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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| K19 | Marriage to a star. | A man or woman marries a star. See motifs K19A, K19B. | 0 | 0 |
| K87 | Marriage to an animal ends badly. | A woman becomes the wife of an animal (rarely another non-human creature). The husband takes care of her, but the marriage ends with the murder of the husband, the woman, their offspring, the woman's relatives, the transformation of the woman herself into an animal, leading to hostility between humans and animals, etc. | 47 | 78 |
| K56a8c In K56 family | Married to a dog. | A young man brings an animal to his home, and it turns into a girl. Imitating him, another man marries a dog (pig), but it remains an animal. | 6 | 4 |
| L113 | Married to a werewolf (ATU 363). | A girl who has long rejected suitors falls in love with a handsome man who turns out to be a demon, a werewolf, or a dangerous animal. The girl barely escapes or perishes. | 67 | 93 |
| K27z2c In K27 family | Marries to lock up his wife. | After marrying a poor girl, the prince locks her up. She turns out to be more cunning than him. | 6 | 6 |
| M90a In M90 family | Marry a guesser | The girl will marry the person who guessed her name, or someone who will fit the ring, or someone who says what material a particular object is made of or originated, etc. The deceiver fulfills the condition. | 65 | 65 |
| M52 | Mascara fresheners | The character (by deception) kills an ungulates. He asks another to refresh the carcass, looks for a knife to do it, or a fire to fry the meat. The other freshens the carcass, gives fire or a knife, but takes or tries to take all the meat for himself. | 38 | 44 |
| 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 |
| B90 | Master of wolves. | There is an anthropomorphic patron, master or mistress of wolves; he usually gives instructions to the wolves on a certain day of the year. | 32 | 47 |
| 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 |
| B80 | Measurement of the world. | The process of creation includes measuring the dimensions of the earth or the world as a whole. | 13 | 15 |
| M134b In M134 family | Measuring the wolf. | When a predator is about to eat a person, the person asks to be measured first and strikes the predator with an (imaginary) measuring instrument. | 16 | 20 |
| L4a In L4 family | Meat answers to the master. | To test the loyalty of the heroine (hero), the demon demands that she eat food that humans should not eat. Usually, when the heroine reports that the food has been eaten, the demon asks where the food is, and the food answers him. | 16 | 20 |
| M11b In M11 family | Meat extracted from the body. | A woman feeds a man with good-quality meat or fat, which she cuts from her own flesh or extracts from her body, and stops doing so when he learns about the source of the food. | 4 | 6 |
| H24f In H24 family | Meat in a bag. | The character has the ability to put a large amount of meat or fish into a bag or container that is easy to carry. | 13 | 19 |
| M39a2d In M39 family | Meat is planted | Fools plant meat, horns, or bones in the hope of raising animals. | 9 | 5 |
| D13g In D13 family | Meat on the teeth. | When the character starts laughing, people see his or her scary mouth (lots of teeth, human flesh on the teeth); they kill the monster or run away. | 14 | 21 |
| B104a In B104 family | Meat turns into a toad, ATU 980D. | The son was about to eat some meat (chicken). At that moment, his father came in, and the son hid the meat so as not to share it with him. When his father left and the son took out what he had hidden, the meat turned into a toad (snake) and jumped on his face. | 9 | 5 |
| M169 | Medicine from a wolf's skin, ATU 50. | In the presence of an authoritative figure, one of the subordinates plots against another. The latter says that the problem can be solved by maiming the former (usually using a part of his body as medicine). The schemer is killed or maimed. | 54 | 62 |
| K27z2a In K27 family | Meeting for one night. | Noticing the woman's pregnancy, her relatives or in-laws accuse her of promiscuity, because, according to their calculations, she could not have conceived by her husband or fiancé. After severe trials, the woman meets again the father of the boy she gave birth to. | 6 | 7 |
| B93 | Meeting in the sky once a year. | Once a year or once every few years, celestial beings or messengers of the gods meet among the stars. | 11 | 16 |
| F8 | Meeting of men and women. | In the beginning (.55.60.67.73.) women and men lived separately from each other, then came together. Cf. motif F45 (Amazons). | 35 | 69 |
| K80c1 In K80 family | Melon and severed head, ATU 780C. | Someone brings meat or fruit to another person or keeps it for themselves. At the decisive moment, the food turns into the remains of a (supposedly) murdered person. The owner is executed or is about to be executed. Cf. motif K168A. | 24 | 19 |
| M89 | Melted wax | A character is humiliated after an object or creature made of wax, resin, or excrement that he made himself or that he thought was strong melts warmly, the present. | 42 | 45 |
