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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M1 | Dangerous crossing. | The character crosses a body of water on the back of a monster or animal that agrees to be a carrier but may or intends to drown or eat its passenger. | 65 | 126 |
| M1a In M1 family | The caiman carries the Pleiades brothers. | The caiman transports one of the brothers or a group of brothers, who then turn into the Pleiades. It usually bites off the leg of the youngest. Cf. motif K13B. | 6 | 10 |
| M1b In M1 family | A caiman/crocodile carries a monkey. | A caiman/crocodile carries a monkey across a river. She manages to jump ashore and runs away from the caiman. | 11 | 13 |
| M2 | Descending a tree. | The hero descends from a tree or rock on the back of an animal or on the backs of animals. | 11 | 12 |
| M3 | Human chain | The character crosses a water or air barrier on the backs of chained animals, birds, or fish. | 39 | 69 |
| M3a In M3 family | Count the inhabitants of the waters | The character invites aquatic creatures to count them, and to do this, form a chain; crosses it to the other side or climbs to land. See M3 motif. | 33 | 51 |
| M3b In M3 family | A severed rabbit tail | Trying to grab a hare, another animal tears off (bites) its tail. It's been short ever since. | 2 | 5 |
| M4 | Careless step | When crossing a pond or descending from a tree, the character (usually despite a warning) steps at a specific animal or part of the animal's body . As a result, it falls into the water and often sinks. | 8 | 18 |
| M5 | Provoked insult | Once in a situation where his life depends on the will of a demon or animal, the hero feels like insulting or hitting him. See M1 motif. | 11 | 95 |
| M5a In M5 family | The passengers of the sinking boat | Small animal characters sail in the boat, it sinks, everyone escapes as best they can. | 31 | 37 |
| M5b In M5 family | An Ungrateful Rat | rat drowns, has difficulty getting to the shore (usually an aquatic animal takes it), and mocks other animals (usually its savior). | 21 | 23 |
| M5c In M5 family | Hairy octopus | The octopus or star-fish was covered with hair but the rat had eaten it up | 5 | 5 |
| M5d In M5 family | Squirrel and fish | The squirrel and the creeping fish are smart and get medicines for each other | 5 | 3 |
| M6 | Night with a partridge | A young man or girl spends night in the forest. The forest partridge (Tinamus sp.) provides him or her a fire, a shelter and/or a hammock but takes them away and flies away itself when the person does something wrong | 11 | 20 |
| M6A In M6 family | Journey to the end of the night | 12 | 15 | |
| M7 | Waiting for transport | The character goes to the lower world, to the sky, to the country on the horizon, etc. and waits for someone to give him a ride to his goal. Usually, some animals/birds or celestial bodies follow by, and the last (often the Sun or Month) delivers. | 27 | 46 |
| M7a In M7 family | Thrown in the water | Birds or animals take the character into their boat, but take on a zoomorphic appearance and leave their passenger in the water (after he breaks a ban). (It is significant that the boat or raft only appears to be artifacts, but is actually the bodies of the corresponding birds or animals, or it is an ice floe; cf. Motive M31). | 9 | 11 |
| M7a1 In M7 family | The luminaries float above the hero | Person gets to a place from which he is unable to come out. Several (more than two) different celestial bodies rise and move near him or above him. He puts attention to them (and asks their help) | 8 | 12 |
| M7b In M7 family | The fox asks for help from people passing by | zoomorphic character (usually a fox) finds himself in a place he can't get out of, and consistently asks for help from animals (fish) passing by or approaching him. The latter helps. | 15 | 16 |
| M7c In M7 family | Fish help: offered and rejected | zoomorphic character is waiting to be transported across the water. Animals or fish consistently offer help. The character only accepts the latter's help - he was waiting for him to eat. | 9 | 18 |
| M8 | A destroyed obstacle | Some characters (not humans) are struggling to break a strong barrier that prevents access to the desired location or to a high-value object. See also M8A - M8D motifs; they are included in the M8 motif in the correlation tables. | 42 | 62 |
| M8a In M8 family | Birds are hammering the rock: release from the trap | Animals, and more often birds, find it difficult to break through a rock from the outside or inside, make a hole in the tree, in the body of an absorber creature, tear fetters, etc., to help a character or get out of the confined space by yourself. The list includes groups whose texts deal with the exit of the first ancestors to earth from a confined space. | 51 | 80 |
| 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 |
| M8c In M8 family | Cleaned eyes | Birds pierce through a layer of clay, wax, resin, etc., that covers the character's eyes or anus. | 10 | 14 |
| M8d In M8 family | Extend the hole in the body | Birds break through the hard cover on the character's body to reach his entrails. | 9 | 13 |
| M9 | Trapped in a hollow | The character puts his head or hand in a hollow or (rarely) another hole), gets stuck in it, or falls into a hollow. Usually, as a result, the character dies or undergoes a metamorphosis. | 30 | 39 |
| M9a In M9 family | Turning into a tree frog | A character who eagerly sucks honey from a hollow and/or gets stuck in a hollow turns into a tree frog. See M9 motif. | 10 | 2 |
| M10 | The girl and the honey. | A girl or woman gets stuck in a hollow while extracting honey, or greedily sucks honey in some other way and as a result dies or undergoes a metamorphosis; a woman stuck in a narrow passage turns into honey, into a honey bee. | 16 | 19 |
