Folklore Database · Browse
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| K13b In K13 family | A caiman bites off a leg. | A man crosses a body of water on the back of a caiman. The caiman bites off his leg. The cripple undergoes a metamorphosis, turning into a constellation or an animal. | 9 | 14 |
| K13c In K13 family | The cannibal's daughter avenges her mother on her husband. | The cannibal's daughter takes revenge on her husband for her mother's death and manages to cut off his leg. See motif K13A. | 0 | 0 |
| K13d In K13 family | Leg hanging in the sky. | A group of boys reaches the sky, the last one's leg is cut off or torn off. | 4 | 6 |
| K14 | Dear advice, ATU 677, 910A, 910B. | A person receives or buys simple advice, the meaning of which is initially unclear (travel with a companion, do not skip breakfast, etc.) and either follows it, achieving success, or violates it, getting into trouble. | 121 | 166 |
| K14a In K14 family | Thrown into the furnace, ATU 910K. | The antagonist orders the killing of the first person to arrive at the agreed place in the morning. The hero is accidentally delayed, and the antagonist himself or his wife or son are killed. | 49 | 58 |
| K14b In K14 family | Accusation of knife theft. | A man is advised not to do anything until he is expressly asked to do so. He unwisely offers to let someone use his knife and is subsequently accused of a crime. | 19 | 16 |
| K14c In K14 family | Son mistaken for lover, ATU 910B. | Returning after a long absence and seeing signs that there is another man in the house, a man thinks that his wife has a lover, but does not rush to act and convinces himself that it is his own son or his wife's relative. | 61 | 64 |
| k14c1 In k14 family | Treasures in a pomegranate. | A man who has gone away to work sends his wife a pomegranate, unaware of its value. His wife finds treasures in the pomegranate. | 6 | 6 |
| K14d In K14 family | Imaginary crime, (ATU 910A). | Testing his wife (household member, acquaintance), a man pretends to have committed a crime or performs incomprehensible actions that could be interpreted as a crime. Usually, his wife (friend) betrays him, and he presents evidence of his innocence. | 37 | 34 |
| K14e In K14 family | Sons think their father is rich, ATU 982. | The sons do not care for their elderly father (rarely: the daughter-in-law does not care for her mother-in-law). He pretends to be hiding something. The sons believe that these are valuables that their father will leave them, and they begin to care for him. | 22 | 15 |
| 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 |
| K15 | No one but this beggar. | A woman swears that she has not been with anyone except (her husband and) a dirty beggar. Others do not know that her lover has taken on the appearance of a beggar. | 9 | 9 |
| K15a In K15 family | Substituted weapon. | The hero secretly replaces the weapon or magical tool of a powerful character with a worthless fake. Traditions in which the replaced weapon belongs to Grom are highlighted in bold. | 38 | 50 |
| K15b In K15 family | The replaced barrel of water. | By secretly switching the vessels containing living and dead (giving and taking away strength) water (rarely: oil, etc.), from which the combatants drink during a duel, the hero defeats his opponent. | 37 | 57 |
| K15c In K15 family | Substituted clothing. | The owner of stone (ice) clothing kills people. By hiding or replacing his clothing, the hero kills him. | 5 | 6 |
| K16 | The bird becomes a young man. | Taking the form of a bird, bat, insect, small animal, or fish, the man enters the young woman's home (her father's house). | 59 | 75 |
| K16a In K16 family | Slipping, he drops the stuffed animal. | In an effort to show that he is a good hunter, a man regularly walks in front of a girl, pretending to carry prey. Once he slips, and the imaginary prey turns out to be a scarecrow stuffed with ashes or a bundle of termites. | 3 | 6 |
| K17 | Ornithomorphic groom. | A male character in the form of a winged creature approaches a girl and either magically or unnoticed by her impregnates her. See motif K16: taking the form of an animal or bird, he enters the girl's house. | 76 | 68 |
| K18 | Recognition of father or mother, H481, ATU 675. | A boy is born whose father (rarely mother) is unknown. He chooses his true father (mother), who usually occupies the lowest social position. Usually, a group of men or women gather together, each of whom wants the boy to choose him or her. | 118 | 167 |
| K18a In K18 family | The boy takes a bow and arrows. | The boy's father is recognised as the man whose bow or arrows he chooses. See motif K18. | 13 | 4 |
| k18aa In k18 family | Pregnancy from touch. | A girl becomes pregnant without her knowledge through contact with the bodily secretions of a male character or with objects that he has touched (i.e. not as a result of sexual intercourse, not as a result of the simple desire of the father of her future child, and not through mystical contact with a deity). The story ends with the happy union of the girl and the father of her child. | 46 | 52 |
| K18b In K18 family | The boy stops crying. | Men or women approach the little boy one after another or take him in their arms. The person who makes the boy stop crying is recognised as his parent. See motif K18. | 1 | 1 |
| K18c In K18 family | A boy urinates on his father's hands. | The man in whose arms the boy urinates will be recognised as his father. See motif K18. | 12 | 4 |
| K18d In K18 family | At the pike's command, ATU 675. | A young man releases or saves a fish (frog, snake, supernatural creature), it grants his wishes, and he marries a princess. {References to ATU are not entirely reliable. In particular, Uther 2004 includes a Corsican variant (Massignon 1984, No. 66), in which the main part of the plot is missing. References to Balkan variants probably correspond to the definition of the plot, since it does exist among the Bulgarians}. | 55 | 47 |
