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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| L19b3 In L19 family | Twelve-headed monster. | A creature with 12 heads is mentioned – either singly or at the end of a series of creatures with fewer heads. | 32 | 59 |
| L107 | Ears-blankets. | People have disproportionately large ears (rarely: lips): they cover themselves with them like a blanket, use them as an umbrella, can step on them, etc. | 33 | 53 |
| L17a In L17 family | Eyes on the back of the head. | A character or creature has an eye or a second pair of eyes on the back of the head or on the back. Cf. motif L17b, "mouth on the back of the head". | 33 | 34 |
| 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 |
| L114a In L114 family | The awake child. | One (usually the youngest) of a group of young men or women (children) ends up with them in the house of a cannibal or cannibaless. The cannibal intends to kill the newcomers when they fall asleep. The youngest consistently answers the cannibal's questions about why he is not sleeping, forcing him to carry out new tasks instead of attacking the sleepers. The brothers (sisters) run away and escape. | 34 | 48 |
| L31 | The sticky monster. | People are forced against their will to follow an object, person or animal (usually sticking to it) that carries them far away (usually into water or into the sky). | 34 | 49 |
| L37a2 In L37 family | Who will become a ferryman. | A man comes to ask God (fate, the sun, etc.) questions that he was asked to ask by those he met along the way. Someone asks when he will be freed from his duties. Answer: let him leave another person in his place. | 34 | 45 |
| L38a In L38 family | Sticky trap – resin stump. | The character sticks to an object, usually by successively sticking individual parts of their body to it. The object is either a trap for a demonic creature or is itself a creature of a non-human nature. Cf. motif M182 (tar doll), probably brought to the New World after Columbus from Africa. | 34 | 55 |
| L65d In L65 family | The younger sister of the cannibal. | When the older sister becomes a cannibal, the younger sister (temporarily) escapes. Cf. motifs L1B, L65C. | 34 | 40 |
| L8 | Left behind feet and heads. | A character temporarily leaves parts of his body behind. Usually, a marriage partner makes it impossible to reunite the departed part with the remaining one. See motif L5. (For the Greater Southwest, Mesoamerica, and the Central Andes, borrowing from the Spanish or the superimposition of a borrowed motif on a pre-Columbian one cannot be ruled out. Stories of witches leaving parts of their bodies behind, which are of European origin, are widespread among the Spanish-speaking population of the Caribbean). | 34 | 48 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| L73c In L73 family | The scarf opens and closes the way. | By waving a piece of cloth (towel, scarf, item of clothing) or throwing it, placing it on water, etc., the character creates obstacles (in the path of the pursuer) or a means of overcoming them (bridge, etc.). | 35 | 62 |
| L95b In L95 family | Together with the demon against the child. | Having promised to give the child to the demon, the mother or father does not try to save him or her, but arranges for the child to fall into the demon's hands. Against all odds, the son or daughter is saved.[1] Motif L85 "Half-creatures, F525" (the character has only half a body (vertically) or only one leg, which does not prevent him from moving) [AKB]. See also text No. 35.[2] Voracity is a characteristic feature of šǝʔōl in Is 5:14, Hab 2:5, Pr 1:12, Ps 141:7 (see Gaster 1950:189, O’Callahan 1954:169). | 35 | 43 |
| L135 | The Wanderer. | A person leaves home and finds himself in unfamiliar places. His journey is marked by encounters with various strange creatures. In the end, he either returns home or leaves the earth for another world. (With an abundance of episodes, the story often either breaks off or does not contain the initial episodes explaining the reason for the hero's departure from home). | 36 | 47 |
| L94b1 In L94 family | The demon collects the riches back into the box. | A man receives a box (bag, horn, etc.) as a gift, which he must open only at home. Driven by curiosity, he opens it on the way, and everything that should make him wealthy (houses, livestock, etc.) spills out. The demon who appears agrees to return everything, but sets a condition, the severity of which the man does not immediately understand. | 36 | 43 |
| L120 | Snakes turn into apple trees, ATU 300A. | After overhearing a conversation between demonic characters who are planning to turn themselves into something edible, attractive, and safe, and to destroy anyone who touches them, the hero neutralises the demons. | 37 | 57 |
| L50 | Cannibal by the trail, G321. | The character kills travellers passing by. Usually, he does not attack them unexpectedly, but distracts their attention first. Often, he pushes his victims down somewhere. | 37 | 56 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| L37c In L37 family | Two Shares, ATU 735. | A person encounters the incarnations of Fortune (and Misfortune) – his own or someone else's. He manages to influence their behaviour and change (for himself) the course of events for the better. | 39 | 33 |
