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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 ▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C8b In C8 family | Brother and sister did not recognise each other. | A brother and sister (or mother and son) find themselves alone, without marriage partners. Both of them (or only the brother, son) refuse to marry, but do so after accepting each other (or the brother accepts the sister, the son accepts the mother) as strangers. They give birth to new people. | 15 | 41 |
| D13f In D13 family | Laughter and fire. | Laughter causes the appearance or spread of fire or the sun. Usually, the owner of fire or the sun loses it after bursting into laughter. | 17 | 41 |
| F45a In F45 family | Intentional conception by the wind. | A woman or female animal conceives by deliberately exposing her genitals to the wind. | 19 | 41 |
| I101 | The Great Bear – stakes. | The Big Dipper or several bright stars of another constellation are stakes, pillars supporting a platform, or some object is stretched, dried, or stored on these stakes. | 19 | 41 |
| I130 | Heavenly net. | One of the constellations – a hunting or fishing net, a seine, a trap, a snare. | 31 | 41 |
| I35 | Thunder - animal skin. | Thunder is produced by a (tanned) animal skin or (rarely) a person being dragged, or clothing being dragged behind or shaken out. | 33 | 41 |
| I51b In I51 family | Earth – animal. | The earth or sky is perceived as a large mammal or created from parts of its body. | 31 | 41 |
| K100f In K100 family | The young man releases the fish. | A man catches an unusual fish (rarely: a bird or some kind of aquatic creature). His son (a worker) releases it. For this, the father (king) drives him away, or the one who released the fish leaves on his own. The rescued fish helps him. | 32 | 41 |
| K100f1 In K100 family | The Wild Man, ATU 502. | A man (king) catches a strange (anthropomorphic) creature. His son releases the wondrous captive (after which he flees from his father's wrath or is banished). The freed captive helps him. Cf. motif K161. | 45 | 41 |
| K115 | Spider web at the entrance, B523.1, ATU 967. | When a character hides in a shelter, a spider immediately weaves a web at the entrance. Enemies decide that no one has entered the cave or room for a long time and leave. | 50 | 41 |
| K11a In K11 family | Feathers turn into birds and people. | Plucked feathers of a (huge) bird turn into actual birds (or their plumage) or humans emerge from them. | 35 | 41 |
| K33f In K33 family | Stream of honey and stream of oil. | Sources of at least two valuable liquid edible products (honey, oil, etc.) are available or imagined. Cf. motif N34. | 24 | 41 |
| K43a In K43 family | A kind person leaves the fire. | People leave a boy, a girl, a sister and brother, a young woman or young spouses alone and depart. Someone sympathises with those who have been abandoned and secretly hides fire for them. | 40 | 41 |
| L101 | Discarded clothing distracts the pursuer. | While running away, a person gradually undresses and throws items of clothing behind them. The pursuer wastes time picking them up or destroying them. | 30 | 41 |
| L108c In L108 family | White Hand. | To prevent the victim from recognising him and opening the door, the predator, the cannibal, shows part of his clothing, his hand, his paw, making the victim believe that his mother, teacher, etc. has come. | 32 | 41 |
| M144 | The King's Drum, ATU 49A. | One character manages to convince another that dangerous and inedible objects are attractive and delicious (a wasp's nest is a drum, a snake is a flute, dung is a delicacy, etc.). | 28 | 41 |
| M157a6 In M157 family | You think you are looking at an abbot, ATU 922. | To help a person answer the ruler's questions, a servant or friend impersonates him and gives witty answers. Most often, the ruler asks, among other things, what he is thinking at the moment. Answer: you think you are looking at one person, but in fact it is another. | 45 | 41 |
| M187c In M187 family | Race: crab/crayfish – participant. | Participating in a race, the crab defeats its faster opponent. | 35 | 41 |
| M199f In M199 family | Threat to wrinkle the lake with a rope, ATU 1045(1). | The character pretends to want to deprive the devils (water dwellers) of their habitat (pull the shores of the lake together, two mountains, muddy the lake, dry up the sea, build a church on the land of the devils, etc.). To avoid this, the devils (fish) comply with the character's demands. | 29 | 41 |
| M39a6h In M39 family | Pluck a goose, ATU 921F* | The king tells the commoner to pluck a goose (geese, shear a ram, etc.). He understands correctly: to rob the vizier. | 37 | 41 |
| M39h In M39 family | Husband pretended to be blind, ATU 1380 | The wife wants to get rid of her husband and usually asks the spirit to blind him. The husband hides in a hollow, behind an altar, etc., and answers on behalf of the spirit (usually advises to kill her husband with good food), or the husband tells his wife that delicious food can make you blind. Pretending to be blind, the husband kills his lover (and wife). | 58 | 41 |
| M83b In M83 family | Whose sleep better? ATU 1626 | Two (or more) characters agree to give food to whoever has the best dream. One talks about a feast he went to in a dream (or says he was in a different world), the second admits that he ate everything alone - he was sure that after the feast, the first one would not qualify for food (which someone who finds himself in a different world does not need food). | 56 | 41 |
| M84a In M84 family | A revived goat | After supernatural characters put the bones of a dead and eaten deer, cow, ram, or goat in its skin, the animal is whole (and usually comes to life). See M84 motif. | 45 | 41 |
| A19c In A19 family | The Sun Horse. | The sun is associated with a horseman or rides in a carriage drawn by horses (equidae). | 24 | 42 |
