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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 ▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| K35a4 In K35 family | Thrown into the sea. | In order to get rid of the hero and take his place, the deceiver pushes him into the sea or leaves him on a distant island. The hero survives and returns. | 17 | 20 |
| K35b In K35 family | The most delicious dish. | The hero gives his rivals the food that the king sent them all to get, but what the rivals got turns out to be poisonous, useless, or tasteless, while what the hero brought, regardless of how it looks, gets praised. | 19 | 20 |
| K38f2 In K38 family | A mark made with dragon's blood. | The girl saved by the hero smears him with the blood of the monster he has slain. When the deceiver claims that he killed the dragon, the hero shows the bloodstain on his body, thus proving that he is the victor. | 15 | 20 |
| K44b In K44 family | Upon returning, throws food. | The hero or heroine returns after a long absence. Seeing (usually from the roof of the house) his or her parents (mother, husband) languishing in poverty, he or she throws food at them, extinguishes the fire, pushes them, etc. At first, they usually do not understand what is going on. | 13 | 20 |
| K56a2b In K56 family | Wash lizards and beetles. | A supernatural character asks a girl to redeem (feed) his (her) children. These are snakes, beetles or wild animals. The girl does everything she is asked and is rewarded. | 14 | 20 |
| K65c1 In K65 family | Division into servants and masters, (ATU 758). | A woman gives birth to many children, but hides some of them from God. Those who are hidden become the progenitors of people of low social status, and those who are shown become the progenitors of people of high status. {The definition of plot 758 in Uther 2004 largely coincides with ours, but the references also include traditions in which children hidden from God become spirits rather than people of low status}. | 18 | 20 |
| K73b5 In K73 family | And so the mother could not eat her child. | A woman is accused of actions that she could not have committed by her very nature. To refute the accusation, an example of something equally absurd and impossible is given, or it is pointed out that the interlocutor accepts the impossible but does not believe in the possible. | 16 | 20 |
| K80a5 In K80 family | The boar and the fratricides. | Brothers, competing as suitors or heirs, must hunt a boar. The younger brother succeeds. The older brothers kill him and take the boar for themselves. The truth comes out. | 8 | 20 |
| K8c2 In K8 family | The swallowed mouse. | The mouse is swallowed by a large land animal and comes out by cutting it open from the inside. | 14 | 20 |
| k93b6 In k93 family | A sword grown in the garden. | The fish eaten by the woman gives birth to sons, and what is buried in the garden are objects or items that are further associated with these young men. These are either weapons (swords, sabres, rapiers) or objects whose appearance allows one to judge what is happening to the young men. | 15 | 20 |
| L17 | Face on the chest. | Mouth and eyes of an anthropomorphic creature on the chest, no head. | 21 | 20 |
| L42c In L42 family | Inside the house, outside the house. | The character hides from someone stronger, sometimes inside the house, sometimes outside, and the stronger character cannot catch him. | 18 | 20 |
| L4a In L4 family | Meat answers to the master. | To test the loyalty of the heroine (hero), the demon demands that she eat food that humans should not eat. Usually, when the heroine reports that the food has been eaten, the demon asks where the food is, and the food answers him. | 16 | 20 |
| L75 | Flint kills his mother at birth. | One of two brothers is the embodiment of evil; at birth, he cuts open his mother's body, killing her. | 16 | 20 |
| L85b1 In L85 family | Ascending to heaven, he regains his physical wholeness. | After ascending to the sky (meeting God, returning from the sky to earth), a physically disabled young man (usually with only half a body) becomes whole. | 16 | 20 |
| L97 | Those rooted in the earth. | Seeing a character who is unable to move (nailed to the ground, his lower body rooted to the ground, petrified, completely absent), the hero himself manages to avoid a similar fate. | 22 | 20 |
| M106b In M106 family | "Last Year" in the demon's house. | The character who caused harm to the antagonist calls himself by a fictitious name such as "Last Year," and the other antagonists understand this to mean that everything happened a long time ago and there is no point in looking for the culprit. | 13 | 20 |
| M134b In M134 family | Measuring the wolf. | When a predator is about to eat a person, the person asks to be measured first and strikes the predator with an (imaginary) measuring instrument. | 16 | 20 |
| M148 | Agreeing to be eaten. | One zoomorphic character asks another to agree to be eaten – usually saying that he will be resurrected and compensated for the inconvenience caused. The animal agrees. | 19 | 20 |
| 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 |
| M171b In M171 family | A shoulder blade without meat. | The character pretends to have brought meat on a shoulder blade and gives it to the hosts to cook. Taking a bare bone without meat out of the pot, he accuses the hosts of stealing the meat. | 16 | 20 |
| 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 |