| M11 | Unclean food. | The character gives others food extracted from his or someone else's body or contaminated with bodily secretions, without revealing the source of the food. | 114 | 148 |
| M11a In M11 family | Fish extracted from the body. | The character gives others the fish extracted from his body. | 9 | 12 |
| 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 |
| M11c In M11 family | Removes fat from the body. | Without harming himself, a male character cuts off, pierces, roasts, holds over a fire, etc. a part of his body (or his wife's body). The character cooks the meat, fat, etc. obtained in this way and treats his guest to it. This food is not perceived as unclean (cf. motifs M11B and M38). | 82 | 126 |
| 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 |
| M12 | The unlucky hunter. | Unable, unwilling or unable to obtain game (fish), the hunter (fisherman) cuts flesh from his own body, removes his own entrails and collects his blood. He usually offers this to others under the guise of animal meat or fish. Alternatively, a woman cuts flesh from her own leg to feed her husband. | 44 | 48 |
| M13 | God does as he is asked, ATU 750A, 775. | A person appeals to higher powers with a request, without considering that his words may have a different meaning than he intended. Either a person accidentally utters the wrong word or accidentally and hastily expresses an empty or absurd desire. As a result, something happens that he did not want at all. Cf. motifs I58B and M13A.Most of the references in ATU 775 (Midas' short-sighted wish) are either incorrect or impossible to verify. In connection with this plot, the reference to Uther 2000 is taken into account only for the Lithuanian variant, since there is a summary of the Latvian one, and for the Greek one, since the motif exists in Ancient Greece and among the neighbouring South Slavs. For ATU 750A, the reference to Bäcker 1988 in connection with the "Chinese" is incorrect; these are Manchus, not Chinese, and the stated motif is not present in the text. | 73 | 74 |
| M13a In M13 family | Turned into stone. | A deity and a human meet so that the former can fulfil the latter's request. As a result, the human is turned to stone. Usually (except for the Squamish), one of the supplicants wants eternal life and is turned to stone. See motif M13. | 12 | 2 |
| M13B In M13 family | Sausage sticks to the nose. | People are promised the fulfilment of two (three, four) wishes. Without thinking, they wish for something they do not want at all. The last wish is spent on returning to the original state. | 7 | 9 |
| M14 | Brutal murder of wife or son. | A man brutally murders his wife (rarely: children, fiancée, sister) and/or eats her flesh himself, or brings her flesh to her relatives (if he kills children, he brings the flesh to his wife). | 39 | 62 |
| M14a In M14 family | Roasted alive. | To take revenge on his wife or her relatives for (allegedly) causing him offence, the husband roasts his wife alive. See motif M14. | 11 | 28 |
| M15 | Tied to a tree. | A man ties a girl or young woman to the top of a tree or places her on the treetop as if on a stake. People try to rescue her. | 7 | 10 |
| M16 | The healed cripple. | The wife or relatives (often the mother) of the sick person do not care for him. He recovers, and those who treated him badly are punished. Cf. motifs F62 and F96. | 48 | 80 |
| M16a In M16 family | Gains sight by diving. | A character (usually a loon) restores a person's sight and/or health by diving into the water with them. See motif M16. | 19 | 11 |
| M17 | A woman lies, pretending that a man has missed his target. | A wife, mother or grandmother directs the arrow of a blind man or boy at game, lies that he missed, cooks and eats the meat herself. See motif M16 (man is blind, K333.1). | 34 | 20 |
| M17a In M17 family | Mother or grandmother deceives a blind man. | The mother or grandmother of a blind man or boy secretly eats (the meat or fish he has caught), pretending that there is no food in the house. | 13 | 19 |
| M17b In M17 family | Wife deceives blind man. | The wife directs the blind man's arrow at game, lies that he has missed, and eats the meat herself. | 29 | 36 |
| M18 | Stolen tackle, D657.1. | The character turns into an object of fishing or hunting and presents himself as a target. The fisherman or hunter does not harm them, but they take away what they use: arrows, darts, harpoons, hooks, bait; or they catch fish, having turned themselves into hooks; or they are caught but escape death by taking on human form again. | 61 | 78 |
| M18a In M18 family | Obtaining arrows. | The character becomes the object of fishing or hunting, presenting himself as a target for enemies. Numerous arrows, darts, and harpoons stick into his body without causing harm, and he carries them away. See motif M18. | 0 | 0 |
| M18b In M18 family | Obtaining a hook, spear. | The character turns into a fishing object in order to carry away the hook with which he is caught or the spear with which they try to harpoon him, or he turns into a hook to catch fish. See motif M18. | 18 | 2 |
| M19 | Bait man. | The character ties another person (usually a child) to the end of a line, using them as bait or forcing them to catch fish with their hands. | 16 | 20 |
| M20 | Severed beak, J2138. | The character does something unacceptable, is caught, and his beak or jaw is damaged. Usually (except for the Koryaks), people keep the torn-off beak (jaw) in their homes, and the character comes and takes it back. | 15 | 20 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.