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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| M29 | Trickster: identification with birds and animals | trickster is defined as a protagonist in the following characteristic episodes. | 0 | 0 |
| M38b3b In M38 family | Hero warms and covers the nestlings | Mighty bird (more rare other creature/mythological person) helps a man (rare: a woman) because he (she) warms/covers from bad weather its/hers nestlings (children) | 0 | 0 |
| M53b In M53 family | A bag with songs | Trickster claims he's carrying songs in his bag. See M53 motif. | 0 | 0 |
| M24a In M24 family | Kills a woman, captured | turtle man goes to war, kills people (usually a woman). He gets caught or killed. In his animal form, he continues to live on. See M24 motif. | 1 | 1 |
| M152f In M152 family | Whose voice is quieter, we will eat. | Animals agree to eat the one among them who has the quietest voice. | 2 | 5 |
| M162C In M162 family | The removed skin is eaten. | The fox persuades the bear to remove his skin, eats it, and the bear dies. | 2 | 3 |
| 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 |
| M45b In M45 family | Animals at the trough, ATU 179B* | The old man carries a trough and lies down to rest, covered with it. The animals take the trough to the table and bring food. The old man gets up, the animals run away, the old man gets the food. | 2 | 2 |
| M53f In M53 family | Pretending to be a monster, it eats supplies | The character is involved in preparing food supplies. After leaving under some pretext, he returns in the form of a monster or predator. Everyone runs away, the deceiver eats supplies, and then returns as usual. As a result, it was exposed. | 2 | 5 |
| M60b1 In M60 family | The crow eats fish | The crow promises to cure the fish, and eats it herself. | 2 | 5 |
| M61a4 In M61 family | He tells everyone that the other is dying | character lies to each of the spouses as if the other had a misfortune. They run to each other in panic. | 2 | 2 |
| M84b3 In M84 family | Eaten and revived goose (Wondrous wondrous). | 2 | 4 | |
| M97B In M97 family | A woman asks the trees | 2 | 2 | |
| M105B In M105 family | Carries his mother on his back. | The character replies that the load, hump or bulge on his back or head is his deceased mother or grandmother. Another kills his mother or wife and places her on his back or head. | 3 | 4 |
| M109d In M109 family | Seized by the tail by a sea creature. | A zoomorphic character dips his tongue or tail into the water. An octopus or shell grabs it and holds it tight, so that the character drowns during high tide. | 3 | 3 |
| M116b In M116 family | The monstrous pursuer and the old man's advice. | A monster chases people. An old man gives advice on how to kill it from ambush. | 3 | 4 |
| M136e In M136 family | Should the bride be shortened? | Instead of asking a person to bend down in front of a low lintel, others suggest cutting off his head or legs. | 3 | 3 |
| M157a7 In M157 family | Stolen children. | A zoomorphic character took the children of a character of another animal species and claims that they are his own children. | 3 | 3 |
| M168b In M168 family | The crooked stick. | A bird or a person who becomes a bird is given the task of bringing a stick that is neither straight nor crooked. This bird is still searching for it. | 3 | 4 |
| M199g2 In M199 family | The thorny pole. | The trickster arranges things so that the tiger, with whom they are carrying meat on a pole, holds the end of the pole with the thorns and suffers from pain. | 3 | 4 |
| M29S In M29 family | Trickster - Crane | See the motives in square brackets. | 3 | 3 |
| M74e In M74 family | Divides by biting off piece by piece | Two characters ask the third to share something edible between them. He bites off a little bit from each of the halves, because one or the other is slightly larger. As a result, it eats everything. | 3 | 3 |
| 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 |
| M163C In M163 family | Money thrown into the sea. | A person is advised to throw money into the water and take only what floats up. This brings him happiness. | 4 | 4 |
| M183a In M183 family | Who will eat more: one against many. | Two people argue about who will eat or drink more. One of them is constantly replaced by his relatives, his opponent does not notice the substitution and loses. | 4 | 3 |
| M23a In M23 family | The turtle asks to be soaked, ATU 122G(2). | The turtle says that before eating it, it must be properly soaked in water, but once in the water, it swims away. | 4 | 4 |
| M29T In M29 family | Trickster - Armadillo | See the motives in square brackets. | 4 | 2 |
| M38a2 In M38 family | The hen boils eggs | The hen (other bird) cooks her own eggs and serves them to other animal persons (who imitated her with disastrous consequences) | 4 | 4 |
| M38d4 In M38 family | The Hunting Needle, ATU 90 | Several characters that embody small objects (and a squirrel with them) travel together. The needle penetrates the body of a large animal and kills it. (In the Baltic-Finnish texts, the needle first finds items that others find useless, but after the animal was caught, everything found turned out to be in demand for cooking meat). | 4 | 5 |
| M39a2e In M39 family | Forgotten name | Forgetting his name, a fool remembers it when he accidentally hears a word. | 4 | 3 |
| M39a4d In M39 family | A fool sells property to a lizard | Fool sells property a lizard and believes it will pay him. Trying to get his money, he finds treasure | 4 | 4 |
| M60a3 In M60 family | The Imaginary Physician: Punishing a Scoundrel | Avenging the seized property (a pet or a bird), the hero repeatedly comes to the offender in different guises (girl, doctor, etc.) and brutally mocks him. | 4 | 4 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| m105a1 In m105 family | Allegedly killed children: two birds. | One of two birds, both of which (rarely: only one) are flightless, suggests that the other break its eggs. The other agrees, but then sees that the first has kept its eggs. | 5 | 16 |
| M170b In M170 family | The rim of a vessel on the neck. | A zoomorphic character stuck its head into a vessel, which broke, leaving the rim on its neck. The character uses this as proof of its high status. | 5 | 5 |
| M173B In M173 family | Running ahead. | The character repeatedly runs ahead of another person on the road to obtain food from them, each time pretending to be a different person. | 5 | 4 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| m203b In m203 family | The cat is associated with spirits. | A person learns that a cat familiar to him and living in the human world also belongs to the world of spirits. | 5 | 8 |
| M39a3b In M39 family | A fool takes care of stumps | fool decides that stumps need hats, puts pots on the stumps. | 5 | 8 |
| M44a In M44 family | Food thieves are the first humans | The character discovers that someone is stealing game or fish from his trap, mountain, etc. or ravages his garden, field; he or his messengers wait and catch the thief [magical tales clearly of European origin (e.g. Chamacoco, Wilbert, Simoneau 1987a, No. 121) are not included]. The kidnappers are the first people to get out of the ground, the first men. | 5 | 14 |
| M55 | Dangerous overnight stay | A human or weaker animal character takes a stronger character to sleep in a supposedly dangerous place where hot coals, sticks, etc. can fall on those lying at night; when A strong character falls asleep, his companion burns or hits him, pretending that both of them have suffered equally. | 5 | 12 |
| 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 |
| M61a1 In M61 family | The character quarrels birds | The character (always a raven) provokes a seagull to quarrel with another bird, telling each one that the other was hostile or offensive towards her. | 5 | 9 |
| 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 |
| M76 | A person climbing a tree has his leg cut off | A woman cuts off a man's leg when he climbs a tree; a man cuts off a woman's leg when she climbs a tree. See K13A motif. | 5 | 4 |
| M78e In M78 family | Baby ear | A tiny boy comes from an animal's ear, compared in size to an ear, his name is “ear”. | 5 | 9 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.