uses it unnecessarily and loses it. | 8 | 6 |
| H40A In H40 family | A dog appears in times of danger. | At the moment of attack by a dangerous creature, a randomly thrown substance or object turns into a dog, which drives away the attacker. | 8 | 5 |
| H43ac In H43 family | The antagonist brings people to life instead of the creator. | The creator made human figures and left. By sneaking up on the figures, the antagonist brings them to life himself. That's why people are mortal and imperfect. | 8 | 11 |
| H36aa In H36 family | False news: incorrect instructions. | The messenger must tell people what they should do if they want to avoid death, but he distorts the instructions and people become mortal. In Mesoamerican variants, it is not about people in general, but about a specific character. | 9 | 16 |
| H36d In H36 family | The hare betrays man. | The hare distorts God's command and/or is responsible for the fact that humans are mortal. See motif H36. | 9 | 25 |
| H37b In H37 family | Skunk's volley wasted. | One character gives another his power (usually a skunk gives his volley). The other wastes the resource unnecessarily to test its effect. Usually, when the need arises, the resource no longer works. | 9 | 10 |
| H54a In H54 family | The shaven old man. | A man meets an old man whose face is completely covered with hair or snot. He cuts (wipes) it off and receives a reward for doing so. | 9 | 7 |
| H9a In H9 family | Who will give birth first. | Of two women, one of whom is associated with a stone and the other with a plant, only the plant woman leaves offspring, which is why people are what they are (mortal, capable of speech, etc.). Alternatively, children born to two women have opposite characteristics (skilled and unskilled, etc.). | 9 | 9 |
| H14 | The woman flies back. | A woman who has returned from the world of the dead flies back, becoming a bird or a fly. | 10 | 9 |
| H43ab In H43 family | The spat upon is mortal. | Man is mortal because he was spat upon at creation. | 10 | 5 |
| H7b2 In H7 family | Immortal poverty. | A man named Poverty makes Death swear that it will never come to him. Therefore, poverty is inevitable in the world. | 10 | 16 |
| H34c In H34 family | Flying rice. | Rice flew (came) from the field to the house. | 11 | 15 |
| H34f In H34 family | Baskets carried heavy loads themselves. | Baskets or clay vessels carried heavy loads themselves. | 11 | 11 |
| H36e In H36 family | The rat betrays man. | The rat is to blame for the fact that man is mortal. | 11 | 12 |
| H36g1 In H36 family | The bull distorts the message. | When a bull (ox, cow) is ordered to convey certain instructions to people, he confuses them or deliberately distorts them. | 11 | 16 |
| H52a In H52 family | Death provokes touching the ground. | Returning from the land of immortality, a person must not touch the ground. However, he dismounts from his horse to help an old man (old woman). Death, who has taken the form of an old man, immediately kills him. Rarely: at the last moment, the hero decides not to perform actions that are fatal for him. | 11 | 19 |
| H6c3 In H6 family | The stork and the otherworld. | Large birds that fly in wedge formations (storks, cranes, swans, geese – German: Zugvögel) are associated with the otherworld (they bring children from there, carry children away to the non-human world, control living and dead water, etc.). | 11 | 18 |
| H9b In H9 family | Children as plant shoots. | People have become like plants, which, although mortal, live on in their descendants (shoots). | 11 | 18 |
| H15 | Yawning and whispering. | The dead or spirits cannot hear cries when the living call them, but they can hear whispers, yawns, gurgles, etc. See motif H12. | 12 | 22 |
| H31 | Death: man and the heavenly bodies. | God summons several characters, including man and the heavenly bodies, and makes man mortal and the heavenly bodies immortal. | 12 | 20 |
| H36i In H36 family | The goat betrays man. | The goat or sheep is to blame for the fact that man is mortal. See motif H36. | 12 | 15 |
| H52b In H52 family | The search for immortality, ATU 470B. | Setting out in search of a land where there is no death, a man encounters characters engaged in tasks that can only be completed in an impossibly long time. However, the man needs eternal life, and so he continues on his way. | 12 | 12 |
| H17 | Ring of defenders around the leader. | The first ancestors surround the deceased or sick person in a ring, seeking to protect him. The antagonist manages to find a loophole and causes irreparable harm to people. | 13 | 27 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.