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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 ▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M152e In M152 family | Whose voice is louder. | A tiger (lion) and another animal compete to see whose roar is louder. The tiger roars louder, but ultimately loses. | 10 | 12 |
| M181b In M181 family | How the spider came to live under the roof. | The story of the trickster Spider ends with his transformation into a spider that lives under the roof, in dark corners, etc. | 8 | 12 |
| M190 | Beaver and porcupine. | The beaver carries the porcupine across a water barrier. Usually, he throws it into the water or leaves it on an island. | 9 | 12 |
| M197c In M197 family | Remedy against fleas, ATU 1862A. | A man sells sand, dust, etc. as a remedy against fleas, mice, etc. He explains that you need to catch a flea and pour sand into its eyes. The buyer replies that you can crush a caught flea. The seller: that's even easier. | 16 | 12 |
| M199c1 In M199 family | Whoever throws a stone farther, ATU 1063A. | A man and his opponent agree to test their strength by throwing a heavy object as far as possible. The man pretends that he is going to throw the object so far that those who are across the sea, behind the mountain, in a distant city, etc. (including the opponent's relatives) may be harmed. The opponent refuses to take part in the test. | 17 | 12 |
| 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 |
| M22a In M22 family | The crane as a watchman. | In a foreign house, in a foreign country, where the hero finds himself, the crane or heron is a watchman who must raise the alarm in case of strangers appearing. | 8 | 12 |
| M29z2 In M29 family | Gypsy - a cunning winner | Being smart and witty, the Gipsy overcomes strong adversaries | 14 | 12 |
| M31 | Discharged into water | A character who can't swim asks another to take him by water. He agrees, but throws the rider into the water. | 10 | 12 |
| M35 | Who won't freeze? | Two zoomorphic characters compete to see which of them will spend the whole night in the cold and stay alive. By morning, one of them dies. Cf. K27A motif (the cold test does not involve a two-animal competition). | 9 | 12 |
| M38d3 In M38 family | A blurred lump of earth | The character, who is a lump of earth (oatmeal, salt), blurred in the rain or after going to get water. | 8 | 12 |
| M38d7 In M38 family | Sausage makes soup, (ATU 85) | Person who represents something fat (a sausage, a piece of fat, etc.) prepares a rich soup adding to it its own fat. Another person tries to repeat the trick and dies | 10 | 12 |
| M39a8b In M39 family | Tongueless Robber | Using a stratagem, someone who hides in a tree cuts (bits) off the tongue of a dangerous person and the latter is unable to describe situation to his partners | 12 | 12 |
| M39b1 In M39 family | They row in both directions, ATU 1276 | Once in the boat, some people row in one direction and others in the opposite direction, the boat remains in place. | 17 | 12 |
| M42c In M42 family | When it falls off a cliff, it eats its bone marrow | Falling off a cliff and breaking his leg, the character eats his bone marrow. | 14 | 12 |
| M53e In M53 family | Allegedly inedible whale | A character (always a raven) kills a whale and points others to imaginary signs that whale meat is not suitable for food. People believe and all the meat goes to the deceiver. | 8 | 12 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| M96 | Imaginary guests | In order not to share with family members, the character pretends to have guests and eats everything himself. | 12 | 12 |
| N35 | Jelly shores | Somewhere milk rivers flow with banks made of jelly (porridge) - a sign of abundance (impossible in reality). Cf. H16B motive. | 7 | 12 |
| A10 | The sun finds its eyes. | The sun gets its sparkling eyes (eye) from an animal. | 8 | 13 |
| A4b In A4 family | The sun is afraid of the night. | The sun decided to walk across the sky during the day because it is afraid of the night. | 9 | 13 |
| B105 | The transformation of a shy daughter-in-law. | The father-in-law or mother-in-law catches the daughter-in-law in a situation she is ashamed of (with her hair down, bathing, etc.). Out of shame, she turns into a bird (usually a hoopoe) or a turtle. | 9 | 13 |
| B11a In B11 family | The mammoth – creator of the landscape. | The mammoth, represented as an underground fish-like creature, creates rugged terrain on wet ground and digs river beds. | 15 | 13 |
| B15 | River from a woman's body. | The river flows from the organs of a woman's body. | 11 | 13 |
| B1c In B1 family | One creator deceives another. | Two creators agree that the older of them (the main creator) will be the one whose object is in a certain state (usually: whose tree or flower grows or blooms earlier). While one was asleep or absent, the other switched the objects and deceitfully achieved primacy. | 13 | 13 |
