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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M61a2 In M61 family | The character quarrels stones | The character provokes a quarrel between two stones of different breeds. To do this, he told everyone how the other supposedly spoke hostile or offensive towards the former. | 5 | 5 |
| L57 | The character returns his organ. | The character loses an internal organ or part of the body, which is taken away by others; he approaches unnoticed and takes back what was lost. | 48 | 67 |
| B97 | The character rewards the bird. | The character rewards (rarely punishes) a bird living by the water, determining its current appearance (crest, beak, feather colouring). | 28 | 27 |
| L100c In L100 family | The chaste sorceress and seducers, D2006.1.1. | When a man comes to a beautiful woman who lives alone, she asks him to perform a trivial task (close the door, etc.) and uses magic to leave him in an awkward and uncomfortable position (holding the door handle, etc.) for the whole night. The next night, the same thing happens to another (rarely: the same) admirer. Each, ashamed, tells the others that he enjoyed it. | 23 | 28 |
| K10g In K10 family | The chick descends to the ground. | Finding himself in the nest of a giant bird on a tree or rock, a man descends to the ground with the help of an adult bird (attaching its feathers or wings to himself), and more often - a chick (grabbing its legs, sitting on the chick, attaching its feathers or wings). | 17 | 21 |
| B104 | The chicken turns into a turtle. | A guest arrived, the host hid the chicken, and when he wanted to eat it, it turned out that it had turned into a turtle. | 10 | 10 |
| K10f In K10 family | The chicks turn into ordinary eagles. | The character turns the children of a flying monster into ordinary eagles or owls. | 22 | 22 |
| K30a In K30 family | The chief's wife and the vultures. | The wife of the first ancestor flies away with the vultures (usually voluntarily, after she has already cheated on her husband), and the chief (Uito: her brother) brings her back. See motif K30. | 9 | 7 |
| M46d In M46 family | The child asks for a toy | A small child cries and calms down only after being given a valuable item hidden in the house to play with. After receiving an item, a child or an associated character takes it away. | 41 | 75 |
| K87a1 In K87 family | The child is handed over. | A demonic woman asks the baby's mother to let her hold him or secretly replaces another person who was supposed to take the child. Once she has the baby, the demon takes him away. | 13 | 10 |
| C19a In C19 family | The child is playing with the sun | The character (except Quileut: Raven) turns into a child, asks for and receives heavenly bodies to play, or (Chukchi) comes to play with the little daughter of the owner of the stars. | 23 | 69 |
| K73a5 In K73 family | The child is replaced by a kitten. | Malicious women replace the newborn with a kitten (telling the father that his wife has given birth to a kitten). See motifs K73, K73A. | 37 | 59 |
| K73a4 In K73 family | The child is replaced by a puppy. | Malicious women replace the newborn with a puppy (telling the father that his wife has given birth to a puppy). See motifs K73, K73A. | 131 | 237 |
| K73a1 In K73 family | The child is replaced by an inanimate object. | After hiding or discarding a newborn baby, the woman's rivals replace it with an inanimate object and/or inform the father that his wife has given birth to a stone, a broom, etc. See motifs k73a2, k73a2a, k73a3. | 26 | 39 |
| K73a2 In K73 family | The child is replaced with a broom. | The ill-wishers of the new mother replace the baby with a broom (they tell the father that his wife has given birth to a broom). | 8 | 12 |
| K73a3 In K73 family | The child is replaced with a doll. | The midwife's ill-wishers replace the baby with a statue or doll (telling the father that his wife has given birth to a doll). | 7 | 9 |
| K73a2a In K73 family | The child is replaced with a log. | After hiding or discarding a newborn baby, ill-wishers replace it with a piece of wood and/or inform the father that his wife has given birth to a piece of wood. | 6 | 6 |
| K167 | The Child King. | A boy plays, pretending to be a king and demonstrating wisdom and/or magical abilities. | 12 | 8 |
| 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 |
| J65 | The children of the Sun destroy their enemies. | After the attack by enemies, a woman and her daughter remain. She rejects the marriage proposals of animal suitors and agrees to give her daughter to the heavenly deity (the Sun). The children from this marriage take revenge on their enemies. | 6 | 7 |
| M198 | The Clever Brothers (the illegitimate khan), ATU 655. | In the house of the khan (judge, king, etc.), three brothers (rarely one person) determine that the food and drink served to them smell of dead flesh, dog, goat, etc., and (or that) the host who receives them is illegitimate or of low birth. After questioning the servants and his mother, the host is convinced that the brothers are right. | 65 | 70 |
