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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I115a In I115 family | Orion and the Pleiades – men and women. | In the same narrative or ritual context, Orion and the Pleiades are contrasted with each other as a man or men and a woman or women. (Orion is usually associated with the masculine principle, and the Pleiades with the feminine; among the Mentawai, d'Antracast, and Toba peoples, the opposite is true (due to regional influences? In Indonesia and eastern South America, the Pleiades are usually a group of young men). | 36 | 50 |
| I116 | The Milky Way – the boundary between seasons. | The Milky Way separates the seasons of the year or worlds (dry from wet, sky from earth, etc.). | 18 | 19 |
| I117 | The spider carries from world to world. | A spider or spider woman lifts a hero or heroine up to the sky, helps them descend to earth, or otherwise helps them cross the path leading to another world. | 60 | 93 |
| I117a In I117 family | The bat helps to descend. | The bat helps the hero descend to the ground from a high cliff. | 11 | 13 |
| I118 | The spider-advisor. | A female spider (less commonly, an old spider) protects the hero or heroine, who live with her, and the hero marries her daughter. (Texts in which the spider only lifts the hero up to the sky or lowers him to the ground are not included; see motif I117). | 20 | 47 |
| I119 | The dead shake the earth. | Earthquakes are caused by inhabitants of the underworld; during earthquakes, they try to get to the surface of the earth to check whether people are still alive. | 23 | 31 |
| I119a In I119 family | Earthquake – are there any survivors? | Creatures shake the earth, either upon learning that there are no longer any inhabitants on it, or to check whether they are still alive, or to show that they themselves are still there. | 12 | 11 |
| I120 | Cornucopia. | Food and clothing can be obtained from the horns of domestic animals (oxen, cows, goats). | 45 | 53 |
| I120a In I120 family | Entering the ear of an animal. | Entering the ear of an animal (usually a horse or a cow) and coming back out, the character becomes beautiful (well-fed, well-dressed). | 11 | 23 |
| I120b In I120 family | Taking something out of an animal's ear. | The character takes food, clothing, and other valuables from the ear of an animal (most often a horse or cow). | 24 | 26 |
| I121 | Paired constellations. | Constellations (usually Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) are considered as two similar, paired objects. (For Africa, Eurasia and Alaska – paired names; for most of America – semantic association, but the names are not paired). | 70 | 88 |
| I122 | The Pleiades – a beehive. | The Pleiades – a beehive, a nest, a cluster of bees or wasps. | 11 | 10 |
| I123 | Altair – herald of the sun. | Altair with a small neighbouring star from the constellation Aquila or Vega with a similarly faint star are considered to appear during or immediately after the winter solstice, although they are actually visible before that. | 7 | 9 |
| I124 | Ursa Major – a boat. | The Big Dipper is considered a boat. | 30 | 23 |
| I125 | Hyades – animal jaw. | Hyades (sometimes, possibly, Pleiades or Orion) – jaw or severed head of a large animal or anthropomorphic creature. | 17 | 29 |
| I126 | The constellation of funeral bier. | The Great Bear or other constellation – a bier on which the dead or sick are carried, a body prepared for burial, a grave. | 25 | 27 |
| I127 | Ursa Major – bed. | Ursa Major – bed, couch. | 23 | 34 |
| I128 | Ursa Major – a ladle. | The Big Dipper – a ladle, a scoop. | 25 | 36 |
| I129 | The Heron Constellation. | The rainy season is associated with the appearance of the Heron constellation in the sky. | 4 | 4 |
| I130 | Heavenly net. | One of the constellations – a hunting or fishing net, a seine, a trap, a snare. | 31 | 41 |
| I131 | The thread of life. | Every person's life corresponds to a thread; when the thread breaks, the person dies. | 23 | 30 |
| I132 | To the sky on deer antlers. | A deer props its antlers against the sky, and a person climbs them to reach the upper world. Alternatively, a person finds themselves in the sky when they touch the deer's antlers. | 6 | 12 |
| 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 |
| I133 | Constellation across the sky. | Star objects in different parts of the sky are associated with separate parts (as well as items of clothing, jewellery, etc.) of a single anthropomorphic or zoomorphic figure. | 23 | 32 |
| I133a In I133 family | The constellation of the great bird. | There is a constellation that represents a bird and corresponds to several large constellations in European traditions (mainly equatorial, rather than circumpolar). | 8 | 10 |
