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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.
K - Adventures: Acts of heroes
| Ref | Title | Summary | Traditions ▲ | Narratives |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| K37c In K37 family | Identifying an animal or object. | The character must identify an animal or object among several identical ones. See motif K37. | 7 | 7 |
| K46 | A woman throws herself into the sea. | In a fit of fear or shame, a woman or girl runs to the sea, throws herself into the water or hides on the shore. The suitor tries in vain to catch up with her. | 7 | 8 |
| K52c1 In K52 family | Penis instead of fish. | Demonstrating his power, a shaman, sorcerer or other character with magical abilities causes the dwelling in which he and other people are located to begin to fill with water. Sometimes it is said that this water is an illusion. One episode: the magical specialist orders those present to catch the birds or fish that have appeared with the water, or they begin to catch them on their own initiative; when the water disappears, people see that they are holding not caught animals, but their penises or something else. | 7 | 9 |
| K56a8a In K56 family | The good girl returns with her fiancé. | A girl goes to another world, behaves correctly, returns with an animal or an object, inside which her groom is found. Usually, another girl behaves incorrectly and suffers damage. | 7 | 8 |
| K56aa In K56 family | The dog-groom tests the bride. | Two or three sisters successively become the dog's brides. The first or the first two act incorrectly, perish or fail to achieve their goal. The last one acts correctly and succeeds. | 7 | 7 |
| K65d In K65 family | Incorrect marriage rites and the birth of spirits. | The first human couple initially only have miscarriages, or their children are spirits or unpleasant and dangerous animals. After performing a formal marriage ceremony or repeating it according to new rules, the woman gives birth to real people or gods. | 7 | 16 |
| K73a3 In K73 family | The child is replaced with a doll. | The midwife's ill-wishers replace the baby with a statue or doll (telling the father that his wife has given birth to a doll). | 7 | 9 |
| K103c In K103 family | The bull-helper fights in the copper forest. | Sitting on a bull or a cow, a young man or woman runs away from their stepmother's house. Along the way, the bull fights other bulls (monsters), the last of which usually kills it. | 8 | 10 |
| K104 | The red swan. | The youngest of the brothers stays at home, wounds a red swan or duck, and follows its trail. | 8 | 6 |
| K10i In K10 family | The tree that opened up. | The tree opens its trunk and hides the hero fleeing from a man-eating bird. The monster that flies in after him is held tightly by the tree, which squeezes its trunk again. | 8 | 26 |
| K11 | The eyes of a monstrous bird: metamorphosis. | Brothers (brother and sister) kill a monstrous bird. Its eyes turn into heavenly bodies (among the Oaxacan Indians) or something else (among the present-day Condors of the Yokuts). | 8 | 11 |
| K111 | Animal suitors rejected, Sun accepted. | The girl's mother consistently rejects birds and animals that propose to her daughter, but accepts the proposal of a heavenly anthropomorphic character. | 8 | 10 |
| K127b In K127 family | Brothers turned into oxen. | A group of brothers are turned into bulls (oxen) and then enchanted. | 8 | 8 |
| K136d In K136 family | Two flutes. | A young man receives two flutes (pipes, horns) from a cow (buffalo), which produce different effects when played (joy and sorrow, prosperity and a call for help, etc.). | 8 | 9 |
| K1d In K1 family | The hero's wife's brothers abandon him. | The hero's wife's brothers try to kill him by leaving him on an island. | 8 | 14 |
| K25a4a In K25 family | Rescue from the underwater world (broken chain). | A young woman finds herself in the power of a water creature, and when she comes ashore, she is chained. To free the woman, the chain must be broken. | 8 | 14 |
| K27h In K27 family | Depict a head that is not shown. | The hero must carve an image of the character's head, which he never shows. It usually adorns a wooden bench. | 8 | 17 |
| K27z2f In K27 family | The Biting Doll, ATU 571C. | A poor girl buys a doll (goose) that defecates gold. When the neighbours take the doll, it only dirties their house. They throw it away, and the prince uses it to wipe himself, and it sticks to his backside. No one can help, but the poor girl easily solves the problem. The prince marries her. | 8 | 8 |
| k32g3 In k32 family | What does the perpetrator deserve? . | The villain is asked what punishment he deserves for committing the crime in question. Not knowing that they are talking about him, he decides for himself how he should be executed. | 8 | 13 |
| K38b2 In K38 family | A bird carries away the hero, the hero kills the snake. | A character (almost always a giant bird) brings the hero to its nest, after which the hero accidentally or at the bird's request kills the monster that was devouring the character's children (usually chicks). | 8 | 11 |
| k67i In k67 family | Cows carried in pieces. | The worker is instructed to follow a straight line or overcome the obstacle without breaking it. He kills and cuts up the animals entrusted to him, throws the pieces over the fence or breaks the fence, even though there is a passage nearby. | 8 | 8 |
| K7 | "Like your wife's pubic area." | A man compares a certain object to the genitals of another man's wife. The offended man takes revenge. Usually, a man who climbs a tree to get chicks from a nest compares them to the genitals of the wife or sister of the man waiting below; the latter throws away the ladder. | 8 | 8 |