| B1e In B1 family | The hero and his ten brothers. | The protagonist of the narrative is one of many (seven or more) brothers with whom he is in conflict, but who are not his irreconcilable enemies. | 6 | 13 |
| B20 | Expedition to the upper world. | People ascend to the sky to hunt, fish, or gather honey; they do not give honey, fish, or good meat to the person who remained below; that person makes sure that they remain in the sky forever. | 8 | 13 |
| B30b In B30 family | The slain turn into animals. | Animals arise from the remains of a killed person. | 11 | 13 |
| B42h2 In B42 family | Reddish star – arrow. | A large reddish star (Betelgeuse or Aldebaran) is identified with an arrow. | 8 | 13 |
| B42m1 In B42 family | Ket, Selkup and Evenk. | The three main stars of the Big Dipper's handle are associated with people of three different nationalities. | 9 | 13 |
| B72c In B72 family | The blood of those who run stains objects. | Children run after their mother, injure themselves, and their blood stains plants, the ground, and the evening sky. | 9 | 13 |
| C30c In C30 family | Drinking the sea. | A man promises to drink the sea (to count how many drops of water there are in the sea), but asks his opponent to first separate the sea water from the water of the rivers flowing into the sea. | 13 | 13 |
| C39 | Repairing the sky. | When the sky split or partially collapsed, it was repaired. | 4 | 13 |
| C6f In C6 family | Retrieving a drowned person. | The characters attempt to retrieve a living creature or part of its body that has sunk to the bottom of the water. See motif C6. | 12 | 13 |
| D2a In D2 family | Mother dies giving birth to fire or the sun. | A woman gives birth to a son who is the embodiment of fire or the sun and dies from burns. | 6 | 13 |
| D4c1 In D4 family | A floating elk distracts attention. | Animal-people come to steal summer from its owners. One of them, in the guise of an elk or caribou, distracts the owners' attention or floats a log or stump down the river, which the owners of summer mistake for an elk and rush after. | 9 | 13 |
| E9l In E9 family | The magical wife – mouse. | Before meeting the hero, his beloved (wife) has the image of a mouse (rarely: a rat). | 14 | 13 |
| F57 | Persephone picks a flower. | A girl or her father (rarely: mother) picks a plant (usually a flower) and as a result encounters a character with a non-human appearance and/or inhabiting the underworld. The girl becomes the character's wife. In some cases, the picked plant is the character's hair, but more often there is no direct association of this kind. | 8 | 13 |
| F66 | False house. | In order to commit incest with his daughter, grandmother, sister (brother), father, grandson, brother (sister), the man pretends to be a stranger, or the husband takes on the appearance of his wife's brother so that she treats him as a blood relative. To do this, the character secretly moves to another house for a while, where the object of his desire mistakes him for someone else. | 13 | 13 |
| G22 | Frog/toad and cultivated plants. | The frog/toad is associated with humans acquiring cultivated plants. | 9 | 13 |
| H22a In H22 family | Animals were struck on the nose. | Large game animals were concentrated in one place and were not afraid of people. They scattered after someone touched them, hit them lightly (often on the nose), or smeared them with something. Cf. motif H22. | 15 | 13 |
| H55b In H55 family | The Repentant Robber, ATU 756B. | From a man who visited hell (and met a deity), the robber learns of his future fate, humbly accepts the inevitability of retribution in the afterlife, and is ultimately saved. The robber is usually contrasted with a self-confident righteous man who is punished for his pride. | 30 | 13 |
| I117a In I117 family | The bat helps to descend. | The bat helps the hero descend to the ground from a high cliff. | 11 | 13 |
| I30 | The lord of the dead meets women. | In the world of the dead, its master or mistress copulates with all new arrivals. | 4 | 13 |
| I64a In I64 family | Race on the Milky Way. | Two different hoofed animals race across the sky. Usually, the Milky Way is the dusty trail they leave behind. | 11 | 13 |
| I76b In I76 family | A mouse becomes a bat. | After a certain amount of time or after performing certain actions, an ordinary mouse turns into a bat. | 13 | 13 |
| I77 | The lame thunderer. | A powerful character associated with thunderstorms and rain, lame. | 14 | 13 |
| I85a1 In I85 family | The North Star – a hole in the sky. | The North Star – a hole leading to the upper world. | 14 | 13 |
| J23a In J23 family | Snot turns into a boy. | A woman cries, and the discharge from her nose (her tears) turns into a boy, who grows up and defeats strong opponents. | 9 | 13 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.