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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I94 | Pleiades – holes. | The Pleiades are something holey. | 40 | 52 |
| I95 | The Pleiades – a sieve for grain. | The Pleiades are a sieve or riddle for sifting agricultural products. See motif I95. | 29 | 45 |
| I95a In I95 family | Orion – scales. | Orion (probably always Orion's Belt) is Libra. | 19 | 21 |
| I95b In I95 family | Orion – the balance beam. | Orion is a yoke. | 15 | 18 |
| I95c In I95 family | Orion – staff. | Orion's belt – staff, stick, three sticks, rod, crutch, etc. | 24 | 21 |
| I96 | The bloody rainbow. | A rainbow consisting of blood either heralds war and death. | 15 | 20 |
| I97 | Rainbow horse. | Rainbow – hoofed animal (horse, bull, goat, sheep). | 24 | 24 |
| I98a In I98 family | The Pleiades – a hen with chicks. | The Pleiades (in Tajikistan – Giady) – hen, brooding hen with chicks, chicks, rarely – rooster. | 58 | 107 |
| I98b In I98 family | The Pleiades – a duck's nest. | The Pleiades – ducks, nest or wild duck egg. | 10 | 16 |
| I98C In I98 family | Pleiades – a flock of birds. | The Pleiades - a flock of (flying) birds. | 11 | 10 |
| I99 | The Pleiades – boys or men. | The Pleiades – a group of boys, young men, men or people of different genders, but predominantly male. | 90 | 129 |
| I100 | Pleiades – girls, young women, women. | Pleiades – a group of girls or women (with children). | 96 | 127 |
| I100a In I100 family | Pleiades – family. | The Pleiades – a woman or man with children, members of the same family. | 25 | 33 |
| I100b In I100 family | Pleiades - people. | The Pleiades - a group of people of any gender and age. See motifs i99 - i100A, aggregate data. | 1 | 1 |
| I100c In I100 family | The Pleiades and the Cuckoo. | God turned the husband into a cuckoo, and the wife and children into the Pleiades. | 3 | 4 |
| I100d In I100 family | Stars – kids. | Stars are associated with kids. | 8 | 7 |
| I101 | The Great Bear – stakes. | The Big Dipper or several bright stars of another constellation are stakes, pillars supporting a platform, or some object is stretched, dried, or stored on these stakes. | 19 | 41 |
| I102 | The Milky Way – a tree. | The Milky Way – a tree, the trace of a tree. | 12 | 14 |
| I103 | Dog Star. | Sirius is associated with a dog or a wolf. | 29 | 47 |
| I104 | Stars - fragments. | Stars are formed from particles of the body, fragments of a larger celestial body (usually the moon); stars (usually also the sun and moon) are formed from the body of a single being. | 43 | 66 |
| I105 | Hand in the sky. | One of the constellations is associated with the hand (with five marked fingers). | 21 | 23 |
| I106 | The Great Bear is a single character. | The Great Bear is one anthropomorphic character, not a group of people. | 26 | 31 |
| I107 | Stars – nails. | Stars are nails or stakes driven into the sky, or stars are nailed down. | 12 | 14 |
| I108 | The Pleiades – a single character. | The Pleiades are a single character, not a group of people. | 76 | 91 |
| I109 | The Milky Way – the road of the heavenly bodies. | The Milky Way – the road along which the Sun and Moon travel. | 4 | 4 |
| I110 | Heavenly farmers. | Constellations are associated with agricultural tools or with people engaged in agricultural work (most often ploughing and haymaking). See motifs I110A (plough), I110B (haymaking). | 61 | 119 |
| I110a In I110 family | Star Plough. | Orion (rarely - another constellation) - plough. | 45 | 56 |
| I110b In I110 family | Orion – reapers. | Orion – people or agricultural tools associated with harvesting or haymaking. | 29 | 62 |
| I111 | Reptilian Earth. | The earth as a whole or a mountain range is the body of a crocodile, dragon, or snake (eel). | 11 | 16 |
| I112 | Monster boat. | The boat is a living creature with a mouth, a fish. | 15 | 20 |
