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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.
M - Adventures: Tricks and episodes
| Ref | Title | Summary | Traditions | Narratives ▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M5c In M5 family | Hairy octopus | The octopus or star-fish was covered with hair but the rat had eaten it up | 5 | 5 |
| M60b1 In M60 family | The crow eats fish | The crow promises to cure the fish, and eats it herself. | 2 | 5 |
| M61a2 In M61 family | The character quarrels stones | The character provokes a quarrel between two stones of different breeds. To do this, he told everyone how the other supposedly spoke hostile or offensive towards the former. | 5 | 5 |
| M74c In M74 family | Handsome as a woodpecker | Having noticed the woodpecker's beautiful plumage, the wolf or bear believes that the fox painted it and asks the fox to make him just as beautiful. The fox burns it alive. | 4 | 5 |
| M81e2 In M81 family | It attracts people and animals | By playing an instrument or otherwise, a character is able to attract an animal or person far away from him. | 5 | 5 |
| M105 | The supposedly murdered mother. | The character hides his mother (wife, mother-in-law), but tells another that he has killed or sold her, or demonstratively leads her away to be sold, but lets her escape. See motif M104. | 6 | 6 |
| M109c In M109 family | Invisibly tied tail. | A character is invisibly tied by the tail and tries to break free (successfully or unsuccessfully). Cf. motif M109. | 6 | 6 |
| M11b In M11 family | Meat extracted from the body. | A woman feeds a man with good-quality meat or fat, which she cuts from her own flesh or extracts from her body, and stops doing so when he learns about the source of the food. | 4 | 6 |
| M132a In M132 family | Ears, not horns. | Another animal thinks that a hornless herbivore has horns and is afraid of it, but these are just ears. | 6 | 6 |
| M140b In M140 family | The wolf adorns the bird. | The fox cunningly ties up the wolf. The bird unties him, and the grateful wolf adorns her plumage. See motifs b97, b97a. | 9 | 6 |
| M147 | The fox runs ahead of the tiger. | A weak animal tells a strong animal that everyone is afraid of him, the weak one, and suggests testing this. He walks in front of the strong animal, everyone runs away, and the strong animal believes that they are running away from the weak one. | 6 | 6 |
| M173 | Pretends to be dead several times. | A zoomorphic character pretends to be dead where a traveller carrying luggage is supposed to pass. The traveller passes by, but the deceiver quietly runs ahead and repeats his trick. The traveller puts his luggage on the ground and returns to pick up the first dead person (for the skin or meat), and the deceiver takes the luggage away. | 6 | 6 |
| M175 | A lion carcass behind a hyena. | The hyena sees the carcass of a larger predator behind it, does not realise that it is dead, and runs away in terror. | 5 | 6 |
| M191c In M191 family | The wolf's song, ATU 163. | Through singing (threats, pleasantries), the wolf (less often, the bear) gradually forces the old man to give him his domestic animals (and family members). | 11 | 6 |
| M195b In M195 family | Three dolls. | A person sticks a needle (thread, stick) into the ear of two or three dolls (skulls). In different dolls or skulls, the object comes out of different holes (or does not go inside at all, remains inside, etc.). This refers to people who react differently to what they hear (inattentive, talkative, wise). | 6 | 6 |
| M197f In M197 family | Black beard, grey head, ATU 921C. | The dialogue plays on the fact that in youth the beard is black, and in old age it is white. Usually a person explains why his head has turned grey but his beard has not: the beard is 20 years younger. | 10 | 6 |
| M198b5 In M198 family | The imaginary fortune teller: an overheard conversation. | The fake fortune teller accidentally overhears someone's conversation, otherwise he would not have been able to give the correct answer. | 5 | 6 |
| M39a5a2 In M39 family | The screaming judge | My husband found a treasure. He knows his wife will talk about it. In order not to believe her, her husband says, and the wife then repeats, that the judge suffered from the hail that fell at that time (soup spilled from the sky) (lost an eye, ulcers on his face). The judge furiously drives the woman away, the treasure remains with her husband. | 6 | 6 |
| M53a In M53 family | Crows and seals | raven gathers seals or other marine mammals around and deceives them into killing them. | 6 | 6 |
| M61a3 In M61 family | The character fights fish | The character tells each of two different species of fish how the other allegedly used to be hostile or offensive towards the former. Fish kill each other and the character prepares them to eat. | 7 | 6 |
| M67 | The trickster was blown away by the wind | By stupidity or carelessness, the character causes a wind that blows him away. See the M66 motif (The Trickster emits a stream of intestinal gases). | 13 | 6 |
| M100a In M100 family | Fire on the edge of a cliff. | One of the characters leads another to the edge of a cliff with the aim of lighting a fire, or lights a fire at the edge of the cliff. As a result, the other falls and is killed. | 5 | 7 |
| M108b In M108 family | The woodpecker helper. | The deceiver takes away someone else's property in a boat or carries it away. A bird (usually a woodpecker) deceives him and returns the property to its owners. | 11 | 7 |
| M114f In M114 family | Crooked pipe. | The girl has a minor physical defect. Man: The house is nice, but the pipe is crooked. Girl: But the smoke comes out well. | 6 | 7 |
