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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L33a In L33 family | The boulder pursues the thief. | The trickster takes an object lying on or near a rock or other inanimate object, which he has given to that object. The object pursues or otherwise punishes the offender. See motif L33. | 25 | 4 |
| L42i1 In L42 family | The boy fisherman is carried away by a witch (ATU 327F). | A boy is rowing a boat. A witch lures him out and carries him away. The boy escapes. | 9 | 24 |
| M78c In M78 family | The boy is a severed finger | A tiny little man emerges from a severed finger. | 18 | 19 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| K25c In K25 family | The boy under the onion. | While digging roots, gathering shellfish, etc., a woman finds a baby. He grows up and enters into a struggle with dangerous characters. | 10 | 13 |
| I87b In I87 family | The braggart meets the strongest, ATU 650B. | When a character boasts of his strength, his wife or mother says that there is someone stronger than him. He sets off in search and meets a character who is much stronger than him. {ATU gives a definition of the plot (or rather, the first half of it) similar to ours, but some of the references given refer to our motif i87a, not i87b}. | 32 | 50 |
| M152b In M152 family | The brave donkey and the cowardly lion, ATU 103C*. | When seeing a herbivorous ungulate (usually a donkey) for the first time, a large predator thinks that it is strong and dangerous. The herbivore's subsequent behaviour usually convinces the predator that its first impression was correct. | 24 | 25 |
| J53b In J53 family | The breasts of a murdered mother. | Two women live together, both have children. One of them leaves the house with the other, kills her, brings her meat home and starts cooking it. The children of the deceased notice their mother's breasts (in California – eyes or liver), or the mother's breasts themselves turn to her children. | 17 | 24 |
| F81 | The bride in the river. | The character does not recognise his reflection in the water, thinks that a person (usually a woman, with whom he immediately falls in love) is looking at him, and jumps into the water. (Cf. J1793, "Diving for a woman's reflection"; among the Kwinolts, diving for a real reflection of a woman; among the Menominee, diving for a woman in the water). | 19 | 23 |
| K113a In K113 family | The bride where the arrow fell. | A young man throws an object, shoots an arrow, etc. Where the arrow lands (where the object falls), the young man finds a wife or a means of obtaining one. | 47 | 61 |
| N28e In N28 family | The bridge across the sea | In a list of things that do not exist in the world, a bridge across the sea, ocean or lake is mentioned | 6 | 10 |
| K123a In K123 family | The broken jug. | A boy or young man accidentally, or more often out of mischief, breaks or overturns a vessel belonging to a woman or girl. This episode forms the basis of the rest of the story. | 41 | 64 |
| A29b In A29 family | The Broken Moon. | A character associated with the upper world and a character associated with the earth or the lower world each seek to possess the hero or heroine who is associated with the Moon. | 12 | 22 |
| K89b In K89 family | The brother left on the tree. | At the beginning of the story, the sister parts with her brothers (or one brother), who die, remain on trees, on a hill, ascend to the sky, etc. Usually, after a successful marriage, the sister meets her brothers again, who have acquired superhuman nature. | 14 | 24 |
| K32j In K32 family | The brother of the changeling is accused of deception (ATU 403). | Upon learning from a young man that he has a beautiful sister, the ruler wants to marry her. The bride is replaced by an ugly woman. Usually, the ruler accuses her brother of deception and throws him into prison. The deception is revealed. | 22 | 38 |
| M157a2 In M157 family | The bull and the cart give birth, ATU 875E. | The character claims that the calf (kid, etc.) was not born (brought) by a cow (goat, etc.) belonging to another owner, but by his own animal of a different species or male sex, or by an inanimate object (usually a cart). | 73 | 99 |
| H36g1 In H36 family | The bull distorts the message. | When a bull (ox, cow) is ordered to convey certain instructions to people, he confuses them or deliberately distorts them. | 11 | 16 |
| B45b In B45 family | The bull of cold. | The bull or cow is the embodiment of cold, the reason why winter is cold. | 8 | 15 |
| K103c In K103 family | The bull-helper fights in the copper forest. | Sitting on a bull or a cow, a young man or woman runs away from their stepmother's house. Along the way, the bull fights other bulls (monsters), the last of which usually kills it. | 8 | 10 |
| M118b In M118 family | The bull-hiding place. | Climbing inside the animal, the character obtains food there without harming the animal. | 14 | 18 |
| D6b In D6 family | The burned one becomes a caiman. | The one who is burned turns into a crocodile/caiman. | 7 | 8 |
| A22d In A22 family | The burned person turns into a constellation. | The burned character turns into a constellation or a dark spot on the Milky Way. | 4 | 4 |
| L15g In L15 family | The burnt log (death of Meleager), ATU 1187. | A person's life is connected to an object that can be burned. As soon as the object is burned, the person dies. | 19 | 8 |
| C2b In C2 family | The Burnt Moon. | The Sun and the Moon are caught in a fire. The strong and intelligent Sun escapes, while the weak and foolish Moon is burned or consumed, but the Sun revives it. | 8 | 10 |
