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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L113 | Married to a werewolf (ATU 363). | A girl who has long rejected suitors falls in love with a handsome man who turns out to be a demon, a werewolf, or a dangerous animal. The girl barely escapes or perishes. | 67 | 93 |
| L4a In L4 family | Meat answers to the master. | To test the loyalty of the heroine (hero), the demon demands that she eat food that humans should not eat. Usually, when the heroine reports that the food has been eaten, the demon asks where the food is, and the food answers him. | 16 | 20 |
| L22B In L22 family | Metamorphosis of the blind. | People who wake up blind in the morning turn into fish, birds or animals. See motif L22. | 15 | 14 |
| L37c1 In L37 family | Misfortune, ATU 735A. | The happiness (misfortune, hardship, etc.) of each person is represented by specific characters with whom they interact. | 40 | 44 |
| L7 | Mistakenly chases after an animal. | While chasing a person, spirit, monster or beast, mistakenly chases after a large two-legged object passing by, usually an animal. | 35 | 54 |
| 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 |
| L17b In L17 family | Mouth on the back of the head. | A character or creature has a second face or a second mouth on the back of its head. | 65 | 105 |
| L90 | Mouth to the sky. | One lip (one fang, horn, etc.) of the creature reaches the sky, while the other drags along the ground. | 61 | 103 |
| L100d1 In L100 family | Mullah in the cradle. | A person endowed with (spiritual) power comes to a woman in the evening. When there is a knock at the door, the woman, having agreed in advance with her husband, tells the guest to lie down in the cradle and replies to her husband who has entered that their son is in the cradle. The man begins to turn the adult into a baby or threatens to do so: he shaves off his beard, knocks out his teeth, and grabs an axe to chop off his legs. The disgraced and exhausted guest runs away. | 10 | 12 |
| L18 | Multi-headed bird. | A bird with two or more heads in descriptions or images. | 67 | 146 |
| L19b2 In L19 family | Nine-headed monster. | A creature with nine heads is mentioned – either singly or at the end of a series of creatures with fewer heads. | 48 | 71 |
| L15a2 In L15 family | Not fully hardened. | The human body is tempered (in a furnace, etc.) to make it invulnerable, but one place remains unprotected. | 7 | 16 |
| L96a In L96 family | Oh! | A person sighs, after which a character named Oh, Uh, Hey-way, etc. appears. | 31 | 57 |
| L130 | One eye for three, ATU 328*. | Two or more characters have only one eye between them. | 14 | 18 |
| 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 |
| L27a In L27 family | One is eaten, the other runs away. | Sisters or a brother and sister find themselves in the same house with an antagonist, whose cannibalism they only suspect or do not know about at all. Trying to hide his actions, the cannibal eats one of the children. The other child or children run away, and the antagonist pursues them. Usually the antagonist is female, and if male, he has no sexual interest in his victims. (In the Central Andes, the plot may have been borrowed in the 19th century from Chinese migrants; see motifs J47, M21). | 11 | 22 |
| L89 | One secretly feeds another. | One person, wishing to harm another, secretly gives him certain food to eat or a certain object to use. As a result, the other person dies (usually undergoing a metamorphosis). Cf. motif K82a. | 18 | 16 |
| L17a1 In L17 family | One-eyed, two-eyed and three-eyed, ATU 511. | Characters with a sequentially increasing number of eyes follow the hero or heroine. He or she puts the eyes to sleep one by one, but forgets about the last one. | 32 | 48 |
| L85F In L85 family | One-legged. | The character has only one leg (and one arm), which does not prevent him from moving. Unlike motif L85 (half-creatures), the character has a complete body, not divided in half vertically. | 39 | 43 |
| L15J In L15 family | Only with fire. | The character can only be killed by fire. | 17 | 14 |
| L9a In L9 family | Ostronog, G341.1. | The character's leg is crippled (intentionally or accidentally) or originally pointed. He uses the pointed bone for hunting, fishing or killing people. | 49 | 67 |
| L37b In L37 family | Overheard conversation, ATU 613, N451.1. | By accidentally overhearing a conversation between animals or spirits, a person learns how to help themselves and others. | 167 | 285 |