| 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 |
| L94a In L94 family | Grabbed by the beard. | When a person leans over the water, a demon grabs him by the beard and releases him on the promise that he will fulfil his demand. | 39 | 56 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| L42g1 In L42 family | A knock is heard, the father has left. | Father (stepfather) takes children into the forest and slips away unnoticed. To make the children think he is nearby chopping wood, father hangs a board, pumpkin, etc. on a tree, which bangs against the trunk in the wind. | 42 | 59 |
| L48 | Demons devour their own kind. | The hero (usually somewhere on high ground - on a tree, rock, at the edge of a precipice or well) kills and/or throws one of his opponents down from there. The other opponents do not recognise their comrade and believe that the slain man is the hero they are pursuing. | 42 | 55 |
| L81a2 In L81 family | The demon comes to drink the girl's blood (ATU 709A). | While the men are away, a demonic character comes to a girl or woman to drink her blood or otherwise torment her. The men notice that the girl is wasting away, but at first they do not know the reason. | 42 | 50 |
| L15d1 In L15 family | Imaginary container of the soul. | When a character is asked to reveal the location of his soul (death, power), he first gives an incorrect answer, and the questioner usually begins to show signs of attention to the corresponding locus or object. | 43 | 52 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| L42e In L42 family | Captured again, ATU 327C. | A demon catches the hero, carries him home, but the hero escapes on the way. The demon returns, catches the hero again, and this time brings him to his home. Or the demon catches and carries several children, but they escape on the way, leaving only one, whom the demon brings to his home. | 43 | 50 |
| 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 |
| L22 | Deep sleep. | Having broken some taboo, seen an unusual object or a strange character, people fall into a deep sleep; at night, while asleep, they are killed or maimed. | 44 | 80 |
| L100f In L100 family | Guest fleeing from his host, ATU 1741. | While the host is away, the guest is told that the host is going to kill or maim him, and imaginary evidence is presented. The returning host tries to stop the fleeing guest, who is convinced that he was warned for good reason. | 45 | 23 |
| L100f1 In L100 family | Lover fleeing from her husband, ATU 1725. | A worker (the young son of the master) arranges things so that the food prepared by the mistress for her lover, who is working in the field, goes to the master, and when the master goes to the man, not knowing that he is his wife's lover, the man thinks that the husband is coming to kill him and flees. | 45 | 22 |
| L114b1 In L114 family | Task: bring the cannibal himself, ATU 328. | The character sequentially steals various items from the cannibal's house and finally catches or kills him. | 45 | 59 |
| L15h1 In L15 family | The soul of a character in an egg. | The object in which the character's life is contained is enclosed in another, which is enclosed in a third (and so on). The final container of the soul is an egg (to kill the character, the egg must be broken over his head). | 45 | 70 |
| L15a1 In L15 family | Achilles' heel. | The character's vulnerable spot is located at the bottom of the foot (heel, toe, sole, ankle). | 46 | 68 |
| 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 |
| L72c In L72 family | The abandoned mirror. | Fleeing for his life, the character throws a mirror behind him, which turns into an obstacle for his pursuer (ice, lake, etc.) or attracts his attention and causes him to lose time. (In the Udmurt version, objects destroy obstacles in the character's path). | 46 | 56 |
| L33 | Rolling Stone, R261. | The stone rolls after the character, trying to crush him. | 47 | 73 |
| L56 | Fire in the belly of a monster. | A large animal or monster perishes from a fire kindled in its belly. See motif K8A. | 47 | 59 |
| 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 |
| L57 | The character returns his organ. | The character loses an internal organ or part of the body, which is taken away by others; he approaches unnoticed and takes back what was lost. | 48 | 67 |
| L125 | The Werewolf Wife, ATU 411. | After meeting a beautiful woman, a man finds her in a situation where her inhuman nature is revealed. After that, the marriage falls apart. | 49 | 83 |
| L43 | Dangerous characters devour refuse. | Characters dangerous to the hero (demons, robbers, merchants) mistake excrement, insects, snakes and other disgusting things (not intended for food) for something pleasant (edible). | 49 | 54 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.