| K73a2 In K73 family | The child is replaced with a broom. | The ill-wishers of the new mother replace the baby with a broom (they tell the father that his wife has given birth to a broom). | 8 | 12 |
| K73b3 In K73 family | Throw a nut for good luck. | A person who is asked to count the nuts in a barrel (taking them out one by one) accompanies his actions with a revealing story. | 8 | 8 |
| K76g In K76 family | The crab son. | The son or foster son of a married couple – a crab. He marries a princess and turns into a handsome man. | 8 | 11 |
| K80a5 In K80 family | The boar and the fratricides. | Brothers, competing as suitors or heirs, must hunt a boar. The younger brother succeeds. The older brothers kill him and take the boar for themselves. The truth comes out. | 8 | 20 |
| K8aa In K8 family | Jonah: swallowed by a bird. | A huge bird swallows people. The hero kills it, freeing those who have been swallowed, or, if he himself has been swallowed, he manages to get out alive. | 8 | 8 |
| K8b In K8 family | Woman – the soul of the whale. | A raven finds itself in the belly of a whale; the woman inside asks it not to touch a certain organ of the whale (usually the heart) or a burning lamp. The raven breaks the prohibition, the woman disappears, and the whale dies. | 8 | 9 |
| K99a2 In K99 family | The sold dream. 26.29.30.32.33. | One person has a dream, and another buys it and obtains what was predicted in the dream. | 8 | 9 |
| K102a6 In K102 family | The enemy and a woman blind the hero. | The hero's wife, sister or mother participates in a conspiracy against him and helps to blind him. | 9 | 8 |
| K13b In K13 family | A caiman bites off a leg. | A man crosses a body of water on the back of a caiman. The caiman bites off his leg. The cripple undergoes a metamorphosis, turning into a constellation or an animal. | 9 | 14 |
| K140 | Demonstratively ungrateful. | Travelling with his sister or brother, the young man regularly kills his saviours and helpers, exposing himself to ever new dangers. | 9 | 12 |
| K145b In K145 family | The newlywed eats her groom. | After a man and a woman are left alone (usually on their wedding night), the woman turns into a predator or monster and eats the man. | 9 | 9 |
| K15 | No one but this beggar. | A woman swears that she has not been with anyone except (her husband and) a dirty beggar. Others do not know that her lover has taken on the appearance of a beggar. | 9 | 9 |
| K156b In K156 family | A dog helps a girl remain unrecognised. | People suspect that the young man is a girl in disguise. She manages to avoid exposure thanks to a dog (rarely a cat) who learns how to determine his mistress's true gender and tells her about it. | 9 | 8 |
| K1j In K1 family | The abandoned returns faster than the abandoner. | The abandoned one turns into a bird and returns home faster than the one who abandoned him. | 9 | 10 |
| K23a In K23 family | Feathers – birds' weapons. | Birds use their feathers as arrows, or falling feathers cover the mouths of their victims. | 9 | 11 |
| K27f2 In K27 family | Get the same shoes. | A girl demands that her fiancé get her the same pair of shoes (or other items) as hers. These items either exist in a single copy, or it is not known what they look like. Having become invisible, the hero either steals the items (and the owner has to make new ones herself), or finds out what they look like. | 9 | 14 |
| K27y1 In K27 family | Coal arrowheads. | The character believes or pretends that arrowheads should be made of bark, coal, grass, and similar materials. | 9 | 10 |
| K2a3 In K2 family | The hero is left on the mountain. | The hero's companions leave him on the mountain, destroying the rope (chain) by which he climbed up or which he lowered down. | 9 | 11 |
| K30a In K30 family | The chief's wife and the vultures. | The wife of the first ancestor flies away with the vultures (usually voluntarily, after she has already cheated on her husband), and the chief (Uito: her brother) brings her back. See motif K30. | 9 | 7 |
| k33c4 In k33 family | Girl in a pumpkin. | A young man obtains a girl who is inside a pumpkin, eggplant or cucumber. | 9 | 11 |
| K35a6 In K35 family | Glowing feather. | The character illuminates the room with a light-emitting object (usually a feather) that he has found. | 9 | 11 |
| K35a7 In K35 family | The magical feather. | A character finds a feather, the touch of which brings health and beauty. | 9 | 7 |
| K37b In K37 family | Recognising a woman by her missing little finger. | A man must identify his chosen one blindfolded. He does this by touch, knowing that one of her fingers is damaged or missing. | 9 | 21 |
| K43c In K43 family | The dog unties the children. | The bound children (a young man and his sister) are left alone in an empty camp, and the animal frees them. | 9 | 13 |
| K45a In K45 family | Fingers turn into aquatic animals. | A man sails away from a woman or girl in a boat or on a raft. When she tries to grab the edge of the boat (raft), he cuts off her fingers. The fingers turn into aquatic animals. | 9 | 14 |
| K56b1 In K56 family | The Old Man with Golden Coals, ATU 751B*. | A poor man goes in search of fire. An old man by the fire gives him coals. At home, they turn into gold. An envious neighbour (brother) deliberately extinguishes the fire in his house and asks the old man for coals. His house burns down. | 9 | 5 |
| K56f2 In K56 family | Woman, two men, five eggs, ATU 1663. | In order to divide a certain number (often five) of eggs equally among people of different sexes, a cunning woman takes into account that each of the men already has two eggs. | 9 | 7 |
| K58b In K58 family | Turn of the watercourse: failure. | The character builds a canal, bridge, or dam. For some reason, the work cannot be completed as planned. | 9 | 3 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.