| K19 | Marriage to a star. | A man or woman marries a star. See motifs K19A, K19B. | 0 | 0 |
| K19a In K19 family | Star Wife, T111.2.1. | A man marries a star woman. | 50 | 109 |
| K19b In K19 family | Star-man. | The star man takes an earthly woman as his wife. | 57 | 102 |
| K19c In K19 family | Mistress in a handbag. | A man brings home a small creature with which he makes love at night. The man's mother, sister or wife finds the creature in his bed or purse. | 18 | 35 |
| K19d In K19 family | A man freezes in the sky. | Once in the sky, the husband of the star suffers from the cold. He freezes to death or perishes after touching forbidden fire. | 6 | 20 |
| K19e In K19 family | Wolverine under a tree. | Returning from the sky to earth, a woman or two sisters encounter a male wolverine who tries to capture them. Usually, the women who have descended first find themselves in a tree. Some animals cannot or will not help them descend to the ground. The wolverine descends to take the sisters as wives; they run away from him. See motif K19B. | 14 | 11 |
| K19f In K19 family | Working stars. | A star or many stars descend from the sky to work in the fields. See motif K19B. | 5 | 9 |
| K19g In K19 family | Stars differ in brightness and colour. | One star is an old man, the other is a young man; both stars differ in brightness or colour, but it is impossible to determine the age of the star-man by these characteristics (a dim star may be young and vice versa); usually two girls want to marry stars of different types (one bright, the other dim, one red, the other blue, etc.). See motif K19B. | 13 | 1 |
| K20 | Mortal desires a star, C15.1, C15.1.1. | Looking at the sky at night, a man or woman expresses a desire to marry a star or the Moon (kuchin: to possess a star as an object). See motifs K19a, K19b. | 72 | 10 |
| K21 | Once in heaven, she gets married. | A girl ends up in the sky and gets married there. | 32 | 46 |
| K21a In K21 family | Woman returns from heaven. | A celestial being marries an earthly woman. She longs to return to earth and secretly descends from her husband. | 19 | 27 |
| K22 | Cranes and pygmies, F535.5.1. | The inhabitants of a distant land, who differ from (ordinary) people, occasionally fight off enemies of a non-human nature who attack them. | 58 | 97 |
| 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 |
| K22aa In K22 family | Birds in the north – people in the south. | There is a country whose inhabitants are migratory birds that live with us in the summer and turn into people when they fly away to their own country. | 6 | 7 |
| K22b In K22 family | Man helps the inhabitants of another world. | The inhabitants of another world are attacked by certain enemies. A human helps them to defeat these enemies, because these creatures are not dangerous to humans. See motif K22. | 58 | 50 |
| K22c In K22 family | Birds are attacked. | Inhabitants of another world who are birds (bird-people) are afraid of birds or animals that are not dangerous to ordinary people, but which regularly attack them. | 10 | 16 |
| K23 | Battle with birds. | Birds attack inhabitants of another world or a person who has entered another world. See motif K22. | 46 | 19 |
| K23a In K23 family | Feathers – birds' weapons. | Birds use their feathers as arrows, or falling feathers cover the mouths of their victims. | 9 | 11 |
| K24 | Hidden clothes of a supernatural woman, F202.4.2. | Women (rarely men) possessing magical powers and usually coming from another world (from the sky, from under water, they are winged creatures, bird-people, animal-people; rarely: a girl of higher social status than the hero) take off their clothes (feather coverings, etc.) or part of them. The character hides the clothes (one of them), forcing him (rarely her) to fulfil his (rarely her) desire. | 238 | 560 |
| K24a In K24 family | A supernatural man hides a woman's clothes. | A man, usually of non-human nature, hides the clothes or sits on the clothes of an ordinary earthly girl. To get her clothes back, she is forced to enter into a romantic relationship with him. Traditions in which the character is a snake or dragon (ATU 425M) are marked with an asterisk*. | 36 | 39 |
| K24b In K24 family | Dancing in magical clothes. | A magical wife deceives her naive mother-in-law into giving her wonderful clothes or some other item that enables her to leave the human world. | 31 | 37 |
| K24c In K24 family | An old man helps to obtain a bird wife, ATU 413. | A young man comes to an old man (less often – to an old woman), who teaches him how to get a magical wife by hiding her bird clothes. Usually, the young man gives away the clothes for the first time and lives with the old man until the girls fly back. | 20 | 19 |
| K25 | The magical wife. | A man consciously marries a woman who belongs to the non-human world. | 422 | 1196 |
| K25a1 In K25 family | Found clothing. | A magical wife leaves her earthly husband when she finds her clothes, which he has hidden (often feathers, if she is a bird woman), persuades him to give them back, makes new ones or receives them from her relatives. (The variant in which the wife leaves her husband because she is offended is not entirely alternative, but in most texts it does not fit with the motif of found clothing). | 106 | 212 |
| K25a2 In K25 family | Discarded feathers. | An anthropomorphic character flies away or tries to fly away, attaching feathers shed by birds flying in the sky to his body. | 15 | 21 |
| K25a3 In K25 family | Collected feathers. | The magical bird-wife flies away when she makes herself new feather clothing from feathers collected on the ground. | 6 | 6 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.