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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L110 | The Devourer, (ATU 2028), Th F911.6. | A character swallows many people and/or animals. In the end, his stomach is cut open, and those who were swallowed unharmed come out or are extracted and revived. Cf. motif K8a. | 146 | 220 |
| 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 |
| L27 | The eaten maiden. | Sisters or friends encounter a demon. One or both do not understand the danger. One is eaten or maimed, the other escapes. | 38 | 59 |
| L65c In L65 family | The elder sister-cannibal. | The eldest of three or more sisters turns out to be a cannibal, devouring her younger sisters and other people. | 10 | 13 |
| 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 |
| L1b1 In L1 family | The female demon and her brothers. | A woman comes into conflict with her brothers and turns into a dangerous demon. | 33 | 36 |
| L120b In L120 family | The fighting hero wakes his brothers. | The hero fights the serpent and calls for help, but no one hears him. Then he throws an item of his footwear or clothing, and his awakened brothers or his horse come to his aid. | 12 | 16 |
| L45 | The fooled watchman. | A strong character traps a weak one and leaves someone to guard the prey. The guard fails to fulfil his duties (usually tricked by the weak one), and the weak one escapes. {African borrowings in America are difficult to distinguish from possible local cases} | 54 | 53 |
| L100b In L100 family | The forgotten bride. | Having escaped from his pursuers, the young man parts with the girl, intending to return for her soon, but forgets her. When he is about to take another wife, the girl manages to restore his memory with the help of magic, and she marries him. Alternatively, the girl, who has briefly parted from her magical spouse, herself forgets him after an embrace or a kiss in her parents' house. | 51 | 106 |
| L60 | The foundling demon. | Several sisters pick up a baby. In their absence, it turns into an adult man, and when they approach, it turns back into a child. Taking on its true form, the demon pursues the sisters. See motif M46a. | 10 | 11 |
| L93a In L93 family | The fox as helper. | The fox, jackal or coyote, resorting to cunning, helps the hero, heroine or people in general, saving them. | 162 | 324 |
| L104 | The fugitive and the pursuer change their appearance (ATU 325). | The fleeing character successively takes on the appearance of various creatures or objects; the pursuer also changes his appearance, each time transforming into someone who is dangerous to the pursued in his current form. | 135 | 174 |
| L33e In L33 family | The gifted cloak. | The trickster demands back or takes the cloak belonging to the skale or another character (usually he himself had previously given this cloak as a gift). | 15 | 24 |
| L77 | The girl seems like a pineapple. | The character devours people because he sees them as a delicacy. | 9 | 12 |
| L108a In L108 family | The goat kills the antagonist. | A predator or cannibal swallows people and animals. A goat (rarely a sheep) punishes it and usually rescues those who have been swallowed (most often by cutting open its belly, allowing those who have been swallowed to escape alive). | 66 | 81 |
| L5f In L5 family | The good skull. | Head, face or skull – a woman's husband, fiancé or son; not dangerous to her, brings wealth, saves from hunger, etc. | 35 | 40 |
| L42b In L42 family | The gullible children of the cannibal. | After capturing the hero, the antagonist brings him home and leaves him in the care of a family member. The latter believes the hero's words and follows his instructions. See motif L42. | 77 | 116 |
| L85a In L85 family | The half-child. | The character is born as half a person or becomes one as a result of an accident. He or she does not belong to a special category of mythical half-beings and usually regains physical completeness. See motif L85, cf. motif L112. | 41 | 32 |
| L93b In L93 family | The hare as helper. | The hare or rabbit, resorting to cunning, helps the hero or heroine, saving them. | 30 | 53 |
| L5g In L5 family | The head of the older sister rolls after the younger one. | Only the head remains of one of the sisters. It rolls after the other sister or sisters, or they take it with them; in the end, the head finds a place where it wants to settle. | 13 | 8 |
| L5A In L5 family | The head turns into a celestial object. | A rolling head turns into a celestial object that emits or eclipses light (sun, moon, stars, fireball; it is the cause of eclipses). See motif L5. | 15 | 11 |
| L5B In L5 family | The head turns into lightning/thunder. | A rolling head turns into lightning/thunder. See motif L83. | 7 | 5 |
| L5d In L5 family | The head wants to drink. | The rolling head suffers from thirst. See motif L5. | 8 | 9 |
| L33d In L33 family | The hero defeats the stone monster. | A rolling stone-monster kills people. The hero destroys it. See motif L33. | 8 | 14 |
| L52 | The hero flies away from the top of the tree. | A person escapes from a pursuer by climbing a tree and then flying away from it himself or on the back of a bird, or a bird helps the hero escape in some other way. | 37 | 57 |
| L39 | The hero is forced to climb down from the tree. | By force or deception, the character forces another to climb down from the tree in order to harm him. | 90 | 135 |
| L41 | The hero runs away. | After catching a person, the cannibal carries his prey home, but the captive escapes on the road or at the cannibal's house. See motif L38 (a person falls into a demon's trap). | 146 | 206 |