| M193 | Rolling home. | To avoid predators (suitors) on the way back, the character climbs inside a pumpkin, a round cauldron, etc. and rolls down the road or walks, disguised beyond recognition. | 15 | 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 |
| M48 | The trickster turns into a bison | Trickster asks another zoomorphic character to turn him into a creature of his kind, but if he breaks the condition for transformation, he becomes himself again. Usually, a trickster asks a bison or elk to turn it into a bison or elk. The bison (elk) rushes to the trickster, which bounces off in fear. The next time the trickster stays in place, metamorphoses, but regains its former appearance after trying to turn another trickster into a bison, etc. | 13 | 20 |
| 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 |
| M81a In M81 family | Vivid female ducks | The hero meets two blind women and makes them sighted. These women are birds (geese, ducks, hazel grouses, partridges). | 13 | 20 |
| M86 | The boulder punishes the offender | A rock stalks or otherwise punishes a character when he unfairly insults her (usually takes away her property, see motive L33). | 21 | 20 |
| M91d In M91 family | The drowned shaman | The character deceives others by passing off the dead as alive, directing suspicions of murder to innocent people, etc. When a shaman (less often a shaman) is ready to discover the truth, he succeeds in it kill and avoid being charged with murder. | 18 | 20 |
| M94a In M94 family | Mountain riding: antagonist victims | The demonic character kills his victims, provoking them to slide down the mountain. | 11 | 20 |
| A23d In A23 family | Who is first in the calendar? | Animals argue about which of them should start the cycle of 12 months or years. The mouse wins the primacy. | 15 | 21 |
| A2c2 In A2 family | Extra moons. | The catastrophe threatening the earth is associated with the appearance of not only several suns, but also several moons. | 13 | 21 |
| B102a In B102 family | Clouds – cows. | Clouds are associated with horned cattle, especially cows (and rain is their milk). | 17 | 21 |
| B28e In B28 family | The Moon as the Creator of the World. | The Moon (alone or together with the Sun) transforms the original "incorrect" world into the one in which people now live. | 14 | 21 |
| B33f In B33 family | The old woman-night unravels the yarn. | A certain character performs actions that determine the change from dark to light times of day. It always involves yarn, thread, rope, or fabric, which the character unravels or winds up, or with which the hero binds the entity responsible for the daily cycle. | 21 | 21 |
| B41a In B41 family | Animals tell about the lives of their owners. | A dog or other domestic animal reveals details about its owners' lives that they would prefer to keep private; it is punished for this by losing its ability to speak. | 19 | 21 |
| B46d In B46 family | Star brothers with different properties. | Men, each of whom excels others in a particular art, turn into stars. | 12 | 21 |
| B73 | The cuckoo has different legs. | The character turns into a cuckoo. This happens so quickly that one foot remains unshod or one braid remains unbraided. Therefore, it is believed that the cuckoo's legs or wings are different. See motif A43A. | 11 | 21 |
| C8c In C8 family | Son and mother give birth to people. | After a global catastrophe, at the beginning of time or when settling a new land, a woman and her son give birth to humans. | 15 | 21 |
| D13g In D13 family | Meat on the teeth. | When the character starts laughing, people see his or her scary mouth (lots of teeth, human flesh on the teeth); they kill the monster or run away. | 14 | 21 |
| E39 | Pig ancestor. | The child of a pig or boar is a woman or man – the ancestor of a certain group of people. | 19 | 21 |
| F28a In F28 family | A monstrous penis grows out of the ground. | A penis grows out of the ground or out of the water in a lake. Women summon it as needed. | 13 | 21 |
| F42a In F42 family | Men turn into birds. | In the community of the first ancestors, young men or boys turn into birds or bats and fly away. | 9 | 21 |
| F5 | Brides for the first humans. | The character does not want to or cannot give all the suitors his daughters in marriage and turns them into girls of various animals. (Usually after the flood or at the beginning of time, men want to marry the only daughter of a deity or patriarch). | 23 | 21 |
| F9d In F9 family | Scorpions in the genitals. | Small stinging creatures dangerous to the partner are found in the genitals of women or men. | 19 | 21 |
| H25 | Choose life or death. | People are offered a choice between two objects, one of which represents death and the other life, or they are asked whether they want to be reborn or die forever. Death is chosen. | 15 | 21 |
| H7d In H7 family | Death and a bundle of firewood, ATU 845. | A man calls Death, and when it comes, asks it to help him lift a bundle of firewood or pull a cart with firewood. | 24 | 21 |
| H7e In H7 family | People knew when they would die, ATU 934H(4). | In the past, people knew when they would die, so before their death they stopped doing their work or performed their duties half-heartedly. | 21 | 21 |
| I73 | Stars – sparks. | Stars (rarely suns and moons) – sparks, hot coals. | 17 | 21 |
| I95a In I95 family | Orion – scales. | Orion (probably always Orion's Belt) is Libra. | 19 | 21 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.