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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.
L - Adventures: Monsters and evil spirits
| Ref | Title | Summary | Traditions | Narratives ▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L100b1 In L100 family | Dialogue between the male and the female pigeons | The young man forgets his magic bride and meets another woman. At the last moment a bird tells the story about his real bride and he recalls everything. Usually two birds, a male and a female, have a dialogue in which the female can tell the male that he will be as cruel with her as this youth who has forgotten his bride. | 0 | 0 |
| L31a In L31 family | Children carried away to the sky. | An object descends from the sky. Children playing climb into it or stick to it, and it carries them away to the sky. See motif L31. | 0 | 0 |
| L67 | Gnawed wool. | Having dug an underground passage to a lying monstrous hoofed animal, a small animal gnaws the wool from the place on the skin where the heart beats; the hero thrusts a spear or arrow into this place. See motif L66. | 0 | 0 |
| L91 | The Long Serpent. | Two or four young men go on a journey or return from one. Their path is blocked by a long creature that cannot be bypassed. They burn a passage through it. One eats roasted meat, turns into a snake himself, or dies. See motif L28. | 7 | 1 |
| L21A In L21 family | Live and dead mice. | A character sitting in a tree throws small animals (snakes, mice) down, distracting the attention of a cannibal who is trying to catch them. When he throws dead animals instead of live ones, the cannibal grabs him. | 2 | 2 |
| L5j In L5 family | The rolling head laughs. | The rolling head laughs for no reason. See motif L5. | 6 | 2 |
| L31b In L31 family | The reptile crawls into the water. | Upon discovering a reptile on land, people touch it or sit on it, stick to it, and it crawls away with them into the water. See motif L31. | 17 | 3 |
| L85e In L85 family | Temporarily splits in two. | The character is temporarily split vertically into two halves and then rejoined. | 2 | 3 |
| L90d In L90 family | Lips nailed to the sky and the earth. | The hero attaches the upper lip (jaw) of the monster to the sky, and the lower lip to the earth. | 4 | 3 |
| L94d In L94 family | The tale with a tail. | A demonic character accuses a man of stepping on (tearing off) the tail of a fairy tale. Cf. motif K100E, "Dangerous Fairy Tales". | 3 | 3 |
| L17a2 In L17 family | Rival with an eye on her forehead. | Instead of a beautiful woman, a man takes a devil with an odd number of eyes. | 6 | 4 |
| L33a In L33 family | The boulder pursues the thief. | The trickster takes an object lying on or near a rock or other inanimate object, which he has given to that object. The object pursues or otherwise punishes the offender. See motif L33. | 25 | 4 |
| L40c In L40 family | He who buys the bridle leads away the camel. | Relying on the ambiguity of the statement, the buyer of a cheap item claims rights to a much more valuable one. | 3 | 4 |
| L5i In L5 family | A multitude of skulls. | A multitude of rolling heads or skulls try to take a woman away. | 5 | 4 |
| L7b In L7 family | Mistakenly chasing a calabash. | While chasing a person, spirit, monster or beast, he mistakenly throws himself after a calabash floating down the river. | 4 | 4 |
| L102a In L102 family | Escape from the seagull husband. | A seagull kidnaps a girl or woman, but she manages to return to people. | 6 | 5 |
| L108f In L108 family | Luring from the bottom. | A character (girl, boy) finds themselves in water, and the antagonist lures them to shore by imitating the voice of their father, brother or sister. | 4 | 5 |
| L108g In L108 family | Wash away the black. | The character is black and must sit in water until he turns white. The antagonist carries him away. | 3 | 5 |
| l118a1 In l118 family | Man deceives monkey. | A man deliberately performs certain actions in front of a monkey. The monkey imitates him, causing harm to itself. | 5 | 5 |
| L132 | Food theft: family conflict. | When one member of a small (family) group, left alone, secretly eats food, this leads to serious conflict, often resulting in the murder of the guilty party. | 5 | 5 |
| L15b1 In L15 family | Deer antlers – a weapon against evil. | In the battle between positive and negative creators, the positive one chooses the deer horn as a weapon – usually because this is the only weapon that the enemy fears. | 3 | 5 |
| L15g1 In L15 family | One family member kills another, knowing his secret. | A person knows a secret on which the life of a loved one (husband, son, wife) depends and, after a quarrel, commits an act that is insignificant to an outside observer but leads to the immediate death of the other. | 4 | 5 |
| L5B In L5 family | The head turns into lightning/thunder. | A rolling head turns into lightning/thunder. See motif L83. | 7 | 5 |
| L5e In L5 family | A decapitated wife pursues her husband. | The decapitated body of a woman pursues her husband, while her head pursues their children. | 8 | 5 |
| L65c1 In L65 family | Sisters fly away from a cannibal. | Three or more sisters have the ability to fly and fly away from the cannibal – their older sister or mother. Only the youngest is saved. | 4 | 5 |
| L81a1 In L81 family | Red bead in the hearth. | Noticing a red bead (pebble) that has fallen into the hearth, the character thinks it is a coal and does not understand that the fire in the hearth has gone out. | 5 | 5 |