| L57a In L57 family | The hero's companion returns his organ. | The enemy takes possession of part of the character's body (remains). Another (usually resorting to trickery) returns what is missing, and the character comes back to life or recovers. | 83 | 114 |
| L65b5 In L65 family | The hero's dogs at the princess's wedding. | Despite obstacles, the young man's dogs or other animals serving him get to the princess just as she is about to be given away to a deceiver. | 8 | 10 |
| L81b In L81 family | The hero's severed legs. | The hero's rivals abandon him, cutting off his legs (usually leaving a sword at the entrance to his tent, and when the hero rushes out, the blade wounds him). | 22 | 32 |
| L65a1 In L65 family | The horse's legs eaten away. | A demonic character successively devours parts of the horse on which the hero arrived, each time returning to the hero and then leaving to devour another part. (Often asks whether the hero arrived on a three-legged, two-legged or one-legged horse). | 27 | 34 |
| L121 | The hunter and his werewolf wife. | An animal or cannibal (man-eater) transforms into a woman and marries a hunter with the sole intention of killing him. Usually, the wife takes on her true form when she goes into the forest with the hunter. | 18 | 37 |
| L121a In L121 family | The hunter's secret. | The hunter has the ability to avoid danger by transforming himself into various objects. His shapeshifting wife tries to recognise them in order to destroy the hunter. | 7 | 15 |
| L105 | The invisible hook, B5482.3. | A wounded animal, fish or anthropomorphic character runs or swims away – usually with a hook, harpoon, arrow or other hunting or fishing implement stuck in its body; local healers cannot cure the wounded creature (usually because they cannot see the object that caused the wound); a person comes to the wounded person's village and successfully treats them (usually by removing the object that caused the wound). Cf. motif M60A. | 54 | 63 |
| L81c In L81 family | The legless, the blind, and the armless. | The legless man lives together with the blind and armless man (or with one of the two). By working together, they are healed. | 28 | 37 |
| L15e In L15 family | The life of a hero in a sword, ATU 302B. | The hero's life is in a certain object, usually his weapon. An enemy steals or discards this object, the hero weakens or dies, his friends or brothers return the object, and the hero comes back to life. {In ATU, this is motif 302B; at least some of the references cited by Uther do not contain the motif in our formulation (not found in Japan or Burma); original publications are required}. | 43 | 60 |
| 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 |
| L100e In L100 family | The lover, the master and the guest, ATU 1358A, (ATU 1360B). | Before entering, the guest notices the mistress with her lover in the house. When the husband arrives, the guest pretends to be clairvoyant and shows the husband where the lover is hiding and where the food prepared for him is. | 41 | 51 |
| L98 | The man-eating owl. | The demon that carries off children and threatens heroes, people, etc., is the eagle owl; there is a race of owls that is hostile to humans. | 57 | 78 |
| L109 | The man-eating pumpkin. | The pumpkin turns out to be a monster-devourer and/or grows from the remains of a monster. | 29 | 38 |
| L93c In L93 family | The monkey helper. | The monkey, resorting to cunning, helps the hero or heroine, saves them. | 13 | 11 |
| L33f In L33 family | The nightjar breaks the rock. | A rock or boulder pursues a character. The character calls for help, and the nightjar splits the rock into pieces. | 17 | 28 |
| L42k In L42 family | The ogre regurgitates the axe. | A demonic character regurgitates an axe (adze) to cut down a tree. | 8 | 17 |
| L21 | The ogre runs away to pick up his prey. | A cannibal or demon under a tree intends to grab a person who has climbed a tree; the person throws his prey or some object far away, and while the cannibal is looking for, picking up or eating what has been thrown, he runs away. | 19 | 18 |
| L100g In L100 family | The One-Legged Goose, ATU 785A. | A servant serves his master a roasted bird, one of whose legs has already been eaten. He tells him to look at the chickens, geese, etc., which are standing on one leg. When they run away, it becomes clear that they all have two legs. Usually, the servant says that if the master had scared the roasted goose, it would have shown its second leg too. | 40 | 24 |
| L20a In L20 family | The parrot devourer. | A man climbs a tree, takes chicks (usually parrots) from a nest and throws them to a woman. She eats them raw, then kills or tries to kill the man. | 12 | 31 |
| L115 | The Perfect Gentleman. | A girl who rejected suitors finally finds someone she likes. The groom turns out to be a werewolf: on the way to his home, he gives away borrowed items of clothing and parts of his body. | 16 | 25 |
| L39b In L39 family | The pie tree. | The tree grows from a flatbread (pie, etc.) and usually bears flatbreads instead of fruit. | 7 | 8 |
| L42f In L42 family | The prey escaped, the wife was killed. | The character intended for consumption slips away unnoticed. The master of the house thinks that his wife has eaten him alone and cuts open her stomach. | 4 | 11 |
| L103c In L103 family | The protective dog and the cannibal. | A dog, cat or other animal tries to drive away a demon (usually an old cannibal). The demon (or its victims, who do not understand the danger) kills the animal – usually by cutting off (breaking) its body parts one by one, after which the demon gains power over its victims. | 12 | 21 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.