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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 ▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| K38b1 In K38 family | A bird steals foals, a hero kills a snake. | Every time a mare gives birth to a wonderful foal, a bird carries it away. Setting out in search of the foals, the hero kills the snake that was devouring the bird's chicks. The bird returns the foals. | 5 | 4 |
| K38f3 In K38 family | Sword strike from a pit. | To kill the dragon, the hero digs a pit and hides in it. When the dragon crawls nearby or over the pit, the hero strikes it with a fatal blow of his sword. | 2 | 4 |
| K56a8b In K56 family | A girl's hand in a cobra's hole. | A virtuous girl (usually the daughter of a dog) wants to kill herself and puts her hand in a snake's hole. The snake does not bite her, but rewards her. | 3 | 4 |
| K56a8c In K56 family | Married to a dog. | A young man brings an animal to his home, and it turns into a girl. Imitating him, another man marries a dog (pig), but it remains an animal. | 6 | 4 |
| k73a5a In k73 family | A baby is replaced by a monkey. | Malicious women replace a newborn baby with a monkey (telling the father that his wife has given birth to a monkey). | 3 | 4 |
| k80bb In k80 family | Grown from the remains of the slain. | A boy is killed and eaten. His sister gathers his remains, from which a tree grows, and on it – the dead boy, often in the form of a bird. | 3 | 4 |
| L17a2 In L17 family | Rival with an eye on her forehead. | Instead of a beautiful woman, a man takes a devil with an odd number of eyes. | 6 | 4 |
| L33a In L33 family | The boulder pursues the thief. | The trickster takes an object lying on or near a rock or other inanimate object, which he has given to that object. The object pursues or otherwise punishes the offender. See motif L33. | 25 | 4 |
| L40c In L40 family | He who buys the bridle leads away the camel. | Relying on the ambiguity of the statement, the buyer of a cheap item claims rights to a much more valuable one. | 3 | 4 |
| L5i In L5 family | A multitude of skulls. | A multitude of rolling heads or skulls try to take a woman away. | 5 | 4 |
| L7b In L7 family | Mistakenly chasing a calabash. | While chasing a person, spirit, monster or beast, he mistakenly throws himself after a calabash floating down the river. | 4 | 4 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| M203a In M203 family | Tell them that I have died. | A supernatural being conveys a message to an unknown recipient via a passer-by, who dies or suffers harm after delivering the message. | 6 | 4 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| M70a In M70 family | A pierced old woman | A character on whom an old woman defecates or whose face blows the winds pierces her from below with a sharp object. See M70 motif. | 10 | 4 |
| 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 |
| M84b3 In M84 family | Eaten and revived goose (Wondrous wondrous). | 2 | 4 | |
| M89a In M89 family | Horned hyena | Only horned animals are allowed to attend the festival. The hyena makes fake horns for itself, exposed. | 5 | 4 |
| N31 | The departure of birds | Late autumn and then winter sets in line with the departure of two or three species of birds flying in a wedge (Zugvogel). | 3 | 4 |
| A12e In A12 family | The spider – enemy of the sun and moon. | The spider attacks the sun or moon (usually causing lunar eclipses). | 5 | 5 |
| A12g In A12 family | Revenge on the moon for informing. | The character tries to eclipse the moon for telling on him. | 5 | 5 |
| A8 | The sun, moon and stars – three siblings. | The sun, moon and stars – three brothers or three sisters. | 3 | 5 |
| B104a In B104 family | Meat turns into a toad, ATU 980D. | The son was about to eat some meat (chicken). At that moment, his father came in, and the son hid the meat so as not to share it with him. When his father left and the son took out what he had hidden, the meat turned into a toad (snake) and jumped on his face. | 9 | 5 |
| B112 | The one who returned the stolen goods decorated. | The character is called upon to help perform a task (usually to transport property or provisions across a river) and takes away what has been entrusted to him. A woodpecker or titmouse returns the stolen goods. The owner of the property paints or dresses the bird, hence the colour of its plumage | 11 | 5 |
| B121 | A little bird wants to fill the sea with stones. | A small bird carries pebbles and sticks, trying to fill the sea. | 2 | 5 |
| B125a In B125 family | The nightingale and the copperhead. | The nightingale (or, less commonly, someone else) takes the copper's eyes and does not return them, leaving her blind. | 4 | 5 |
| b125c In b125 family | The beaver and the muskrat swapped tails. | Previously, the beaver had the same tail as the muskrat now has, and the muskrat had the same tail as the beaver. | 5 | 5 |
| B24a In B24 family | Transformation into wild pigs: a circle of feathers. | After a character surrounds a group of people with a circle of feathers or throws feathers into their dwellings, the people turn into wild pigs or peccaries. | 5 | 5 |
| b33e2 In b33 family | March breaks the bull's horns. | The severity of the cold in early spring is said to break the horns of large hoofed animals. | 6 | 5 |
| B42o1 In B42 family | The Great Bear – the fisher. | The Big Dipper is identified with the fisher (Mustela pennati). | 7 | 5 |
| B77c In B77 family | The serpent pushed back the sky. | A snake-like creature pushes the sky away from the earth. See motif B77. | 6 | 5 |
| B7d In B7 family | Water pours from a bone. | Water pours from a broken bone, flooding the earth. | 5 | 5 |
| D13i1 In D13 family | The one who showed his teeth was exposed. | The characteristics of a character can be determined by his teeth. By laughing and showing his teeth, the character reveals himself. | 3 | 5 |
| E15b In E15 family | Birds sew a boat. | Bird women sew the birch bark covering of the hero's boat. See motif E15. | 5 | 5 |
| E38c In E38 family | The first humans are mute. | The first humans were mute and began to speak after being struck by something, made to laugh, etc. | 5 | 5 |
| E39a In E39 family | A female animal conceives from human urine. | An animal (snake, pig) conceives from a man's urine and gives birth to a human child (or twins). | 4 | 5 |
| E5 | The half-finished man tries to stand up. | God makes man out of clay. He must wait until it dries, but tries to stand up earlier. | 9 | 5 |
| F12 | A husband kills his wife with his lover's penis. | A husband kills his wife by inserting her lover's severed penis into her body. | 4 | 5 |
| F21 | Penis stuck in a tree. | While the character copulates with a woman, she turns into a tree or a rock. His penis gets stuck in her. | 5 | 5 |
| F28a2 In F28 family | Penises grow in the field. | The owner of the field, either intentionally or having misheard the question, replies that he grows penises. After that, penises grow in the field instead of crops. | 5 | 5 |
| F48 | Why women are different. | Individual women differ physically because the pieces of flesh divided from the first woman were not identical, or because the males who copulated with the first woman were animals of different species. | 4 | 5 |
| F54d In F54 family | Conceives after drinking urine. | A woman gives birth to a boy after accidentally drinking animal urine, or a female animal gives birth to a boy after drinking a man's urine. | 4 | 5 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.