| l93d In l93 family | The hedgehog as helper. | The hedgehog, resorting to cunning, helps the hero and saves him. | 4 | 5 |
| L94c In L94 family | Son or daughter sacrificed. | If a deity grants victory, a person promises to sacrifice to it the first person who comes out to meet them at home. A son or daughter comes out. | 4 | 5 |
| L127 | Dancing ears. | Having entered another world, the character sees dancing body parts and other strange creatures. He must not be surprised, laugh, or mention God. | 6 | 6 |
| L133 | Without arms and legs. | The character keeps his limbs separately, connecting them to his body when necessary. | 8 | 6 |
| l15h4 In l15 family | The character's soul in a needle. | The object in which the character's life is concentrated is enclosed in another, which is enclosed in a third (and so on). The final container of the soul is a needle, which the hero breaks. | 5 | 6 |
| L22a In L22 family | People go blind. | Having broken some taboo, seen an unusual object or strange character, people fall into a deep sleep and wake up in the morning blind. See motif L22. Among the Watut, Khmou and Trumai, a spirit eats out a person's eyes and they die immediately without waking up). | 16 | 6 |
| L37b2 In L37 family | Overheard conversation: a snake inside a person. | From the conversation of snakes or crows, a person learns the cause of another's illness: a snake has crawled inside him. The person expels the snake and the sick person recovers. | 8 | 6 |
| L72f In L72 family | Discarded entrails. | Fleeing for his life, the character throws behind him the entrails or stomach contents of an animal, which become an obstacle in the path of his pursuer. | 6 | 6 |
| L108b2 In L108 family | Ants make the voice thin. | To acquire a thin voice, the character allows ants to bite his tongue. | 5 | 7 |
| L110b In L110 family | The stomach eats the oak tree. | The stomach (spleen) removed from the body of a domestic animal or bird turns out to be a voracious monster. | 7 | 7 |
| L15e1 In L15 family | Discarded weapon. | An ageing character and/or one who senses his death approaching instructs his son, a warrior, or his subjects to throw his cold weapon (sword, sabre or axe) into the sea, a lake or a river. Cf. motifs L15E and L15e2. | 8 | 7 |
| L26 | Death of initiates. | During the (first) initiation, supernatural beings teach boys rituals and kill them for violating rules related to the consumption and distribution of food. | 5 | 7 |
| L26a In L26 family | Extermination of spirits. | During the (first) initiation, men kill supernatural characters (reproducing their appearance and/or voices during rituals from that moment on). | 9 | 7 |
| L33c In L33 family | The boulder crushes the trickster. | The trickster and the boulder agree to race down the slope. The boulder rolls faster and faster and crushes the trickster. See motif L33. | 14 | 7 |
| L33g In L33 family | Stone with a beard. | A tree, a creature on a tree, a stone kills (seriously injures) anyone who calls it a certain way, climbs on it, etc. The character provokes others to do this and eats the dead, the last of the invited guests deceives the provocateur himself. | 6 | 7 |
| L71 | The end of a thin branch. | The character kills an animal; the trickster tries to take the meat; the character lifts the meat onto a tree; helps the trickster or his cub to climb up too; after eating, the climber wants to relieve himself or (less often) drink; the character points out that this can be done at the end of a thin branch; the trickster or the trickster's cub climbs up, falls, and is killed. See motif L70. | 19 | 7 |
| L76 | Severed testicles. | When a female cannibal attacks a man, she devours or tears off his testicles. | 3 | 7 |
| L93 | The discarded axe. | A demon, a man-eater, chops down a tree or a rock on top of which the hero is hiding. While he is resting, the animal throws his axe into the water, carries it away or damages it. See motif L92. | 17 | 7 |
| L108e In L108 family | Children of the fox, ATU 123A. | A fox has a child, usually adopted (she cares for a lamb, a foal, etc.), a wolf or a bear kills it, and the fox takes revenge. | 15 | 8 |
| L110a In L110 family | Cut ear. | A character swallows a person or (usually) many people and animals, the hero kills the monster, and while cutting it open, accidentally wounds one of those who were swallowed. Usually, the wounded person is offended and when those who were swallowed come out, they harm or destroy the hero. | 5 | 8 |
| L119 | Battle in the air. | The hero and antagonist fight in the air, tearing off each other's limbs. Usually, their allies on the ground try to preserve the limbs of their leader and destroy those of their enemy. | 4 | 8 |
| L123 | Traces lead in all directions. | In order to confuse the pursuer, the character leaves traces leading in all directions before running away. | 8 | 8 |
| L125a In L125 family | The werewolf wife suffers from thirst. | The woman with whom the man has come together is a creature of a non-human nature. This becomes clear after she suffers from thirst at night and, finding no water in the house, takes on her true form, turning into a snake, separating her limbs from her torso, etc. | 8 | 8 |
| L15e2 In L15 family | What happened when you threw the sword into the lake? | One character instructs another to throw a certain object (usually a sword or sabre) into the water. The messenger claims to have carried out the task, but cannot say what happened as a result, so it becomes clear that he has lied. | 9 | 8 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.