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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.
All motif categories
| Ref | Title | Summary | Traditions | Narratives ▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| K90a In K90 family | Aimed at the black one, hit the white one. | Seeing two snakes of contrasting colours fighting, a man tries to strike one, but accidentally hits the other. The relatives of this snake gather to punish him, but upon learning what happened, they reward him. | 11 | 11 |
| 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 |
| L1c2 In L1 family | Hiding under the hearth. | Fleeing from a demonic creature, the characters hide their children (younger brother or sister) in a camouflaged pit, usually under the hearth. See motif L1C. | 11 | 11 |
| L37b4 In L37 family | Dog meat has miraculous properties. | From a conversation between spirits or animals, a man learns that the meat (brain, blood) of a neighbouring shepherd's dog has miraculous properties. | 8 | 11 |
| L3a In L3 family | She asked for help – a demon came. | Left alone, a woman carelessly calls for someone to help her with the housework; a demon comes and kills the woman or her child. | 8 | 11 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| L5A In L5 family | The head turns into a celestial object. | A rolling head turns into a celestial object that emits or eclipses light (sun, moon, stars, fireball; it is the cause of eclipses). See motif L5. | 15 | 11 |
| L60 | The foundling demon. | Several sisters pick up a baby. In their absence, it turns into an adult man, and when they approach, it turns back into a child. Taking on its true form, the demon pursues the sisters. See motif M46a. | 10 | 11 |
| L72j In L72 family | A needle (awl) turns into many needles (awls). | Fleeing for his life, the character throws behind him an awl or needle, which turns into many awls or needles. | 11 | 11 |
| L73b In L73 family | A line drawn. | The fugitive draws a line on the ground (ice), creating an obstacle in the path of the pursuer. | 7 | 11 |
| L88 | The demon comes to life from touch. | A man kills a demon, but when he touches its remains some time later, it comes to life. | 8 | 11 |
| L93c In L93 family | The monkey helper. | The monkey, resorting to cunning, helps the hero or heroine, saves them. | 13 | 11 |
| L94e In L94 family | White wolf. | A supernatural character who helps the hero or heroine under certain conditions – the white wolf. | 10 | 11 |
| M114b2 In M114 family | How many steps did your horse take? | A man (an authoritative character) asks a girl (a subordinate) a question about the number of routine actions she has performed (or small items she has), which no one counts. She asks a counter-question about the number of similar actions performed by the questioner. | 9 | 11 |
| M130 | The fox and the bird in one burrow. | The fox and the bird hide from the hunter in the same burrow or hollow. The bird pretends to be dead and as a result is saved – either alone or together with the fox. Cf. motif M130A. | 13 | 11 |
| M139 | Released birds. | The fox caught the birds and put them in a bag. Another character secretly replaced them with thorns. | 7 | 11 |
| M154a1 In M154 family | Pregnant wife on a pregnant mare. | A man who understands the language of animals hears the mare say that she is carrying four (three): she has a foal in her belly, and the woman in the saddle is also pregnant. | 11 | 11 |
| M157d In M157 family | Grandfather and the Turnip, ATU 2044. | Animals (mainly domestic) and/or people join forces to achieve a goal (usually to pull a root vegetable out of the ground). They succeed after the last participant (usually the weakest) joins in. | 16 | 11 |
| 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 |
| M29h In M29 family | Trickster - Owl | See the motives in square brackets. | 17 | 11 |
| M32a In M32 family | Eats what falls out | character's insides or pieces of flesh fall out of his back. He eats them, mistaking them for regular meat and fat. | 9 | 11 |
| M38c2 In M38 family | He cuts off a horse's leg to shove it | To shove a horse or donkey, Jesus (the saint) cuts off his leg, nails a horseshoe to his hoof, and attaches his leg back. The other character tries to imitate in vain. | 12 | 11 |
| M39a2b In M39 family | A fool salts the river | After buying salt or sugar, a fool pours them into a pond to salt or sweeten the water. | 9 | 11 |
