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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 ▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L65c1 In L65 family | Sisters fly away from a cannibal. | Three or more sisters have the ability to fly and fly away from the cannibal – their older sister or mother. Only the youngest is saved. | 4 | 5 |
| L81a1 In L81 family | Red bead in the hearth. | Noticing a red bead (pebble) that has fallen into the hearth, the character thinks it is a coal and does not understand that the fire in the hearth has gone out. | 5 | 5 |
| l93d In l93 family | The hedgehog as helper. | The hedgehog, resorting to cunning, helps the hero and saves him. | 4 | 5 |
| L94c In L94 family | Son or daughter sacrificed. | If a deity grants victory, a person promises to sacrifice to it the first person who comes out to meet them at home. A son or daughter comes out. | 4 | 5 |
| M143A In M143 family | Cheese mistaken for the moon, ATU 34. | A character mistakes the reflection of the moon in a body of water for cheese. | 6 | 5 |
| M152f In M152 family | Whose voice is quieter, we will eat. | Animals agree to eat the one among them who has the quietest voice. | 2 | 5 |
| M170b In M170 family | The rim of a vessel on the neck. | A zoomorphic character stuck its head into a vessel, which broke, leaving the rim on its neck. The character uses this as proof of its high status. | 5 | 5 |
| M179b In M179 family | The guest ruined the house, ATU 80. | One zoomorphic character asks another (or a human) to let him in to dry off, warm up, etc. Once inside, he wreaks such havoc on the dwelling that it becomes difficult for the owner to stay there. Usually, in response to reproaches, he says that if the owner doesn't like it, there's the door. | 11 | 5 |
| M201 | Oak and mushroom. | A rapidly growing mushroom (melon) believes that it will soon outgrow the oak tree. The mushroom (pumpkin vine) soon rots, while the oak tree remains standing. | 7 | 5 |
| M29i In M29 family | Trickster - Hawk | See the motives in square brackets. | 13 | 5 |
| M29qq In M29 family | Trickster - Anteater | See the motives in square brackets. | 10 | 5 |
| M38d4 In M38 family | The Hunting Needle, ATU 90 | Several characters that embody small objects (and a squirrel with them) travel together. The needle penetrates the body of a large animal and kills it. (In the Baltic-Finnish texts, the needle first finds items that others find useless, but after the animal was caught, everything found turned out to be in demand for cooking meat). | 4 | 5 |
| M39a2d In M39 family | Meat is planted | Fools plant meat, horns, or bones in the hope of raising animals. | 9 | 5 |
| M3b In M3 family | A severed rabbit tail | Trying to grab a hare, another animal tears off (bites) its tail. It's been short ever since. | 2 | 5 |
| M53f In M53 family | Pretending to be a monster, it eats supplies | The character is involved in preparing food supplies. After leaving under some pretext, he returns in the form of a monster or predator. Everyone runs away, the deceiver eats supplies, and then returns as usual. As a result, it was exposed. | 2 | 5 |
| M5c In M5 family | Hairy octopus | The octopus or star-fish was covered with hair but the rat had eaten it up | 5 | 5 |
| M60b1 In M60 family | The crow eats fish | The crow promises to cure the fish, and eats it herself. | 2 | 5 |
| M61a2 In M61 family | The character quarrels stones | The character provokes a quarrel between two stones of different breeds. To do this, he told everyone how the other supposedly spoke hostile or offensive towards the former. | 5 | 5 |
| M74c In M74 family | Handsome as a woodpecker | Having noticed the woodpecker's beautiful plumage, the wolf or bear believes that the fox painted it and asks the fox to make him just as beautiful. The fox burns it alive. | 4 | 5 |
| M81e2 In M81 family | It attracts people and animals | By playing an instrument or otherwise, a character is able to attract an animal or person far away from him. | 5 | 5 |
| N19 | It's still lame | fairy-tale text ends with a formula stating that one or two people who met the narrator after the fabulous feast or were present directly at it at the festival, became bald/lame as a result of hot food and/or a bone or bowl thrown on the head. | 5 | 5 |
| N40 | The liver drowned and the lungs swam away | The fabulous or epic text ends with a formula stating that the liver has drowned and the lungs have swam away (surfaced, stayed, etc.). | 3 | 5 |
| A19b In A19 family | In summer on a snail, in winter on a bird. | Moving across the sky, the sun changes its mounts depending on the season – in summer it rides on a slow animal, in winter – on a fast one. Or in winter the sun is carried by a young man, and in summer – by an old man. | 8 | 6 |