| K139 | The burnt pheasant. | A servant is so struck by the beauty of a girl (rarely: a boy) that he lets the meat or bread intended for his master burn. | 17 | 18 |
| D4aa In D4 family | The butterfly tries to steal fire. | Moths try to steal the fire that humans possess. | 16 | 12 |
| M1a In M1 family | The caiman carries the Pleiades brothers. | The caiman transports one of the brothers or a group of brothers, who then turn into the Pleiades. It usually bites off the leg of the youngest. Cf. motif K13B. | 6 | 10 |
| J54a In J54 family | The Calf and the Tiger Cub, ATU 131. | Two women, both or one of whom are animal characters, live together and have children. One of them kills and eats the other or is about to do so. The son of the murderer kills his mother for this, remains the sworn brother of the son of the murdered woman, or the children of the murderer and the victim run away together. Cf. motif J54B. | 18 | 24 |
| K76f In K76 family | The calf-boy. | A young man with the appearance of a calf marries and then turns into a handsome man. | 9 | 8 |
| H11 | The call of God. | People are mortal or defective because they respond to the call (or pronounce the name) of a creature that brings death, or do not hear the call (do not pronounce the name; do not respond to the call, do not notice) of a creature that promises immortality (power). | 47 | 74 |
| K27zz In K27 family | The Cannibal and the Blinded Wives, ATU 462. | A man does not suspect that his (new) wife (less often his mother) is a cannibal/witch/treacherous woman; she persecutes (former) wives (his wife) and/or blinds them or throws them into a pit, or her husband does so at her instigation. Contrary to the cannibal's plans, the son of one of the wives survives, kills the cannibal, and rescues his mother and sisters. | 28 | 34 |
| L42 | The cannibal brings the hero to his home, ATU 327C. | After capturing the character, the enemy brings the prey home or to the place where he intends to eat it. The character runs away and escapes. | 198 | 342 |
| M120 | The Cannibal Nanny, ATU 37, Th. K931. | A zoomorphic character takes on the responsibility of caring for other people's children (raising them, teaching them, healing them), but in reality has no intention of doing so, and usually eats the children. | 71 | 90 |
| L65a In L65 family | The Cannibal Sister, ATU 315A. | A daughter is born, or people find a girl; she is a monster or turns into a monster and devours everyone. Her brother escapes (usually leaves, marries, returns), and she pursues him unsuccessfully. | 65 | 82 |
| 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 |
| L42d In L42 family | The cannibal's frozen tongue. | A man runs away from a cannibal across the ice, the cannibal pursues him, licks the blood spilled on the ice, his tongue freezes, he dies, or falls to his death after slipping on the ice. | 11 | 13 |
| K10b In K10 family | The Carried Away Cage. | A huge bird carries away to its nest a cage, bag or other container in which people are located. See motif 10A. | 11 | 12 |
| F70c In F70 family | The castrated becomes a man (ATU 318). | A young man loses his male organ, but restores it with magic (and marries happily). Cf. ATU 750K. In ATU 318, this episode is described as one of many possible ones related to the theme of the unfaithful wife. | 16 | 15 |
| L81a In L81 family | The cat extinguishes the fire. | A girl offends a cat (rarely: a dog, a rooster) and the cat takes revenge by causing misfortune to befall the girl (usually by extinguishing the fire, after which the girl falls into the hands of a demon). | 22 | 33 |
| K27z3 In K27 family | The Cat with the Lamp, ATU 217. | The character taught the cat (monkey, dog) to hold a candle (lamp) or to extinguish it on command. Seeing a mouse (rat), the cat rushes after it and as a result drops (does not extinguish) the candle. | 50 | 35 |
| L41a1 In L41 family | The cauldron split. | When the demon tries to shake the meat out of the bag over the cauldron, stones fall from the bag into the cauldron and it splits, or the boiling water spills out and scalds the demon. | 15 | 19 |
| H36b In H36 family | The chameleon betrays man. | The chameleon is to blame for the fact that man is mortal or that he must labour; he loses the trust placed in him by the deity. See motif H36. | 39 | 47 |
| B2g In B2 family | The chameleon walks on soft ground. | The chameleon walked on the ground when it had not yet hardened. | 5 | 8 |
| L96 | The changed appearance is sold and returns (ATU 325). | The character has the ability to transform into animals or objects. Sold in this form, he achieves his goal and becomes human again. | 87 | 127 |
| L1e In L1 family | The character creates monstrous birds. | A monstrous bird is created from a small amount of human or animal flesh (usually from the heart) or from lumps of manioc starch. | 9 | 9 |
| B14 | The character creates river rapids. | In order to regulate the flow of the river in a certain way, the character creates rapids and waterfalls. | 16 | 18 |
| K27x6a In K27 family | The character encounters the mother of the sun. | The character comes to the mother of the Sun when the Sun itself is not there. Cf. motif b33h ("Mother of the Sun"). | 32 | 35 |
| 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 |
| M61a1 In M61 family | The character quarrels birds | The character (always a raven) provokes a seagull to quarrel with another bird, telling each one that the other was hostile or offensive towards her. | 5 | 9 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.