| m11d In m11 family | Salt from bodily secretions. | The character makes food taste good by adding salt to it. Another character learns that the cook extracts this salt from his own body (it is contained in his bodily secretions). | 8 | 7 |
| M130b In M130 family | The traitor is killed instead of the victim. | A herbivorous animal falls into a hunter's trap. The predator does not want to release it, as it hopes to eat its entrails, but the bird helps it to escape. The hunter tries to kill the bird, but instead kills the predator. | 7 | 7 |
| M138a In M138 family | One hundred and twenty years of life. | At the beginning of time, the supreme deity or his messengers decided that the maximum lifespan of a human being would be 120 years. | 7 | 7 |
| M144a In M144 family | Burning straw on the back of a tiger. | The character asks a large and dangerous animal (a tiger or an elephant) to carry a load of straw and sets it on fire. Then he or someone else advises the victim to run not to the river, but to the mountain. | 7 | 7 |
| M162b In M162 family | Cranberry juice in the bear's eyes. | The character pretends to rub sour berry juice into his eyes. Another (always a bear) wants the same thing, goes blind, and the character kills him. | 6 | 7 |
| M198b1 In M198 family | A fortune teller named Rak. | An authoritative character asks a man named Cancer to guess what is in a box (under a lid on a plate, etc.). There are crabs or crayfish inside. The man says that now he, Cancer, has been caught, while others think that he has guessed correctly. | 7 | 7 |
| m198b6 In m198 family | A fortune teller named Zhaba (Frog). | An authoritative character asks a person to guess what is in his box. The person says that now he, so-and-so, has been caught, or utters an exclamation. This exclamation or name sounds like "toad" or "frog," and the character believes that the person has a special gift. | 6 | 7 |
| M26a In M26 family | Ducks carry the catcher (strung on a rope), ATU 1881 | The character catches birds by feeding them bait tied to a rope, which they swallow one by one, or by shooting several birds with one bullet, or by soldering birds drunk and tying up. Birds usually take off and carry away a catcher holding a rope. | 16 | 7 |
| M29E In M29 family | Trickster - Skunk | See the motives in square brackets. | 17 | 7 |
| M29l In M29 family | Trickster - Possum | See the motives in square brackets. | 25 | 7 |
| M29q In M29 family | Trickster - Raccoon | See the motives in square brackets. | 11 | 7 |
| M29x1 In M29 family | Trickster - Badger | See the motives in square brackets. | 9 | 7 |
| M30a In M30 family | They relieve the need for a fallen person | The character flying over the village falls, is tied up, and defecated on him. | 9 | 7 |
| M39a6e In M39 family | Basket Maker, ATU 888A* | A person learns a craft (weaving, painting) in order to earn a living for the family. His wife is kidnapped (separated if he is with him). The wife finds out that her husband is there when she sees baskets or other items he has made. | 7 | 7 |
| M62d In M62 family | A hare in rotten skin | trickster wears rotten skin, pretends to be another animal, and says that the name (i.e. himself) has caused him to get sick. The animals are frightened, they do not dare to take revenge on the trickster for his tricks. See M62C motif. | 8 | 7 |
| M62e In M62 family | One field and two employees | A weak character alternately negotiates with two strong ones to cultivate the site. Each of the strong works in due time and does not know about the existence of the other. As a result, a weak character takes the entire crop. | 6 | 7 |
| M84d In M84 family | A sick tree | A person hears trees talking, one of which is (fatally) ill and suffers. | 6 | 7 |
| M8b In M8 family | Birds are hammering the rock: extracting water | Animals, and often birds, struggle to break through the rock to get water or honey hidden inside it. | 7 | 7 |
| M90c In M90 family | Stepladder instead of wife | man agreed with another that he could take the first thing he touched from his house. The visitor is going to take his wife, but when he takes up the stepladder to go up to the woman, he is told to pick up the stepladder and leave. | 7 | 7 |
| M113a In M113 family | A bird sees blood instead of water. | A certain type of bird cannot drink water from rivers and lakes because instead of water it sees blood, fire, etc. | 7 | 8 |
| M114i1 In M114 family | He throws away the dead ones and brings the unkilled ones. | A man replies that his father (brother, etc.) hunts: he kills (discards) those he sees, and leaves (brings back) those he does not see (those not killed). This refers to lice or fleas. | 9 | 8 |
| M121 | Insects as spies. | A louse or other similar creature (flea, tick, firefly) is sent to follow a certain character. | 7 | 8 |
| M123b In M123 family | A girl ties her kidnapper to a boat. | The trickster deceives the girl into marrying him and takes her away in a boat. The woman asks to be allowed to go ashore to relieve herself, secretly ties the kidnapper's clothes to the boat and runs away. | 7 | 8 |
| M132 | Ears instead of sandals. | The enemy is ready to seize the character. The character asks the enemy to first take and throw away his clothes or shoes, and then offers his ears. The enemy grabs him by the ears and throws him away, and the character runs away. | 6 | 8 |
| M141a In M141 family | And who is the mouse to us? | In a gathering of various animals, one of the participants refers to the weakest as insignificant to the others and bearing an ugly name. That one is eaten. This is repeated several times, each time the weakest of the remaining animals is eaten. | 7 | 8 |
| M155 | Covered nakedness of the father. | The father or mother (pretends to) fall asleep naked. One of the children covers him or her, which is a sign of respect. | 8 | 8 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.