| I113 | The piglet – the golden bristle, (ATU 530A). | A pig or boar made of gold or with golden bristles is a precious object. (In ATU, "a pig with golden bristles" is one of the possible miraculous objects; the presence of a corresponding number in regional indexes does not necessarily mean the presence of an image; only cases where the image is directly named are taken into account). | 15 | 28 |
| I114 | The Golden Fleece. | Describes a ram or sheep with golden wool or the skin of such a ram. | 11 | 17 |
| I115 | Orion and the Pleiades. | Orion and the Pleiades appear in the same story. | 62 | 73 |
| I115a In I115 family | Orion and the Pleiades – men and women. | In the same narrative or ritual context, Orion and the Pleiades are contrasted with each other as a man or men and a woman or women. (Orion is usually associated with the masculine principle, and the Pleiades with the feminine; among the Mentawai, d'Antracast, and Toba peoples, the opposite is true (due to regional influences? In Indonesia and eastern South America, the Pleiades are usually a group of young men). | 36 | 50 |
| I116 | The Milky Way – the boundary between seasons. | The Milky Way separates the seasons of the year or worlds (dry from wet, sky from earth, etc.). | 18 | 19 |
| I117 | The spider carries from world to world. | A spider or spider woman lifts a hero or heroine up to the sky, helps them descend to earth, or otherwise helps them cross the path leading to another world. | 60 | 93 |
| I117a In I117 family | The bat helps to descend. | The bat helps the hero descend to the ground from a high cliff. | 11 | 13 |
| I118 | The spider-advisor. | A female spider (less commonly, an old spider) protects the hero or heroine, who live with her, and the hero marries her daughter. (Texts in which the spider only lifts the hero up to the sky or lowers him to the ground are not included; see motif I117). | 20 | 47 |
| I119 | The dead shake the earth. | Earthquakes are caused by inhabitants of the underworld; during earthquakes, they try to get to the surface of the earth to check whether people are still alive. | 23 | 31 |
| I119a In I119 family | Earthquake – are there any survivors? | Creatures shake the earth, either upon learning that there are no longer any inhabitants on it, or to check whether they are still alive, or to show that they themselves are still there. | 12 | 11 |
| I120 | Cornucopia. | Food and clothing can be obtained from the horns of domestic animals (oxen, cows, goats). | 45 | 53 |
| I120a In I120 family | Entering the ear of an animal. | Entering the ear of an animal (usually a horse or a cow) and coming back out, the character becomes beautiful (well-fed, well-dressed). | 11 | 23 |
| I120b In I120 family | Taking something out of an animal's ear. | The character takes food, clothing, and other valuables from the ear of an animal (most often a horse or cow). | 24 | 26 |
| I121 | Paired constellations. | Constellations (usually Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) are considered as two similar, paired objects. (For Africa, Eurasia and Alaska – paired names; for most of America – semantic association, but the names are not paired). | 70 | 88 |
| I122 | The Pleiades – a beehive. | The Pleiades – a beehive, a nest, a cluster of bees or wasps. | 11 | 10 |
| I123 | Altair – herald of the sun. | Altair with a small neighbouring star from the constellation Aquila or Vega with a similarly faint star are considered to appear during or immediately after the winter solstice, although they are actually visible before that. | 7 | 9 |
| I124 | Ursa Major – a boat. | The Big Dipper is considered a boat. | 30 | 23 |
| I125 | Hyades – animal jaw. | Hyades (sometimes, possibly, Pleiades or Orion) – jaw or severed head of a large animal or anthropomorphic creature. | 17 | 29 |
| I126 | The constellation of funeral bier. | The Great Bear or other constellation – a bier on which the dead or sick are carried, a body prepared for burial, a grave. | 25 | 27 |
| I127 | Ursa Major – bed. | Ursa Major – bed, couch. | 23 | 34 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.