| 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 |
| L49 | Parts of the body fall down. | Individual parts or pieces of a character's body are successively thrown down. (In American variants, those below usually mistake them for game, honey, or fish). | 28 | 42 |
| 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 |
| L85c In L85 family | Polukurochka, B171.1, ATU 715. | A character with half a body – a hen, a chick. Sometimes it is only a name, and the character's appearance is more anthropomorphic. | 23 | 28 |
| L94 | Promised to the demon. | A demon or animal helps a person or agrees to let them go, but in return takes a promise to give them a daughter or son. | 151 | 328 |
| L23 | Proteus. | Trying to free himself, the captured character successively transforms into various substances, materials or animals, or (Urarina, Setebo) orders various dangerous animals to successively attack the person who captured him. (In some cases, only one variant of transformation is mentioned, but in the same context as in typical variants with a series of transformations). | 43 | 80 |
| L20 | Raw meat eater. | Two characters hunt or fish. One turns out to be or becomes a cannibal, which is revealed when he/she begins to eat the prey raw. | 22 | 49 |
| 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 |
| L40 | Reflection and shadow, R351. | The character discovers (rarely: cannot discover) another person on a tree or rock, noticing their reflection or shadow. See motif L39. | 108 | 133 |
| L64 | Removable head. | A certain character removes, takes out a part of his body (head, scalp, lungs), takes it in his hands, puts it back. | 46 | 53 |
| L65b3 In L65 family | Rescue on a tree. | A character who climbs a tree manages to escape from a demon (who usually tries to knock the tree down). | 154 | 261 |
| L95 | Returning for toys. | A person (usually a child or teenager) returns to a previous location for a forgotten item (often a toy) and finds a demon there, from which they struggle to escape. | 30 | 31 |
| L122 | Riding a rooster. | The character rides on a rooster. | 19 | 25 |
| 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 |
| L5 | Rolling head. | Describes or depicts a creature in the form of a skull or head without a body. | 153 | 254 |
| L33 | Rolling Stone, R261. | The stone rolls after the character, trying to crush him. | 47 | 73 |
| L61 | Samoyed, F1035. | The character eats himself, guts himself, or kills himself in order to be eaten. | 58 | 68 |
| L19b1 In L19 family | Seven-headed monster. | Describes or depicts a monster (usually a reptile) with seven heads (except in cases where snakes with an increasing number of heads are described sequentially and "seven" is not the largest number). | 85 | 155 |
| L35 | Severed hand. | A shaman or spirit comes at night and, reaching his hand into the hut, steals food or disturbs a woman. A man in the hut cuts off or tears off the hand. | 11 | 13 |
| L76 | Severed testicles. | When a female cannibal attacks a man, she devours or tears off his testicles. | 3 | 7 |
| L122a In L122 family | Sewing up cracks in the earth. | The character is busy sewing up cracks in the earth, just as one would sew up torn fabric. (Motif identified by Ruslan Doutalieyev). | 6 | 9 |
| L9c In L9 family | Sharp breast. | The character kills others with a sharp protrusion on his chest. | 13 | 28 |
| L9d In L9 family | Sharp hands. | The character has sharp nails or knife-like hands, which he uses to kill people. | 17 | 18 |
| L10 | Sharp tail. | The character has a sharp (biting) tail or a protrusion on its back. See motif L9, cf. motif L9C. | 16 | 13 |
| L3a In L3 family | She asked for help – a demon came. | Left alone, a woman carelessly calls for someone to help her with the housework; a demon comes and kills the woman or her child. | 8 | 11 |
| L65a2 In L65 family | Shot finger. | A man shoots off (damages) the finger of a demonic creature, and then sees that his sister, lying in her cradle, has lost her finger. | 11 | 14 |
| L44 | Show your head! ATU 1152 | A demon or powerful beast demands that a person or weak animal show certain parts of their body. The person shows parts of a large animal's body or certain objects. The opponent decides that the hero is more frightening and powerful than them. | 43 | 43 |
| L1f In L1 family | Sister avenges her lover. | The sister, using magic or transforming herself into a monster, kills her brothers in revenge for the death of her lover or husband. | 14 | 14 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.