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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 ▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F68 | The supposed dead woman dresses up as a man. | A woman pretends to be dead or actually dies. Her (former) lover comes to her grave. She goes with him, trying to avoid exposure, puts on men's clothes, but is eventually recognised. | 4 | 5 |
| F84 | Imitation of chastity. | A guest or younger brother has sexual intercourse with the wife of the host or older brother. Wanting to demonstrate long abstinence, the character sprinkles ash on the head of his penis or smears it with fruit juice. | 4 | 5 |
| F85 | The Moon: women against men. | The moon/moon leads women in their confrontation with men or takes women away from men. | 6 | 5 |
| G14 | The swallowed one brings plants. | A man swallowed by a water monster is carried away to an underwater or overseas world, obtains plants, and returns to people. | 5 | 5 |
| H1bb In H1 family | They did not spare the dog. | One character refuses to resurrect another's beloved dog, and this conflict is linked to the loss of the ability to resurrect people. | 5 | 5 |
| H1f In H1 family | People learn to bury the dead. | People learn how to treat the dead by observing the behaviour of crows. | 7 | 5 |
| H38 | The owner of the valuables comes to retrieve them. | A supernatural character changes appearance and comes to the hero's children (less often to the hero himself). Unaware of the trick, they hand over the magical object they have obtained to its former owner, and the character disappears with it. | 5 | 5 |
| H40A In H40 family | A dog appears in times of danger. | At the moment of attack by a dangerous creature, a randomly thrown substance or object turns into a dog, which drives away the attacker. | 8 | 5 |
| H43ab In H43 family | The spat upon is mortal. | Man is mortal because he was spat upon at creation. | 10 | 5 |
| I132a In I132 family | Girl on the swings of the sun. | A girl sits on a swing and it lifts her up to the sky. | 5 | 5 |
| I132b In I132 family | Metamorphosis of the Sun's bride. | A girl comes to the Sun to become his wife, but at the last moment undergoes a metamorphosis (usually turning into a bird). | 6 | 5 |
| I137 | The Lapti Constellation. | One of the constellations is associated with footwear, usually with (worn-out) bast shoes. | 4 | 5 |
| I15a In I15 family | Vertical incision of the mouth. | Due to ignorance or haste, the mouth of anthropomorphic creatures is first cut vertically. | 5 | 5 |
| I22g1 In I22 family | Colliding stones. | In another world, the hero sees many strange things, including colliding stones (but they do not block his path). | 5 | 5 |
| I27b In I27 family | The dog-ferryman. | A dog carries a person across a river to another world. See motif I27. | 3 | 5 |
| I37d1 In I37 family | St. Peter spits out mushrooms, ATU 774L. | St. Peter secretly eats bread, and when Christ asks him what he is doing, he chokes, spits out the crumbs, and they turn into mushrooms. | 10 | 5 |
| I37e In I37 family | Mushrooms cry out. | Tree mushrooms cry out like people. | 3 | 5 |
| I7b In I7 family | Lightning – a crack in the sky. | Lightning – a crack in the sky through which the heavens are visible for a moment. | 6 | 5 |
| J12m In J12 family | A woman turns into a duck. | A woman or two sisters come to two men and become wives of one of them. The other kills or tries to kill his rival or the women. As a result, the women turn into waterfowl. | 7 | 5 |
| J22c In J22 family | Conjoined women. | There is a demonic character in the form of Siamese twins – two semi-fused women. | 5 | 5 |
| J51b In J51 family | A piece is missing: the reborn moon. | The moon has been eaten or has died and its body has decomposed. It is revived, but a small part (the bone) is missing. This determines the characteristics of the moon or the characteristics of human anatomy. | 4 | 5 |
| J56a In J56 family | Transformation into frying pans. | Heroic brothers are transformed into pots or frying pans, but only the elder is able to sit in the fire long enough. | 3 | 5 |
| K107e1 In K107 family | Blood on the shirt. | When a magical husband leaves his earthly wife, his shirt is stained with blood. Only his new wife manages to wash it clean. | 6 | 5 |
| K11C In K11 family | Plants grow from feathers. | The plucked feathers of a huge bird turn into plants. | 5 | 5 |
| K14F In K14 family | Material evidence of the father's righteousness. | After his father's death, the son consistently violates his father's instructions. Having preserved material evidence of what happened, he presents it to those gathered, proving his father's rightness and/or his wife's wrongness. | 5 | 5 |
| K169 | Pregnant doe. | The hunter spares the hunted animal, noticing that it is a pregnant female and remembering his own pregnant wife. | 6 | 5 |
| K172 | The deaf bride without arms and legs. | A man describes his daughter to a potential groom as ugly and crippled. The groom agrees to the marriage, and the bride turns out to be beautiful. | 5 | 5 |