| A24a In A24 family | First day or night: transformation into spirits. | At the moment of the first day or the first night, people transform into supernatural characters. | 8 | 6 |
| A32de In A32 family | Headless man on the moon. | A headless man is visible on the lunar disc. | 10 | 6 |
| A9 | The Moon as protector of humans. | The moon-woman does not allow her son or husband, the Sun, to destroy people. | 5 | 6 |
| B108 | The remains of the deceased turn into snow. | An anthropomorphic character that has fallen apart into pieces turns into snow. | 3 | 6 |
| B110a In B110 family | The falling one turns into snow and wind. | A character who is dragged along the ground or who falls from the sky turns into atmospheric phenomena. | 4 | 6 |
| B118 | Those who remain on earth become owls. | A character who was unable to reach the sky or returned from the sky to earth becomes an owl. | 4 | 6 |
| B2f2 In B2 family | Carries an unburied corpse. | The character carries the body of the deceased for a long time, unable to bury it or not knowing how to do so, but eventually buries the body in the ground. | 5 | 6 |
| B33e In B33 family | If February were like January. | The last cold month regrets that it did not come earlier or that it is too short. In that case, it would have frozen everyone. | 7 | 6 |
| B49b In B49 family | Cow teats. | In the past, cows had more teats on their udders than they do now. | 5 | 6 |
| B66 | The rope turns into vines. | Characters climb to the sky using a rope or chain of arrows; when it falls to the ground, it turns into forest vines. See motif J47. | 6 | 6 |
| B74b In B74 family | The wedding of the owl and the moon. | The owl is forced to part with the moon and now cries out when it sees the moon. Usually, the story tells how the marriage of the owl and the moon fell apart or did not take place. | 5 | 6 |
| C21 | Drought. | During a severe drought, birds (and animals) go in search of the rainmakers and bring them back. | 6 | 6 |
| C41 | Why the sky is blue. | At first, the sky has no specific colour. After a character hangs a cloth on it or performs other actions, the sky acquires its characteristic colour. | 2 | 6 |
| c6h1 In c6 family | Earth was taken from the belly of an invertebrate. | The earth brought from the underworld was found in the belly of a worm or insect, from where it was taken. | 5 | 6 |
| C8c1 In C8 family | Father and daughter give birth to humans. | At the beginning of time or after the destruction of the rest of humanity, a father and daughter (daughters) remain. They marry and give rise to humans or certain ethnic groups. | 6 | 6 |
| D12a In D12 family | At sunrise, the sun's heat is sufficient to cook food. | People living in the east or west prepare food using the heat of the passing sun. | 4 | 6 |
| D1a In D1 family | Mother-in-law-fire. | A girl marries a man whose mother is fire. | 4 | 6 |
| D4f In D4 family | Beavers or fish allow themselves to be roasted. | Once in the fire, the beaver (in North America) or fish (in South America) scatters and/or carries the fire away from its original owners. See motif D4A. | 3 | 6 |
| E14a In E14 family | Masks reproduce slain demons. | People kill demons, examine their bodies, make ritual costumes and masks, reproducing the appearance of the slain. | 6 | 6 |
| E40 | Nostrils facing upwards. | The first humans had nostrils facing upwards, into which rain poured. | 4 | 6 |
| E9aa In E9 family | The fox wife in the burrow of all animals. | A man searches for a missing woman, who is a fox by nature, and comes to the burrow where she has hidden. Various bird or animal women come out of the burrow and offer themselves in place of the fox. Then they let him inside. | 4 | 6 |
| F100 | Test of chastity (queen and maid). | A magic potion reveals that the only chaste woman is the maid, an orphan, etc. The king chooses the maid. | 6 | 6 |
| F28A5 In F28 family | The penis and vulva as separate beings. | The penis and vulva (in the singular or plural) are separate beings and characters. | 8 | 6 |
| F51a In F51 family | Aggressive sister. | After incest is discovered, the sister openly demands her brother as her husband, turns into a monster, and kills people. | 6 | 6 |
| F73a In F73 family | The vulva as a wound (first humans). | The vulva is an unhealed wound on the body of the first women, or the first humans did not copulate because they thought that the vulva was a wound. | 6 | 6 |
| F97a In F97 family | The snake loses its legs. | The snake is to blame for others eating food forbidden by the deity. For this, it is deprived of the limbs it once had. {The Efik variant may not be related to the biblical one, but the South Asian ones are most likely related. | 6 | 6 |
| H28b In H28 family | Mosquitoes made from animal wool. | Shorn hairs on animal skins or ash and smoke from burnt skins covered with wool turn into blood-sucking insects. | 5 | 6 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.