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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| K76f In K76 family | The calf-boy. | A young man with the appearance of a calf marries and then turns into a handsome man. | 9 | 8 |
| K80c3 In K80 family | A name helps solve a murder. | Before his death, a man asks his murderer to tell his pregnant wife to give their newborn a certain name. Upon hearing the unusual name of the child, a powerful figure begins to investigate the case, and the murderer confesses to his crime. (All texts containing motifs K80c3 and K80c4 also contain the more general motif K80c) | 9 | 9 |
| K89c In K89 family | Brother-helper is married to a bear. | A girl parts with her brother or sister. He or she becomes the wife or husband of a bear and helps the girl. | 9 | 10 |
| K107e In K107 family | Delayed childbirth. | A woman remains pregnant for many years and gives birth only after her wonderful husband, who has left her, or someone else allows her to do so. | 10 | 10 |
| K10h In K10 family | The bird feeds, but does not let go. | A bird carries a woman or boy to its nest, feeds them, but does not let them go. The captive runs away. | 10 | 8 |
| K123b In K123 family | Broken spinning wheel. | A boy or young man damages an elderly woman's spinning wheel or yarn. This episode forms the basis of the rest of the story. | 10 | 8 |
| K136b In K136 family | Rubies from the river, (ATU 467). | A character finds precious stones or unusual flowers (usually in a river) and learns where they come from. | 10 | 13 |
| K168b In K168 family | The bewildered man became a bear. | A person makes another person believe that he has turned into a bear (wolf), found himself in the forest, etc. When he wakes up, the bewitched person finds himself where he was before. | 10 | 9 |
| K22c In K22 family | Birds are attacked. | Inhabitants of another world who are birds (bird-people) are afraid of birds or animals that are not dangerous to ordinary people, but which regularly attack them. | 10 | 16 |
| K25c In K25 family | The boy under the onion. | While digging roots, gathering shellfish, etc., a woman finds a baby. He grows up and enters into a struggle with dangerous characters. | 10 | 13 |
| K27g3 In K27 family | One falls – all fall. | To fell all the trees in the forest, a man fells one (lightly touching it with an axe), after which all the trees fall. | 10 | 10 |
| K27v1 In K27 family | To hit a needle with an arrow. | The character must hit the eye of a needle with an arrow (the eye of a needle). | 10 | 16 |
| K29c In K29 family | Brings a tree. | They hope to kill the hero by knocking a tree down on him or tying him to a tree. He comes back alive, dragging the tree behind him. | 10 | 14 |
| K33a2 In K33 family | The witch distorts what is said. | A brother takes his sister to her fiancé. She cannot hear her brother's words, and the witch distorts them (as if the brother is telling his sister to throw herself into the water, to blind her, etc.). Having got rid of the heroine, the witch replaces her with her own daughter. | 10 | 14 |
| K33a5 In K33 family | The heroine is turned into a duck. | A woman who has been turned into a duck (goose) by her rival's scheming tries to establish contact with her children or husband. | 10 | 19 |
| k33c2 In k33 family | Girl in a pomegranate. | A young man obtains a girl who is inside a pomegranate. | 10 | 12 |
| k33f1 In k33 family | Source of oil according to a vow. | A person promises to create a source from which a valuable product (most often oil) flows and honestly fulfils their promise (rarely: promises to distribute a large amount of such a product). | 10 | 16 |
| K35a5 In K35 family | A sign by which the patron recognises the visitor. | An authoritative character leaves an object (a letter) for a little boy, by which he will be able to recognise him when he grows up and comes to him. | 10 | 10 |
| K51a In K51 family | Pushes a rival into boiling water. | One woman comes to another in the absence of a man and kills her by pushing her rival's head into boiling liquid or pouring boiling water or hot fat into her ear. See motif K51. | 10 | 9 |
| K56a5a In K56 family | Skinning oneself to rejuvenate (ATU 877). | To become a young beauty, an old or unattractive woman asks to have her skin stripped off. Cf. motif H4. | 10 | 12 |
| K56a5d In K56 family | Conversation with Moroz. | A person responds kindly to a question from a character embodying cold, praises him, and is rewarded. Another expresses dissatisfaction and is punished. | 10 | 24 |
| K76h In K76 family | The magical groom threatens disaster. | A young man, temporarily having a strange or monstrous appearance (freak, animal, etc.), woos a princess, but is rejected. Then he causes natural disasters or creates personal troubles for the king, who is forced to give up his daughter. | 10 | 13 |
| K10b In K10 family | The Carried Away Cage. | A huge bird carries away to its nest a cage, bag or other container in which people are located. See motif 10A. | 11 | 12 |
| K10c In K10 family | Wrapped in entrails. | The hero (twins) is weighed down with the blood-filled intestines of an animal. A bird pierces them with its claw, blood flows, the bird thinks its prey is dead, and brings the man to its nest. He kills the adult bird and either kills or transforms the chicks. Cf. motif M91A. | 11 | 20 |
| K124 | It's not a miracle! | An animal killed by a hunter runs away. The animal itself or someone else explains that this is not a miracle (or that it is not a tragedy), but that the real miracle (tragedy) happened somewhere else. A story about what happened follows. | 11 | 26 |
| K137a In K137 family | A girl disguised as a young man finds a wife for her brother. | The brother is killed. The sister, dressed in his clothes, finds a woman. The brother comes back to life, the sister puts on women's clothes again, and the woman believes that the girl's brother was the one who married her. | 11 | 12 |