| M39g2 In M39 family | To rake nuts with a pitchfork, ATU 1229* | Numskulls try to shovel nuts with a pitchfork. F stranger shows them how to do this work more easily with a shovel (a basket) | 14 | 11 |
| M56c In M56 family | Try on a snake | The character promises to bring a snake. The snake agrees to have the character measure its length. He ties the snake to a stick or, while measuring, finds out where to hit it to kill it. | 10 | 11 |
| M66a In M66 family | A mountain of excrement | After eating a certain food, the trickster leaves a mountain of excrement that is larger than himself. | 7 | 11 |
| M75d In M75 family | Vulture knife | A man bereaves vultures of their hunting weapons or amulets | 10 | 11 |
| M78g In M78 family | Sleep-related | When the inhabitants of the house fall asleep, a joker (usually a tiny boy) ties them together in pairs so that when they wake up, they quarrel. | 15 | 11 |
| 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 |
| M91E In M91 family | The Tsar orders himself to be burned | The ruler, the leader, believes that a man who escaped death by cunning returned from the world where he received benefits. It tells you to burn, drown, etc. yourself or your close associates. | 16 | 11 |
| M99a1 In M99 family | Leaky beaks of birds | The character is going to pierce all the birds with their beaks (to string them on a rope) or cut them off altogether. | 7 | 11 |
| N12 | Beard cloak | A powerful character makes or tells you to make a cloak or fur coat from human beards and/or mustaches. | 6 | 11 |
| N25 | The path is a needle long | said that characters spend a long time (days, weeks, months, years) on the road, but end up walking a journey as long as a grain, needle, or other small object. | 3 | 11 |
| N28c In N28 family | Sky support | In a list of things that do not exist in the world, a pillar of the sky is mentioned | 11 | 11 |
| N37 | Sheltered in the sky | The character is said to sleep under the sky (like a blanket). | 8 | 11 |
| B115B In B115 family | The slain person turns into a viburnum. | One brother kills another, or one sister kills another, or a brother kills a sister. A viburnum or other shrub with red berries grows in this place. | 7 | 12 |
| B122 | Infants and birds. | Birds (cranes/storks, geese or crows) carry children away to another world or bring them back from there. See motif H6c3, "The Immortal Stork". | 5 | 12 |
| B16a In B16 family | Sea of urine. | The sea is formed from urine or blood. | 14 | 12 |
| B33g In B33 family | Three horsemen (sun, moon, night). | Horsemen or horses represent celestial bodies or different periods of the day. | 8 | 12 |
| B42i In B42 family | Cassiopeia – deer. | Cassiopeia is associated with a deer or elk. | 15 | 12 |
| B42l In B42 family | Ladle – beast, handle – hunters. | The stars of the handle of the Big Dipper are hunters, the dipper itself is a bear, an elk or a meat storehouse where the bear climbs. | 23 | 12 |
| B44e In B44 family | Dialogue of the first ancestors. | First ancestors (usually birds or animals) argue with each other about the length of time periods in the calendar or daily cycle, or about the desirability of the dominance of cold and dark or warm and light times. See motif B44. | 11 | 12 |
| B78 | Shaking off, produces a blizzard. | When a character dusts himself off (or shakes out his clothes, plucks birds, etc.), snow falls from his hair, feathers, wool, bedding, clothes, etc. onto the ground. | 13 | 12 |
| C2a In C2 family | The Woodpecker's Fire. | Two characters meet a woodpecker and receive an object from it, which causes the ground to catch fire upon contact. The stronger and smarter of the two characters escapes, while the weaker and stupider one is burned or burned to death. | 7 | 12 |
| C32B In C32 family | Nails – material for the devil. | Demonic characters will make something useful for themselves (and harmful to humans) out of nail clippings. | 11 | 12 |
| C6i In C6 family | Stuck mud turns into earth. | A zoomorphic character returns from the underworld covered in mud. He shakes himself off, or the mud is scraped off him, and earth emerges from it. | 8 | 12 |
| D10 | The fire drill is a pair of people. | A couple of people serve as the embodiment of a tool for obtaining fire. | 11 | 12 |
| D13h In D13 family | He who goes to the dead must not laugh. | Those who have entered the world of the dead should not laugh. | 10 | 12 |
| D1a4 In D1 family | Conversation between two fires. | Two fires from different dwellings meet and converse. | 13 | 12 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.