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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.
J - Avenger heroes
| Ref | Title | Summary | Traditions | Narratives ▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| J12E In J12 family | Skunk. | The false bridegroom - skunk. See motif J12. | 0 | 0 |
| J12F In J12 family | Owl. | False groom - eagle owl/owl. See motif J12. | 0 | 0 |
| J40b In J40 family | Avenged prisoners | After the hero comes back after a long absence and finds his parents enslaved, he tells them to demonstrate openly a lack of respect to their masters and punishes those who were cruel with them | 0 | 0 |
| jia | The myth of the avengers with a full plot. | The myth of the avengers with a full plot. | 0 | 0 |
| J12c In J12 family | Acquaintance at a festival. | A girl meets her fiancé at a dance and then follows in his footsteps. See motif J12. | 8 | 1 |
| J12j In J12 family | The false suitor turns out to be a jester. | A girl or sisters end up with a false groom who plays the role of a jester in the chief's house. See motif J12. | 18 | 1 |
| J12k In J12 family | The groom and the deceiver live in the same house. | Desirable and undesirable marriage partners live in the same house. The undesirable partner is a servant or junior partner, usually pretending to be the master. | 1 | 1 |
| J20 | The sinister guest: the broken taboo. | While the husband or brother is hunting, an evil spirit comes to his wife or sister; he kills or maims her or her brother after she breaks the taboo of opening the door to the guest, looking at him or talking to him. See motif J19. | 14 | 1 |
| J12a In J12 family | Penis in a vessel. | A girl or two sisters come to an old woman who invites them to marry her son. In reality, he is a worm, a snake or a penis, which his mother hides in a vessel during the day. The girl (sisters) do not allow him to approach them and run away. See motif J12. | 7 | 2 |
| J12I In J12 family | Spitting beads. | A desirable marriage partner secretes beads instead of saliva or excrement. See motifs J12 and M57. | 12 | 2 |
| J25b In J25 family | Dead mother brings food to her child. | A pregnant woman dies and is buried. Her spirit leaves the grave to bring food to the child. The child is found and grows up. | 3 | 2 |
| J1 | Avenging heroes (all variants). | The characters avenge the death of their father, mother or other relatives who are older than them by a generation (less often by two generations). | 1 | 3 |
| j23f In j23 family | Temporarily incarnated in a human being. | Something inanimate incarnates in a human being to solve people's problems and then returns to its original state. | 3 | 3 |
| J6a In J6 family | Mother eaten, daughter saved. | A pregnant woman with a young daughter fall into the hands of cannibals. The cannibals find and eat the woman, but her daughter and the baby in her womb are saved. | 3 | 3 |
| j23e In j23 family | Flies through the body of a cannibal. | Wanting to make sure that the enemy is really dead, an insect or bird penetrates its body from one end and exits from the other. | 4 | 4 |
| J25a1 In J25 family | A child born in a grave saves his mother. | A woman dies, but remains incorrupt and gives birth to a child in the grave. He is found and brings his mother back to life. | 5 | 4 |
| j25c In j25 family | Raised by a wolf. | A she-wolf nurses an abandoned infant. He becomes an outstanding leader. | 3 | 4 |
| J33a In J33 family | An old woman beats a scarecrow. | A boy, a young man, or two children live in an old woman's house. They kill her husband—a man or a large animal—and make a scarecrow out of him. Angry that her husband is not responding to her, the old woman beats the scarecrow and then discovers that her husband has been killed. See motif J33. | 4 | 4 |
| J43 | Bait for enemies. | To destroy his antagonists, the hero creates edible bait for them, usually a fruit tree on the other side of the river. | 2 | 4 |
| J58b In J58 family | Door to the sky. | With the help of a chain of arrows, the sky or the sun is pulled down or pushed up, or a hole is made in the sky. | 4 | 4 |
| J62b1 In J62 family | The mistress of the island turns men into animals. | A sorceress living on an island turns men into animals. | 4 | 4 |
| J6B In J6 family | Blinding of the victim. | The mother of the heroes is not killed, but loses her sight. | 4 | 4 |
| J12m In J12 family | A woman turns into a duck. | A woman or two sisters come to two men and become wives of one of them. The other kills or tries to kill his rival or the women. As a result, the women turn into waterfowl. | 7 | 5 |
| J22c In J22 family | Conjoined women. | There is a demonic character in the form of Siamese twins – two semi-fused women. | 5 | 5 |
| J51b In J51 family | A piece is missing: the reborn moon. | The moon has been eaten or has died and its body has decomposed. It is revived, but a small part (the bone) is missing. This determines the characteristics of the moon or the characteristics of human anatomy. | 4 | 5 |
