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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B75b1 In B75 family | Sounds of the era of creation: the voice of a wife or mother-in-law. | The character pushes his mother-in-law or wife into a hollow, and she turns into the creaking of trees or an echo. | 7 | 9 |
| K27g4 In K27 family | Sow, reap and bake bread in one day. | The character must complete all field work in an unimaginably short time and present the products of the new harvest. | 47 | 68 |
| H43aa In H43 family | Spat-upon figures. | Having created the human body, the creator leaves. At this time, his opponent spits on the figure, which has not yet come to life, smears it with mud, etc. | 42 | 60 |
| J23b In J23 family | Spears are placed along the path. | To defeat the monster, the young man (twins) prepares spears in advance and leaves them along the supposed retreat route. Fleeing from the monster, the young man throws spears at it one after another and eventually kills it. | 7 | 8 |
| D7a In D7 family | Spider and fire. | The spider possesses the first fire or steals it from its original owner (texts in which the spider acts together with other animals and does not play the main role are not included). | 10 | 11 |
| K115 | Spider web at the entrance, B523.1, ATU 967. | When a character hides in a shelter, a spider immediately weaves a web at the entrance. Enemies decide that no one has entered the cave or room for a long time and leave. | 50 | 41 |
| M84c In M84 family | Spirit Guest | Sleeping in a deserted place, a person finds himself among spirits. One of them explains that he has a guest, that is the same person. | 14 | 17 |
| I56 | Spirits cannot see the living. | Moving between worlds, the same living person is visible to some and invisible to others. | 42 | 63 |
| K65a In K65 family | Spirits fall from the sky. | After being thrown from a height or expelled, various creatures end up in different locations, acquiring corresponding functions and names. | 36 | 54 |
| K65 | Spirits of loci. | Having been cast out, discarded, or born of the first ancestors, creatures of a certain category acquire individuality, transforming into spirits who are the masters of various loci. | 40 | 61 |
| B7a In B7 family | Spit-out water. | Someone possesses water or a drink. Another character swallows what is hidden, runs away and spits out what is hidden, making the water or drink available to everyone. | 16 | 23 |
| J12I In J12 family | Spitting beads. | A desirable marriage partner secretes beads instead of saliva or excrement. See motifs J12 and M57. | 12 | 2 |
| B54 | Splinters turn into fish. D441.10+. | Wood chips, branches or pieces of bark that have fallen or been thrown into the water turn into fish and aquatic animals. | 46 | 59 |
| A35 | Spots on the lunar disc, A751.5. | Dark spots on the lunar disc – dirt, blood, paint, marks from blows, burns on the body or face of a character; they do not form a specific image. See motif A31. | 212 | 289 |
| B7c In B7 family | Sprinkled water. | Fresh water, which its sole owner hides in a vessel or pond, is scattered throughout the world. | 8 | 9 |
| I78 | Square Earth. | The earth is thought of as rectangular (usually square). | 60 | 71 |
| M199a In M199 family | Squeezing brains out of the ground. | A man buried something soft and liquid in the ground, and when he stamped on it (shot an arrow into it) and the buried object splashed onto the surface, he said that he had squeezed the brain (innards) out of the earth. | 16 | 28 |
| M199 | Squeezing water from a stone, ATU 1060. | A man and a giant (devil, predator, robber) agree to test their strength by crushing a stone. The man squeezes a piece of cheese, an egg, etc., and the giant believes that he is facing a strong man. {ATU 1060 includes variants in which the character squeezes brains (guts, etc.) out of the ground, without specifying this in the definition; where we were able to verify this, we did not include such traditions}. | 77 | 101 |
| M5d In M5 family | Squirrel and fish | The squirrel and the creeping fish are smart and get medicines for each other | 5 | 3 |
| I37d1 In I37 family | St. Peter spits out mushrooms, ATU 774L. | St. Peter secretly eats bread, and when Christ asks him what he is doing, he chokes, spits out the crumbs, and they turn into mushrooms. | 10 | 5 |
| N28b In N28 family | Stairway to Heaven | In a list of things that do not exist in the world, a ladder or stairway to the sky (variant: a ladder in the sky) is mentioned | 10 | 14 |