| B42mn In B42 family | A hunter chases the Big Dipper. | Only one character (rather than several) chases an animal (elk or bear) across the sky, associated with one of the circumpolar constellations, but not with the Pleiades or Orion. (In the Kalevala tradition, there is no identification with stars). | 18 | 42 |
| B68 | Giant hazel grouse. | The giant hazel grouse became small – it was usually torn into pieces, which turned into the current hazel grouse. | 23 | 42 |
| C10 | The Flood: Wet Tails, A2211.1. | During the flood, some birds or animals escape to a mountain, a tree, a boat, or by clinging to the sky; their tails or other parts of their bodies remain in the water and as a result acquire their current colour or shape. Cf. A2211.7 ("During the flood, birds cling to the sky; their tails acquire their current colour"). | 28 | 42 |
| C33 | Prometheus (the chained strongman). | A strongman-god-fighter is chained to a rock or a pillar for centuries. | 16 | 42 |
| F70a In F70 family | Scratches his body. | Accusing a man or young man of assaulting her (usually sexually), a woman presents fabricated material evidence (tearing her clothes, scratching her body, etc.). See motif F70. | 58 | 42 |
| F70e1 In F70 family | Daughter in the role of son, AT 884B. | An old man needs a son to do men's work. (Only the youngest) daughter takes on this task (successfully passing the test set by her father), pretending to be a man. | 38 | 42 |
| H2 | The selfish animal. | Animals ask God to make humans (tigers: domestic animals) mortal or otherwise reduce their numbers, as they fear that humans will trample them, deprive them of food or habitat, force them to work, etc. | 33 | 42 |
| H29 | Progenitor of foreign tribes. | A woman mates with an animal. The people of a hostile tribe originate from or derive their culture from the descendants of this union, from the relatives of the animal or from the children of the woman's brothers. | 27 | 42 |
| H48 | Fever sisters. | Illnesses – female sisters (less often male brothers), usually children of an evil spirit. | 34 | 42 |
| H6a In H6 family | People and plants. | Mortal humans are contrasted with plants, which regularly shed their bark, bloom in spring after winter dormancy, or reproduce vegetatively. See motif H4. | 45 | 42 |
| I35a1a In I35 family | Insulting a deity. | The character considers himself equal to the deity, imitating him, mocking him or trying to kill him. | 23 | 42 |
| I56a In I56 family | Man is an evil spirit in the world of spirits. | When a person who has entered another world touches the local inhabitants, they become ill or die. | 29 | 42 |
| J53a1 In J53 family | Method of revenge: lure into smoke and fire. | The children of the murdered man kill the murderer's children, luring them to a place where they perish from heat or smoke. | 24 | 42 |
| K107b In K107 family | Prohibition on lighting candles. | One spouse forbids the other from seeing them. When the other willingly or unwillingly breaks the prohibition, the first disappears (gets into trouble). (In the Tuscan version, the prohibition is broken by the woman's mother). | 29 | 42 |
| K147 | The horse brings the hero's remains, and he is revived. | The enemy dismembers the hero's body. The remains are tied to the horse's saddle, or the horse itself picks them up and brings them to friendly characters. They revive the hero. | 31 | 42 |
| k33c3 In k33 family | The girl in the orange. | A young man obtains a girl who is inside an orange or other citrus fruit. | 26 | 42 |
| K65f In K65 family | Which eye do you see with? (ATU 476**) | Once in the locus of demons, a person sees them in their true form. Upon returning, the person sees the demon again, which ordinary people are incapable of doing. The demon blinds him. | 30 | 42 |
| k84a In k84 family | Give to the first person who asks. | On his deathbed, a father instructs his son, without specifying any conditions, to give his sister (sisters) to whoever comes for her. | 25 | 42 |
| K99a In K99 family | Father will serve his son, ATU 517, (725). | A young man or woman (often after having a dream) declares that a great future awaits him or her (usually that his or her father, parents, brothers, or sisters will show him or her signs of respect). The young man or woman is expelled, but the prophecy comes true. | 42 | 42 |
| L37b1 In L37 family | Toad under a stone. | To cure a sick person or rid a house of other misfortunes, one must kill (catch, expel) a toad, frog or snake hiding in the house (in the garden, under the roots). | 30 | 42 |
| L49 | Parts of the body fall down. | Individual parts or pieces of a character's body are successively thrown down. (In American variants, those below usually mistake them for game, honey, or fish). | 28 | 42 |
| L4b In L4 family | Blood cannot be washed away. | The character learns about the violation of the prohibition to enter a certain room, as evidence of this has been preserved on the body of the heroine (hero) or on an object in her (his) hands (often blood on a key or an apple). | 29 | 42 |
| M114b1 In M114 family | What is the fattest, sweetest, fastest? | When answering the question of what is the sweetest (fattest, fastest, etc.), a clever person names abstract concepts and entities (while a foolish person names specific objects or creatures). | 41 | 42 |
| M157a3 In M157 family | The demand to milk the bull. | A character demands that another provide him with offspring or milk from a male animal. | 35 | 42 |
| M197 | Cooking on a distant fire, ATU 1262. | Seriously or demonstrating the absurdity of such actions, the character tries to fry or cook something on a fire (source of light) located far from the object that needs to be heated. | 58 | 42 |
| M38c1 In M38 family | Converting old to young: an unsuccessful imitation, ATU 753 | The character (supposedly) forges a person, rejuvenating or reviving him, the other unsuccessfully tries to imitate him. | 37 | 42 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.