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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.
I - Supernatural objects and creatures
| Ref ▲ | Title | Summary | Traditions | Narratives |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I80b In I80 family | The forgotten wind, ATU 752B. | Man is allowed to control the weather in his own interests. He sends rain at the right time, but cannot take all factors into account (he usually forgets about the wind). The bread will not grow or will be unpalatable. | 23 | 8 |
| I81 | Waters fall into the abyss. | Earthly waters fall into the abyss. | 26 | 29 |
| I81a In I81 family | Chthonic crab. | The giant crab causes earthquakes or floods, closes or can close the water outlet. | 14 | 22 |
| I81a1 In I81 family | Crab and snake. | The struggle between the crab and the snake (eel) determines the features of the relief of a particular area or has cosmic proportions. | 5 | 6 |
| I81b In I81 family | Charybdis (ebb and flow). | During high tide, a certain creature spews seawater or displaces it with its body, and during low tide, it swallows the water or makes room for it (or it is simply reported that the water is either spewed or recedes). | 14 | 15 |
| I82a In I82 family | Male Venus. | The Morning and/or Evening Star – a male character. | 148 | 218 |
| I82b In I82 family | Venus-woman. | The Morning and/or Evening Star – a female character. | 170 | 234 |
| I82c In I82 family | Wife of the Moon. | Venus or an unidentified star in the eastern and/or western sky – the wife of the Moon. See motif I82b. | 63 | 78 |
| I82c1 In I82 family | The Moon's two wives. | The Moon has two wives (usually the Morning Star and the Evening Star). With the caring one, he grows fat, with the other, he starves and grows thin. | 8 | 7 |
| I82d In I82 family | Morning and Evening Stars – Man and Woman. | The Morning and Evening Stars are contrasted as man and woman. See motifs I82a, I82b. | 32 | 29 |
| I82e In I82 family | The star that sold its mother. | It is said that Venus or another star sold her mother or father in order to adorn herself luxuriously and dress up. | 3 | 8 |
| I82f In I82 family | Venus – Wolf Star. | (Evening) Venus is associated with a predatory beast, usually a she-wolf. | 13 | 18 |
| I82g In I82 family | Venus – Shepherd's Star. | Venus or another star (Arcturus, Sirius, etc.) is called the Shepherd's Star (the star of the Shepherd, Sheepherder, Cowherd, Swineherd, etc.). | 21 | 20 |
| I82h In I82 family | Venus – Cholpan/Cholbon. | The name of Venus sounds like Cholpan, Cholbon, Tsolmon, etc. (čol- 'to sparkle, to shine' [Vámbéri 1879: 155]). | 50 | 72 |
| I82i In I82 family | Venus – Zahra/Zura. | The name of the object in the night sky (usually Venus) sounds like Zukhra, Zahra, Zura, etc. | 25 | 29 |
| I82j In I82 family | Venus – husband of the Moon. | Venus-man or another star is the husband of the Moon-woman. See motif I82a. | 3 | 3 |
| I83 | The sky of birds. | Birds (especially vultures and eagles) lived or live in the sky, usually on one of several tiers of the upper world. | 64 | 107 |
| I84 | The Milky Way – a ski trail. | The Milky Way – ski tracks. | 31 | 68 |
| I84a In I84 family | The frozen son of a god. | Contrary to the warning of his father or mother, a young man or woman sets off on a journey in winter and freezes to death. Cf. motif B33A ("Frozen in Spring"). | 10 | 16 |
| I85 | The Polar Star – a stake or a nail. | Polar Star – stake, nail, hitching post, etc. | 77 | 108 |
| I85a In I85 family | Animals around the North Star. | Animals walk around the North Star, or the movement of the stars is compared to the movement of animals around a pole. See motif I85. | 23 | 25 |
| I85a1 In I85 family | The North Star – a hole in the sky. | The North Star – a hole leading to the upper world. | 14 | 13 |
| I85b In I85 family | The North Star – Man. | The North Star – one person. | 31 | 35 |
| I85c In I85 family | Vessels with weather. | The character goes up to the sky and finds vessels containing various (two or more) types of precipitation, weather phenomena, seasons and/or celestial bodies. | 18 | 20 |
| I85c1 In I85 family | Heavenly vessel for rain, A1131.4, A1131.4.1. | In the sky there is a vessel, a box or an indescribable container for storing rain (rain clouds). | 38 | 47 |
| I86 | Down in birds, scales in fish. | The inhabitants of the upper world produce down, wool, and scales, which turn into birds, animals, and fish. | 18 | 16 |
| I86a In I86 family | Down turns into snow. | Snow arises from bird down when a bird shakes itself in the sky or when a character shakes out down or fur clothing, plucks birds, etc. | 21 | 24 |
| I87 | Skull cave. | The characters use an object belonging to the world of giants (a skull, an animal shoulder blade, a mitten) as a shelter. Cf. I87C: animals use an object belonging to the world of humans (a skull, a mitten, a sieve, etc.) as a shelter. | 19 | 29 |