| B46d In B46 family | Star brothers with different properties. | Men, each of whom excels others in a particular art, turn into stars. | 12 | 21 |
| I110a In I110 family | Star Plough. | Orion (rarely - another constellation) - plough. | 45 | 56 |
| 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 |
| I104 | Stars - fragments. | Stars are formed from particles of the body, fragments of a larger celestial body (usually the moon); stars (usually also the sun and moon) are formed from the body of a single being. | 43 | 66 |
| 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 |
| I72a In I72 family | Stars – children of the moon, A764.1.3. | Stars – children of the moon and/or sun. | 66 | 79 |
| I74a In I74 family | Stars – fireflies. | Stars – fireflies. | 9 | 9 |
| I55 | Stars – holes. | Stars – holes in the sky; or holes in the canopy, in the roof of a dwelling, appear to be stars. | 65 | 75 |
| I100d In I100 family | Stars – kids. | Stars are associated with kids. | 8 | 7 |
| I55a In I55 family | Stars – lakes. | Stars – lakes on one of the heavenly tiers. | 5 | 7 |
| I107 | Stars – nails. | Stars are nails or stakes driven into the sky, or stars are nailed down. | 12 | 14 |
| I72 | Stars – people. | Stars – anthropomorphic beings. See motif K19 (marriage to a star). Cases where the Star is a unique object, e.g. Venus, rather than one of many Star-people, are not included. | 239 | 278 |
| I71 | Stars – roots. | Stars – roots of plants growing in the upper world. | 17 | 23 |
| I73 | Stars – sparks. | Stars (rarely suns and moons) – sparks, hot coals. | 17 | 21 |
| I74 | Stars – stones. | Stars – (bright) stones, sequins, beads. | 31 | 34 |
| K56b3 In K56 family | Stench instead of fragrance. | A man's intestinal gases become fragrant. An envious person tries to achieve the same result, but the outcome is the opposite. | 2 | 2 |
| M90c In M90 family | Stepladder instead of wife | man agreed with another that he could take the first thing he touched from his house. The visitor is going to take his wife, but when he takes up the stepladder to go up to the woman, he is told to pick up the stepladder and leave. | 7 | 7 |
| K64b In K64 family | Sticky object. | The hero's opponent provokes him to touch an object that turns out to be sticky. The hero sticks to the object (see Miller 1890: 41). See motif K64. | 33 | 43 |
| L38a In L38 family | Sticky trap – resin stump. | The character sticks to an object, usually by successively sticking individual parts of their body to it. The object is either a trap for a demonic creature or is itself a creature of a non-human nature. Cf. motif M182 (tar doll), probably brought to the New World after Columbus from Africa. | 34 | 55 |
| L7a In L7 family | Sticky: first to humans, then to animals. | A character who sticks to another creature and refuses to let go, first sticking to a human, then to an animal, or first sticking to an animal, then to a bird. | 17 | 24 |
| H24d In H24 family | Still gathering what has been released. | An animal character who released the contents (darkness, insects, reptiles) from a vessel is still trying to gather everything back (etiology of the behaviour of a certain species of animal). | 15 | 26 |
| J32f In J32 family | Stolen apples. | While standing guard, the hero discovers who is stealing fruit (usually apples) from the garden. | 61 | 85 |
| M157a7 In M157 family | Stolen children. | A zoomorphic character took the children of a character of another animal species and claims that they are his own children. | 3 | 3 |
| J32e In J32 family | Stolen Foals. | Every time a mare foals, the foal is stolen. The hero finds out who is doing this. | 18 | 20 |
| H6d In H6 family | Stolen immortality. | Having obtained a means of ensuring immortality, the character falls asleep or leaves the means unattended. At this time, another character steals the means. | 13 | 20 |
| M18 | Stolen tackle, D657.1. | The character turns into an object of fishing or hunting and presents himself as a target. The fisherman or hunter does not harm them, but they take away what they use: arrows, darts, harpoons, hooks, bait; or they catch fish, having turned themselves into hooks; or they are caught but escape death by taking on human form again. | 61 | 78 |
| M114a In M114 family | Stone coat. | The character is offered to sew clothes or shoes from stone or iron, or to remove the skin from the stone. | 28 | 34 |
| L41a In L41 family | Stone in a basket. | The character runs away from his captor, leaving a stone (or a log, sand) in his place. See motif L41. | 57 | 55 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.