| K180 | The time of the wolf and the time of the fox. | The ruler demands an explanation of his dream. The snake tells the man that this dream signifies the coming of a time when people tend to behave in a certain way. This happens several times. Each time, the man's behaviour towards the snake confirms her words. | 4 | 5 |
| K22a In K22 family | Dwarves are attacked. | Birds or other creatures that are harmless to ordinary people attack dwarves living in another world. See motif K22. | 29 | 5 |
| K27n3a1 In K27 family | The hero in battle with the elements. | In the course of his courtship, the hero enters into a struggle with characters (more than two) who embody the elements, celestial bodies, and parts of the universe. | 2 | 5 |
| K27v2 In K27 family | To hit a copper object with an arrow. | The character must hit an object or creature made of copper with an arrow. | 5 | 5 |
| K27yy3 In K27 family | Obtaining the fruits of a dangerous tree. | The hero must bring the fruits growing on a tree that is dangerous to approach. | 4 | 5 |
| K27z2 In K27 family | Separated from her son, she avoided incest, ATU 674. | A noble woman is forced to leave her home, gives birth to a son, and is separated from him. The young man grows up and almost marries his mother, but at the last moment everything is explained. {The Sudanese text, attributed to this plot in el-Shamy 2004 and subsequently in Uther 2004, does not fit the definition; it is quite possible that the Latvians, Romanians and Ukrainians are also mentioned incorrectly in Uther 2004}. | 4 | 5 |
| k33c5 In k33 family | Girl in an egg. | A young man obtains a girl who is inside an egg. | 5 | 5 |
| K37e In K37 family | Three-legged cast-iron bird. | The clairvoyant cannot identify the person who revealed the secret, because that person does so while hiding among objects that are never found together in everyday life. | 5 | 5 |
| K44a In K44 family | The frog pretends to be a mother. | A frog or toad (coastal Koryaks: triton) kidnaps or finds a boy and lies that she is his real mother. See motif K44. | 4 | 5 |
| K56ac In K56 family | A row of stones and a row of logs. | A girl finds herself in a forest hut, where a bear arrives. He orders her to make him a bed out of stones and logs. | 4 | 5 |
| K56b1 In K56 family | The Old Man with Golden Coals, ATU 751B*. | A poor man goes in search of fire. An old man by the fire gives him coals. At home, they turn into gold. An envious neighbour (brother) deliberately extinguishes the fire in his house and asks the old man for coals. His house burns down. | 9 | 5 |
| K61f In K61 family | The Living Doll, ATU 459. | Fearing her husband's wrath, a childless woman pretends to have given birth. Her husband believes that he has a daughter or son, and after some time marries her off (marries him off). During the wedding ceremony, a doll or animal is placed under the veil (in the palanquin), but at the last moment, a supernatural character transforms the supposed bride (groom) into a girl or boy. | 5 | 5 |
| K67g In K67 family | Smiling sheep. | Pretending to carry out his master's orders, the worker cuts off the animals' lips (to make them look like they are smiling). | 5 | 5 |
| K73b2 In K73 family | Boil the kettle with a story. | It is necessary to boil the pot by telling an incredible but nevertheless true story. | 5 | 5 |
| L102a In L102 family | Escape from the seagull husband. | A seagull kidnaps a girl or woman, but she manages to return to people. | 6 | 5 |
| L108f In L108 family | Luring from the bottom. | A character (girl, boy) finds themselves in water, and the antagonist lures them to shore by imitating the voice of their father, brother or sister. | 4 | 5 |
| L108g In L108 family | Wash away the black. | The character is black and must sit in water until he turns white. The antagonist carries him away. | 3 | 5 |
| l118a1 In l118 family | Man deceives monkey. | A man deliberately performs certain actions in front of a monkey. The monkey imitates him, causing harm to itself. | 5 | 5 |
| L132 | Food theft: family conflict. | When one member of a small (family) group, left alone, secretly eats food, this leads to serious conflict, often resulting in the murder of the guilty party. | 5 | 5 |
| L15b1 In L15 family | Deer antlers – a weapon against evil. | In the battle between positive and negative creators, the positive one chooses the deer horn as a weapon – usually because this is the only weapon that the enemy fears. | 3 | 5 |
| L15g1 In L15 family | One family member kills another, knowing his secret. | A person knows a secret on which the life of a loved one (husband, son, wife) depends and, after a quarrel, commits an act that is insignificant to an outside observer but leads to the immediate death of the other. | 4 | 5 |
| L5B In L5 family | The head turns into lightning/thunder. | A rolling head turns into lightning/thunder. See motif L83. | 7 | 5 |
| L5e In L5 family | A decapitated wife pursues her husband. | The decapitated body of a woman pursues her husband, while her head pursues their children. | 8 | 5 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.