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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

Showing 401–450 of 3,494 · Page 9 of 70

Ref	Title	Summary	Traditions	Narratives ▲
M39a5a2 In M39 family	The screaming judge	My husband found a treasure. He knows his wife will talk about it. In order not to believe her, her husband says, and the wife then repeats, that the judge suffered from the hail that fell at that time (soup spilled from the sky) (lost an eye, ulcers on his face). The judge furiously drives the woman away, the treasure remains with her husband.	6	6
M53a In M53 family	Crows and seals	raven gathers seals or other marine mammals around and deceives them into killing them.	6	6
M61a3 In M61 family	The character fights fish	The character tells each of two different species of fish how the other allegedly used to be hostile or offensive towards the former. Fish kill each other and the character prepares them to eat.	7	6
M67	The trickster was blown away by the wind	By stupidity or carelessness, the character causes a wind that blows him away. See the M66 motif (The Trickster emits a stream of intestinal gases).	13	6
N26	When wheat grew on ice	said that the action took place when cultivated plants (wheat, cotton) grew on ice or salt.	4	6
N28h In N28 family	A horse doesn't have horns	In a list of things that do not exist in the world, horns of the horse are mentioned	7	6
A29a In A29 family	Torn apart by two women.	Heavenly and earthly women (demons) pull a man in different directions. As a result, he (or his half) turns into a heavenly object.	10	7
A47A In A47 family	The lizard finds the sun.	The lizard or iguana is associated with the appearance of the sun.	3	7
B109a In B109 family	Bear from the sky.	Originally, the (human) bear lived in the sky, then descended to earth (and became a bear).	3	7
B1b In B1 family	Two creators.	Two female progenitors participate in the process of creation. The actions of one bring good, the other evil.	6	7
B36b In B36 family	Birds acquire voices.	Birds find their voices by pecking at a large reptile and smearing themselves with the fluids that flow out of its body.	6	7
B42o In B42 family	The Hunchback Constellation.	A certain constellation is represented by a person who has been struck or wounded in the back.	7	7
B49a In B49 family	How many offspring per year.	Powerful animals could have many cubs, but now they give birth to only one every few years.	6	7
B75d In B75 family	Sounds of the creation era: the rustling of leaves.	The sound of leaves or grass rustling in the wind has been heard since the time of creation.	7	7
B86B In B86 family	Remove the bottom brick.	When building a tower, there are not enough prepared modules (bricks, logs). The character removes the bottom one to put it on top, and the structure collapses.	3	7
B88	Job.	A man's children all die. He turns to God with a request to explain why he is suffering so much.	6	7
C25a In C25 family	Cooking soup on the moon.	In the sky, on the moon, somewhere outside our world, a character (usually an old woman) cooks soup. The fate of the universe depends on his (her) behaviour.	7	7
C34a In C34 family	Buried in the sand.	A supernatural character goes with people to catch fish or lives on the sand by the river; he is buried in the sand or thrown into the river, into a swamp, or otherwise persecuted. Usually, he himself or his father sends a flood.	6	7
C6g In C6 family	The diver – the boar.	The boar brings earth from the bottom and/or scatters it on the water.	4	7
D4n In D4 family	The weeping one demands summer.	A boy or (among the Kutené) a woman cries, demanding the absent elements - summer, fire, rain. See motif D4A (demand for summer).	15	7
E13B In E13 family	Knowledge from the sky.	Sacred knowledge, objects and rituals received from the celestials.	9	7
E5e In E5 family	The two-headed creature does not come out onto the ground.	People or animals come out from under the ground or descend from the sky. The two-headed creature following them gets stuck in the opening or is not allowed to come out.	10	7
F20a In F20 family	People and dogs.	At first, people mated as dogs do now, but then it became as it is now.	5	7
F28a4 In F28 family	Penises on plants.	The fruits or stems of plants are penises.	7	7
F49C In F49 family	The first humans do not know how to give birth.	In the beginning of time, women do not know how to give birth. See motif F49.	27	7
F78	Toothy anus.	The character has teeth in the anus or a second head in place of the anus.	7	7
