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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 |
| 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 |
| L85e In L85 family | Temporarily splits in two. | The character is temporarily split vertically into two halves and then rejoined. | 2 | 3 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| L76 | Severed testicles. | When a female cannibal attacks a man, she devours or tears off his testicles. | 3 | 7 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| L103b1 In L103 family | A stream of excrement in the face of the pursuer. 28.30.-.32. | The hero or heroine flees from a demon on the back of a domestic animal (often a bull). When the demon approaches, the animal releases a stream of manure or intestinal gas into its face, and it stops the chase. | 5 | 10 |
| L108b2 In L108 family | Ants make the voice thin. | To acquire a thin voice, the character allows ants to bite his tongue. | 5 | 7 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| L40a In L40 family | A woman mistakes a young man's reflection for her own. | An unattractive woman sees the reflection of a young man sitting in a tree in the water and thinks that she has become beautiful. | 5 | 10 |
| L5i In L5 family | A multitude of skulls. | A multitude of rolling heads or skulls try to take a woman away. | 5 | 4 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| L12 | Vultures and incomplete bodies. | Vultures lift into the sky a creature that has lost some of its limbs or has only one head left. | 6 | 11 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| L42b1 In L42 family | Frying pans are placed on top of each other. | A character kidnapped by a demon advises him to stack pots, pans and other kitchen items on top of each other and climb up them. He does so, falls and breaks. | 6 | 10 |
| L5j In L5 family | The rolling head laughs. | The rolling head laughs for no reason. See motif L5. | 6 | 2 |
| 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 |
| L90b In L90 family | Fangs reaching the sky and the earth. | One tooth (fang) of the creature touches the sky, the other reaches the earth or the underworld. | 6 | 14 |
| L103a In L103 family | They did not unlock the door for their daughter. | A girl, a young woman, runs away from a demonic character; she manages to run home, but her relatives do not open the door. The pursuer finds and eats her. (A musical instrument is made from her hair or intestines). (Overview of variants in Rakhno 2016: 475-484). | 7 | 13 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| L16A In L16 family | Eyes on the feet. | The creature's eyes are located on its feet. | 7 | 9 |
| L1d In L1 family | Woman kills a jaguar. | The jaguar-werewolf kills most people and is killed by the woman who survives. | 7 | 8 |
| L39b In L39 family | The pie tree. | The tree grows from a flatbread (pie, etc.) and usually bears flatbreads instead of fruit. | 7 | 8 |
| L42j In L42 family | The tree bends (children in the ogre's bag). | The ogre catches children (usually mice), puts them in a bag, orders a tree (pole, crossbar in the house) to bend over, hangs the bag, orders the tree to straighten up again, and leaves. Another character (usually a fox) orders the tree (pole, etc.) to bend over and frees the children. | 7 | 9 |
| L59a In L59 family | Stuck to the whale. | People who mocked the hero or his son were dragged into the sea and turned into sea animals or parts of its body or parasites on its skin. | 7 | 11 |
| L5B In L5 family | The head turns into lightning/thunder. | A rolling head turns into lightning/thunder. See motif L83. | 7 | 5 |
| L72k In L72 family | A discarded bottle of oil. | Fleeing for his life, the character throws a jar of oil behind him. Spilling out, it turns into a lake or river. (Only North American materials are taken into account. In the Old World, the motif is rare and unsystematic. In North America, it most likely refers to hair oil in all cases). | 7 | 12 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.