| K143 | The bird catcher hero. | The protagonist of the narrative is a bird catcher or bird hunter, or the son of a bird catcher (hunter). | 11 | 11 |
| K149 | Three knots. | The character has a rope or reins with three knots, allowing him to move faster or slower. Usually, untying the first and second knots causes the character's ship to sail faster (thanks to the rising wind) or his horse to gallop faster; however, contrary to the warning, the character (when almost reaching the goal) also unties the third knot and as a result loses the ship, the horse, ends up not where he wanted to be, etc. | 11 | 16 |
| K156 | Will the flowers under the pillow wilt? | A girl pretends to be a man. To determine who it really is, flowers are placed under the pillow or mattress. If a man is sleeping, they will remain fresh, but if a woman is sleeping, they will wilt by morning (or if a woman is sleeping, the milk left under the bed will sour). | 11 | 10 |
| K27n3c1 In K27 family | The hero's adversaries – polar bears. | The inhabitants of the polar bear village – relatives of his wife – set the hero difficult tasks and trials. | 11 | 16 |
| k27q2 In k27 family | Gusli-samogudy. | The hero is sent to obtain a musical instrument, usually a gusli-samogudy. | 11 | 16 |
| K27v3 In K27 family | Shooting an arrow through a ring. | The character must hit a small ring with an arrow or shoot it through several rings. (The main materials were identified by Y.V. Vasilkov and presented in Vasilkov 2018). | 11 | 11 |
| K27yy In K27 family | Approach a dangerous tree. | The hero is sent to a tree that is supposed to fall on him. | 11 | 9 |
| K27yy4 In K27 family | Obtaining tree bark. | The hero must obtain tree bark, which is fraught with danger. | 11 | 14 |
| K27z4a In K27 family | The cripple demands the return of his leg, ATU 978. | The cripple claims that the father of the visitor is to blame for his physical disability. The man's wife or the man himself, on someone's advice, promises to return the leg (eye) if the cripple gives him the other one as a sample or brings him a part of a dead person's body and demands money. | 11 | 9 |
| K27zz4 In K27 family | The wife who cannot be beaten (ATU 888A). | A conceited prince (the son of a merchant) beats his wife every day (he marries on the condition that he will beat his wife every day). She saves him by demonstrating her superiority. | 11 | 9 |
| K2a1 In K2 family | A commoner witnesses the abduction of a princess. | A demon carries off a girl of noble birth. A commoner accidentally witnesses the abduction or accidentally finds evidence of it. The girl's father sends him to search for his daughter. | 11 | 15 |
| K37d In K37 family | Recognised by teeth marks. | The character recognises the presence of another by noticing traces of their teeth or nails on fruit or leaves. | 11 | 12 |
| K48a In K48 family | Birds on a cap. | The hero's costume and/or headdress are decorated with live birds or animals. Usually, the antagonist steals the clothes and pretends to be the hero, but the birds and animals on his headdress remain silent or cry out differently. See motif K48. | 11 | 1 |
| k57e In k57 family | Daughter is persuaded to kill her mother. | Due to her naivety or by accident, a young girl causes her mother's death. | 11 | 12 |
| K65c3 In K65 family | Eve is ashamed of her large family. | A woman (alone or with her husband) hides some of her children from God because she is ashamed of having given birth to so many offspring. | 11 | 13 |
| k73a9 In k73 family | The talking bed. | Lying on the marital bed, the deceiver, who has taken the place of the real wife, hears the conversation of her rival or her children, and in the morning orders the bed to be destroyed. | 11 | 10 |
| K90a In K90 family | Aimed at the black one, hit the white one. | Seeing two snakes of contrasting colours fighting, a man tries to strike one, but accidentally hits the other. The relatives of this snake gather to punish him, but upon learning what happened, they reward him. | 11 | 11 |
| K101b1 In K101 family | Black becomes white. | The enchanted character (the castle where the action takes place) gradually changes its appearance over several days as the spell wears off: it acquires human features, turning from black to white, from ugly to beautiful. | 12 | 19 |
| K102a4 In K102 family | The wolf across the river. | A hostile young character is located behind a water barrier. The young man's sister or mother helps him cross and becomes his lover. | 12 | 17 |
| K107a2 In K107 family | Shepherdess instead of princess. | A nobleman (king) is forced to promise his daughter or son to a demon (monster, predatory beast). He tries to replace her or him with other girls or boys, but this does not work. | 12 | 21 |
| K10e In K10 family | Rescued people. | In the bird's habitat, the hero finds the people it has kidnapped and helps them return home. | 12 | 15 |
| k117c1 In k117 family | To play before death. | A man sentenced to death asks to be given something from his possessions, usually a musical instrument. Once he has it, he gains power over those gathered and is saved. | 12 | 12 |
| K119c In K119 family | Tsar-Thunder and Tsarina-Lightning. | The antagonist believes that he has been attacked by the lord of thunder (the father of the bride, whom a zoomorphic assistant has tricked into marrying a poor young man, motif K119). | 12 | 16 |
| K136 | The young man and the cows. | The young man turns out to be the owner and leader of a herd of cattle, and with his herd of cows or buffaloes he is summoned to the king (usually after his hair is found by the princess). | 12 | 15 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.