| J56a In J56 family | Transformation into frying pans. | Heroic brothers are transformed into pots or frying pans, but only the elder is able to sit in the fire long enough. | 3 | 5 |
| J12l In J12 family | The hypocritical murderer. | The murderer pretends to mourn the victim along with everyone else. The deception is revealed, and the murderer is pursued. See motif J12. | 10 | 6 |
| J41a In J41 family | Son turns mother into a bird. | The son returns and finds his mother, who has been humiliated and tortured in his absence. The son turns his mother (and usually himself as well) into a bird of a certain species. | 10 | 6 |
| j4c In j4 family | The young man from the egg. | An egg remains from the deceased water character. The young hero who emerges from it avenges his father. | 5 | 6 |
| J59d In J59 family | Reviving the dead by stepping over their bones. | The character steps or jumps over the remains of the slain, and the latter comes back to life. | 5 | 6 |
| J14 | The flute player. | To find the man of her dreams, a woman follows the sounds of music or singing; she usually distinguishes imposters by listening to their clumsy performance. See motif J12. | 17 | 7 |
| J19b In J19 family | Burnt belly. | An evil spirit kills a woman by burning through her body. | 3 | 7 |
| J19c In J19 family | Torn out tongue. | A demonic character comes to a woman and tears out her tongue. She dies (and comes back to life when her tongue is found and returned). | 4 | 7 |
| J51a2 In J51 family | A severed finger instead of a chicken bone. | A girl must penetrate an inaccessible place with the help of chicken bones. She loses one or there are not enough bones. By cutting off her finger and using it as she would use the bones, the girl achieves her goal. | 5 | 7 |
| J58a In J58 family | Three wizards by the river. | To cross the river, each of the three men uses his own magical method. | 8 | 7 |
| J65 | The children of the Sun destroy their enemies. | After the attack by enemies, a woman and her daughter remain. She rejects the marriage proposals of animal suitors and agrees to give her daughter to the heavenly deity (the Sun). The children from this marriage take revenge on their enemies. | 6 | 7 |
| J23b In J23 family | Spears are placed along the path. | To defeat the monster, the young man (twins) prepares spears in advance and leaves them along the supposed retreat route. Fleeing from the monster, the young man throws spears at it one after another and eventually kills it. | 7 | 8 |
| J3 | Conception from under the earth. | A woman conceives a son or twins in a way that is incomprehensible to her; the reason is that when she sits on the ground, a male character (animal) creeps under the ground and fertilises her from below. | 6 | 8 |
| J36 | Antagonist - turtle. | The turtle drags the hero's parents under water. | 7 | 8 |
| J47a1 In J47 family | Goats – owners of food. | The character enters a house where goats live. He secretly eats the food he finds there, but is eventually discovered. | 7 | 8 |
| J50b In J50 family | The father remains half-dead. | The father (alone or with his brother) is only partially resurrected and is unable to live among people (he cannot be a warrior). The hero leaves him (in another world) or allows him to die completely. | 10 | 8 |
| J59c In J59 family | Reviving the dead with a whip. | A character strikes the remains of the deceased with a whip or a lash, and the deceased comes back to life. | 7 | 8 |
| J12G In J12 family | Waterfowl or marsh bird. | The false bridegroom is a bird that lives on or near water. See motif J12. | 15 | 9 |
| J27a In J27 family | The rejected child kills his father. | One of the babies is abandoned and lives in a river, forest, etc.; the other remains at home; after the abandoned brother returns home, the brothers kill their father or his men. See motifs J19, J25. | 6 | 9 |
| J50a In J50 family | Sons embrace their mother. | The mother dies when her sons push or embrace her. | 7 | 9 |
| J58c In J58 family | Bridge of arrows. | A chain of arrows forms a bridge across a water barrier. | 10 | 10 |
| J62b In J62 family | Those transformed into animals are disenchanted. | The character turns those who come to him into animals. Thanks to the hero, they are disenchanted. | 9 | 10 |
| J24 | Ground into flour. | The hero, ground into powder, is reborn. | 9 | 11 |
| J67 | Stones on the eyes. | At night, the character places light-coloured stones or shells over his eyes. Thinking that the character's eyes are open, the antagonist either does not dare to attack him or takes the stones away instead of gouging out his eyes. | 9 | 11 |
| J15b In J15 family | Woman at the toad's house. | While travelling, a woman finds herself in the house of a frog or toad. See motif J15. | 11 | 12 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.