| I87a In I87 family | One creature is larger than another. | A character of gigantic size turns out to be small in comparison with a character of even greater size, or the same character turns out to be small in some episodes and gigantic in others. | 43 | 63 |
| I87a1 In I87 family | Small or large – dialogue. | Two people engage in a dialogue, contradicting each other in their descriptions of the sizes of creatures and objects. | 19 | 27 |
| I87a2 In I87 family | What are two? Dialogue, ATU (812*), 2010, H602.1.1., †H602.1.1. | The antagonist names numbers from one to 7, 12, etc., the hero answers what each number corresponds to, and the antagonist is unable to refute him. | 53 | 62 |
| I87aa In I87 family | The Great Bull, ATU 1960A. | Describes a giant bull (rarely: horse): head in one field, body in another; a bathhouse on its tail, a lake on its back; people standing at its head and tail have to walk a long way to meet each other; etc. Usually the bull is killed and eaten (by people in Baltic-Finnish traditions and in Olonets antiquity; by birds in most southern traditions). | 28 | 50 |
| I87ab In I87 family | Only a child can move it. | Strong men or a crowd of people cannot move the body of a dead animal or the leg of a motionless person, but a child or a woman can do it easily. Cf. motif B83. | 15 | 24 |
| I87ac In I87 family | A bone in the eye. | Something huge gets into a person's eye, which he mistakes for a speck of dust. Usually, a bird carries away an animal or fish and drops a bone into the man's eye. It is difficult to find and remove (to do this, they get into a boat and float it inside the eye, throw a net into the eye, pull it out with oxen, etc.). | 17 | 29 |
| I87ad In I87 family | Hidden in a tooth cavity. | A giant hides a persecuted person in his mouth – usually (perhaps always) in a tooth cavity; or the person remains alive in the giant's mouth, hiding in a tooth cavity. Cf. motif M21a. | 11 | 10 |
| I87b In I87 family | The braggart meets the strongest, ATU 650B. | When a character boasts of his strength, his wife or mother says that there is someone stronger than him. He sets off in search and meets a character who is much stronger than him. {ATU gives a definition of the plot (or rather, the first half of it) similar to ours, but some of the references given refer to our motif i87a, not i87b}. | 32 | 50 |
| I87c In I87 family | The mitten house, ATU 283B. | Animals use a small object belonging to the human world (skull, mitten, jug, etc.) for shelter or transportation. Cf. motif I87: characters use an object (skull, animal shoulder blade, mitten) belonging to the world of giants as a shelter. | 19 | 39 |
| I87c1 In I87 family | Mouse in a boat. | A mouse makes itself a boat out of a small object. | 8 | 8 |
| I87d In I87 family | People in the time of giants, ATU 701. | In the past, giants inhabited the earth. One of them finds a tiny human being and brings him to his father or mother. They usually say that such people will replace the current giants. | 25 | 35 |
| I87e In I87 family | Dwarves after humans. | After the present humans, dwarves will live on earth. | 7 | 7 |
| I87f In I87 family | Suicide of the Narts. | Before modern humans, there lived others who differed in strength, height, nobility, or other qualities. They disappeared after committing suicide. | 9 | 7 |
| I88 | The multi-tailed beast. | Describes a creature with several tails. | 13 | 16 |
| I89 | The lost caravan. | There is a star that brings death and misfortune; it is usually told how people mistake a star or constellation rising at night for the Morning Star, set off on a journey and lose their way. | 27 | 39 |
| I90 | Behind the rolling ball. | The character goes towards their goal, following a rolling ball of thread (less often an apple or a ball). | 52 | 81 |
| I91 | A body of water at the foot of a tree. | At the foot or around the base of a tree connecting the tiers of the universe or of gigantic size and considered the main tree of the world, there is a spring or water body, the water of which usually has unusual properties. | 17 | 18 |
| I92 | The rainbow changes gender. | A person who has come into contact with a rainbow in a certain way (walked under it, drunk water where the rainbow drinks, etc.) changes their gender. | 41 | 56 |
| I92a In I92 family | Jumping over the rainbow. | A person who jumps or steps over a rainbow changes their gender. | 9 | 10 |
| I92b In I92 family | Treasures under the rainbow. | Where the ends of the rainbow reach the ground, there is treasure. | 16 | 23 |
| I93 | The Milky Way – the backbone of the sky. | The Milky Way – the backbone, support, pillar of the sky or world. | 26 | 20 |
| I93A In I93 family | The Milky Way – the heavenly tail. | The Milky Way is the tail of a creature that is being pulled by its tail. | 2 | 2 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.