G19	Burnt men bring plants.	After a conflict in the community of the first ancestors, a group of men or young people (pareisi: boy and girl) burn in a bonfire (jump over it, etc.). As a result, people acquire cultivated plants, mainly corn.	6	7
G30	The penis turns into plants.	A long penis is cut into pieces, which turn into many edible plants or different types of trees. Cf. motif B53.	7	7
G4	Mountain of abundance.	Cultivated plants found on or inside a mountain.	12	7
G8g In G8 family	The Great Oak and Its Inhabitants.	There is a unique tree that must be bent or felled. Different creatures inhabit its separate parts and/or objects of special importance are made from its wood.	6	7
H54a In H54 family	The shaven old man.	A man meets an old man whose face is completely covered with hair or snot. He cuts (wipes) it off and receives a reward for doing so.	9	7
H54c In H54 family	Crucified eyelids.	The character's eyelids are crucified so that he cannot close them, or he does so himself on the advice of another.	5	7
H6c2 In H6 family	Living water in the land of darkness.	At the edge of the world lies the land of darkness. Those who want to obtain living water or gold strive to get there.	6	7
I100d In I100 family	Stars – kids.	Stars are associated with kids.	8	7
I13e In I13 family	The devoted snake.	The snake agrees to let the man go on condition that he does not tell anyone about their meeting. Under threat of death, the man breaks his promise. The snake teaches him to drink a broth made from its flesh and takes revenge not on the man, but on those who forced him to break his word.	10	7
I46d In I46 family	Rainbow loop.	Rainbow – a hunting loop, a trap.	7	7
I55a In I55 family	Stars – lakes.	Stars – lakes on one of the heavenly tiers.	5	7
I6a In I6 family	Male and female: different types of precipitation.	The male and female of a huge bird carry different types of precipitation (for example, the eagle carries snow, and the eagle carries rain). Or (Buryats of Mongolia) the same bird carries different types of precipitation depending on whether it is angry or not. See motif i6. Traditions associated with Na-Dene languages are highlighted in italics in the list.	32	7
I82c1 In I82 family	The Moon's two wives.	The Moon has two wives (usually the Morning Star and the Evening Star). With the caring one, he grows fat, with the other, he starves and grows thin.	8	7
I87e In I87 family	Dwarves after humans.	After the present humans, dwarves will live on earth.	7	7
I87f In I87 family	Suicide of the Narts.	Before modern humans, there lived others who differed in strength, height, nobility, or other qualities. They disappeared after committing suicide.	9	7
J14	The flute player.	To find the man of her dreams, a woman follows the sounds of music or singing; she usually distinguishes imposters by listening to their clumsy performance. See motif J12.	17	7
J19b In J19 family	Burnt belly.	An evil spirit kills a woman by burning through her body.	3	7
J19c In J19 family	Torn out tongue.	A demonic character comes to a woman and tears out her tongue. She dies (and comes back to life when her tongue is found and returned).	4	7
J51a2 In J51 family	A severed finger instead of a chicken bone.	A girl must penetrate an inaccessible place with the help of chicken bones. She loses one or there are not enough bones. By cutting off her finger and using it as she would use the bones, the girl achieves her goal.	5	7
J58a In J58 family	Three wizards by the river.	To cross the river, each of the three men uses his own magical method.	8	7
J65	The children of the Sun destroy their enemies.	After the attack by enemies, a woman and her daughter remain. She rejects the marriage proposals of animal suitors and agrees to give her daughter to the heavenly deity (the Sun). The children from this marriage take revenge on their enemies.	6	7
K101c In K101 family	By day in the palace, by night in the sky.	The bride stipulates that she will only be with her husband during the day. The husband discovers that at night she meets with heavenly maidens (and usually flies away to dance in the sky). He follows her and in the end she stays with him on earth.	6	7
K105	The wonderful son and the rat children.	A despised wife gives birth to miraculous children, while other wives give birth to animals.	7	7
K109	Wife – puppy or object.	The hero is advised to ask supernatural characters for something insignificant (a puppy, a cup) in return for his service. What he receives turns out to be the daughter of a deity. Another character unsuccessfully tries to take the hero's wife away from him.	6	7

Showing 401–450 of 3,494 · Page 9 of 70

Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.