| F16 | Men and women: exchange of characteristics. | Men possessed biological characteristics that are now characteristic of women, or vice versa (beards, menstruation, breasts, childbearing). | 59 | 83 |
| K154a In K154 family | Men in the harem. | By solving a riddle, a boy or young man (rarely a girl) exposes the daughter, wife or assistants of an authoritative character: the daughter or wife has a lover; the assistant is plotting a conspiracy. | 24 | 32 |
| F42 | Men leave. | Feeling wronged, men leave their wives or sisters. | 20 | 32 |
| F42a In F42 family | Men turn into birds. | In the community of the first ancestors, young men or boys turn into birds or bats and fly away. | 9 | 21 |
| F45C In F45 family | Men without wives. | There were men who lived separately from women. See also motif F8. | 3 | 4 |
| M171 | Mena: from a pea to a horse, ATU 170, 1655, 2034F. | The character stops at a house and in the morning claims that the worthless object or animal he brought has disappeared; either he or other characters use or spoil what the deceiver gives them. Each time, the character receives something more valuable in return and, repeating his trick several times, obtains a truly valuable object, an expensive animal, or a person. (All texts of motifs M171A and M171C are also included in motif M171). | 131 | 165 |
| M171a In M171 family | Mena: gets a girl, ATU 1655. | A character (often zoomorphic) gets a girl (boy) by successively exchanging smaller values for larger ones. | 83 | 83 |
| M171d In M171 family | Mena: receives a drum. | The character exchanges one thing for another and ultimately receives a musical instrument (usually a drum). | 13 | 14 |
| D13B In D13 family | Menstruation passes to women. | Menstruation passes from men to women after women laugh at an old man. | 3 | 3 |
| L22B In L22 family | Metamorphosis of the blind. | People who wake up blind in the morning turn into fish, birds or animals. See motif L22. | 15 | 14 |
| 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 |
| J53a1 In J53 family | Method of revenge: lure into smoke and fire. | The children of the murdered man kill the murderer's children, luring them to a place where they perish from heat or smoke. | 24 | 42 |
| M39e1a In M39 family | Mice ate iron, ATU 1592, 1592A | The character claims that the mice ate iron (gold). | 27 | 22 |
| F9e In F9 family | Mice in the vagina. | Small mammals with sharp teeth are found in a woman's vagina. | 9 | 14 |
| A17 | Midday rest of the sun. | Having travelled halfway across the sky or the underworld, the Sun stops to rest. | 53 | 58 |
| K99b In K99 family | Midnight escape: change of partner, (ATU 856). | A girl and a young man agree that he will take her away at night. The young man is late or falls asleep, and the girl is taken away by someone else who happens to be at the appointed place. | 39 | 50 |
| K65e In K65 family | Midwife in the demonic world, ATU 476**, (ATU 156B*). | A woman is invited into the non-human world, where she delivers a child for one of the creatures (or serves as a nanny for a certain period of time, baptises the child). Then she returns to the human world. | 40 | 63 |
| K65e1 In K65 family | Midwife to a toad. | A woman delivers a baby (baptises a child) for a creature that in the human world has the appearance of a toad or frog. | 14 | 15 |
| K27q In K27 family | Milk of a wild animal. | Task: to obtain the milk of a wild animal or milk possessed by a dangerous creature. See motif K27. | 80 | 108 |
| I61 | Milk on the Milky Way, A778.5. | The Milky Way is a trail of spilled milk. | 23 | 34 |
| H16b In H16 family | Milk pond. | The narratives (in various contexts) mention a milk pond (river, lake, wave in the sea) existing on earth (but not among the stars). Cf. motifs H16, K33F, N34. | 53 | 79 |
| I62 | Milky Way - river, A778.3. | The Milky Way is a heavenly river, a body of water, a chain of creatures floating in the water. | 110 | 181 |
| I60a In I60 family | Milky Way – a stripe on the belly. | The Milky Way – a stripe associated with a longitudinal stripe on an animal's body. | 4 | 4 |
| C8a In C8 family | Millstones fall on each other. | Finding themselves alone and without other marriage partners, a brother and sister make it possible to marry each other by the occurrence of an incredible event. This event takes place, giving them a sign to become spouses. Among such events (alternatively or sequentially): 1) millstones rolling down from two different mountains fall on top of each other; 2) swords thrown from two mountains end up in the same scabbard; 3) objects thrown up join together; 4) smoke from two fires joins together (rising in a column); 5) two planted bamboo stalks join at the tops. See motif C8. | 16 | 44 |
| K73a7 In K73 family | Miraculous children: a sister with two brothers. | A woman gives birth to three (not two or many) miraculous children – two boys and a girl. They grow up and triumph over their enemies. | 26 | 33 |
| K73a8 In K73 family | Miraculous children: brother and sister. | A woman gives birth to a miraculous boy and girl. They are replaced by animals or objects and thrown away, but they escape and triumph over their enemies. | 58 | 90 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.