| I134 | Long neck on the Milky Way. | Along the axis of the Milky Way, a creature with a long neck (llama, emu, rhea) can be seen. | 9 | 18 |
| I135 | Heavenly skin or cloth. | The sky (Milky Way, clouds) is an animal skin or a piece of cloth. | 15 | 17 |
| I136 | The demonic wheel. | The rolling wheel (and the character riding on it) is a creature or weapon hostile to the hero (people) that he uses. | 13 | 18 |
| I137 | The Lapti Constellation. | One of the constellations is associated with footwear, usually with (worn-out) bast shoes. | 4 | 5 |
| I138 | Glass Mountain. | The glass mountain (tower, bridge) is mentioned as an unusual (inaccessible) locus. | 36 | 62 |
| I139 | Throwing an axe, F531.3.2.3. | Two (rarely three) men or women are at a distance from each other, but regularly throw or pass something to each other. This is a sign of their unusual size, strength, and agility. | 20 | 39 |
| I140 | Moses' rod. | The staff thrown to the ground turns into a living snake. | 3 | 3 |
| I141 | Magic wand. | The wand is an instrument for performing actions whose results cannot be explained rationally. | 55 | 88 |
| J1 | Avenging heroes (all variants). | The characters avenge the death of their father, mother or other relatives who are older than them by a generation (less often by two generations). | 1 | 3 |
| J1A In J1 family | The myth of the avengers with a full plot | 153 | 297 | |
| j1b In j1 family | Heroic avengers - with a missing or altered plot start: it is unclear whether the characters with whom the heroes live are their real or adoptive parents; the hero's mother herself tries to destroy him in infancy. | Heroic avengers - with a missing or altered plot start: it is unclear whether the characters with whom the heroes live are their real or adoptive parents; the hero's mother herself tries to destroy him in infancy. | 11 | 20 |
| j1c In j1 family | Avenging heroes - with a missing or distorted final part of the plot (revenge is not described). | Avenging heroes - with a missing or distorted final part of the plot (revenge is not described). | 13 | 15 |
| j1d In j1 family | Heroic avengers - Like J1D, but the role of potential heroes is reduced to a minimum: a woman with a baby is saved from the antagonist and receives help from <i>the patron </i>. | Heroic avengers - Like J1D, but the role of potential heroes is reduced to a minimum: a woman with a baby is saved from the antagonist and receives help from the patron . | 13 | 19 |
| J2 | Tree husband. | Husband or lover – tree (temporarily transformed into a human). | 12 | 17 |
| J3 | Conception from under the earth. | A woman conceives a son or twins in a way that is incomprehensible to her; the reason is that when she sits on the ground, a male character (animal) creeps under the ground and fertilises her from below. | 6 | 8 |
| J4 | Revenge for the death of male relatives. | The heroes avenge the death (enslavement) of their father, uncle, grandfather, or mother and father, or in general their descendants, with the loss of men being the most painful. | 197 | 428 |
| J4a In J4 family | Revenge for the death of a mother. | A woman is killed. Her son or sons (rarely: grandsons, nephews) avenge her. | 142 | 274 |
| j4b In j4 family | Revenge within the family. | The children (son, sons, son and daughter) of the murdered person take revenge on characters who are related to the victim by marriage or close kinship. | 63 | 109 |
| j4c In j4 family | The young man from the egg. | An egg remains from the deceased water character. The young hero who emerges from it avenges his father. | 5 | 6 |
| J5 | Brothers as victims. | The role of the victim is played by two or more brothers (friends). See motif J4. | 32 | 40 |
| J6 | The children of the murdered woman grew up in the house of their antagonists. | A pregnant woman is killed (and eaten). Twins are taken from her womb, who are usually also destined to be eaten, but they escape, live (secretly) in the house of their antagonists, and take revenge on them. | 32 | 50 |
| J6a In J6 family | Mother eaten, daughter saved. | A pregnant woman with a young daughter fall into the hands of cannibals. The cannibals find and eat the woman, but her daughter and the baby in her womb are saved. | 3 | 3 |
| J6B In J6 family | Blinding of the victim. | The mother of the heroes is not killed, but loses her sight. | 4 | 4 |
| J7 | Substituted signs. | A woman or girl sets off to her husband (beloved) or relatives, or a man sets off to find a bride. She or he loses their way after a certain character substitutes the signs indicating the way. See motif J12. | 46 | 50 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.