| M198a In M198 family | The Clever Brothers (The Lost Camel), (ATU 655A). | Brothers (rarely: one person) determine the characteristics of a domestic animal they have not seen, or of the person who stole the animal, based on subtle clues. {In ATU, plots 655 and 655A are combined; in Aarne, Thompson 1961 and in regional indexes, our motif M198A corresponds to plot 655A} (Type 655A only in Aarne, Thompson 1984. In ATU mixed with 655). | 56 | 58 |
| L6 | The clingy demon. | The creature demands that the person carry it constantly, not allowing itself to be thrown off. | 85 | 113 |
| B35 | The club-footed bear. | The bear hastily puts his left moccasin on his right foot and vice versa, which is why he is club-footed. | 8 | 8 |
| F9f2 In F9 family | The cobra's hood in the wife's handbag. | A woman places a piece of flesh from her slain snake lover in her handbag and poses a corresponding riddle. If her husband fails to guess the answer, she has the right to kill him. The husband accidentally learns the secret and kills his wife. | 3 | 3 |
| J44 | The collapsed bridge. | The hero lures the enemy onto a rickety bridge. The enemy falls into the water, into the abyss (see motif J46). See motif J52. | 108 | 164 |
| K38e2 In K38 family | The collapsed kingdom. | Returning from the underworld to earth, the princess places the objects surrounding her (clothes, house, "kingdom") into a small object (egg, ball of yarn, etc.), which she takes with her. | 26 | 51 |
| M198b3 In M198 family | The collapsed mosque. | A supposed fortune teller accidentally finds the missing items, is rewarded and brought close to the ruler. One day, for some reason, he rudely pushes him (or people in general) out of the room. Immediately afterwards, the roof of the building collapses. Since then, no one has doubted the fortune teller's abilities. | 9 | 9 |
| F34a In F34 family | The common husband of the first women. | All women of the community of the first ancestors or all Amazons have a common lover of non-human nature or simultaneously mate with animals of a certain species, summoning them with a conventional signal. | 18 | 33 |
| F40a In F40 family | The common husband of the first women. | A male character, androgynous, with a monstrous penis, single-handedly possesses all women, rules over them or leads away the first women. | 40 | 54 |
| K99a1 In K99 family | The condemned riddle-solver is freed. | A man thrown into prison is released and exalted because he alone manages to solve the riddles set by the king or save the princess (king, prince, etc.). | 45 | 61 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| K38e1 In K38 family | The Copper Forest, (ATU 511). | Characters pass through a forest with metal trees of two or more types (copper, silver, etc.). | 32 | 43 |
| A30 | The corpse-eating moon. | The moon descends to earth to eat children, corpses or the bones of the dead. | 11 | 19 |
| C35 | The cosmic marriage will not take place. | It becomes known that if characters representing natural phenomena and parts of the universe marry, it will lead to disaster. The marriage is broken off. | 18 | 32 |
| K103 | The cow as helper, ATU 511. | A domestic animal (horse, cow, bull, goat, ram, sheep) helps an orphan, a lonely child, or an unfortunate young woman. | 118 | 164 |
| B47a In B47 family | The cow's split hoof. 33.34. | A cow steps on the Pleiades stars lying on the ground, which were demonic creatures. Some of the stars slipped through her split hoof. | 7 | 11 |
| H36gg In H36 family | The coyote betrays man. | The coyote is to blame for the fact that humans are mortal. | 37 | 64 |
| K76g In K76 family | The crab son. | The son or foster son of a married couple – a crab. He marries a princess and turns into a handsome man. | 8 | 11 |
| M22a In M22 family | The crane as a watchman. | In a foreign house, in a foreign country, where the hero finds himself, the crane or heron is a watchman who must raise the alarm in case of strangers appearing. | 8 | 12 |
| M22 | The crane as saviour. | A long-necked bird living near water (crane, heron, bittern, swan) helps a fugitive escape from his pursuer (indicated in brackets). See motifs J44-J46 (a long-legged bird helps cross the river, drowns the pursuer; the pursuer is most often a bear). | 56 | 50 |
| E1 | The creation of man. | The first human being was created, made by a certain character, and did not exist initially (on earth, underground, in the sky, in a small container) and did not arise spontaneously. Only variants that specify the material from which humans were created, or that refer separately to the creation of the human figure and its ensoulment, rather than simply to the fact of "creation" itself, are taken into account. | 164 | 311 |
| H42 | The creator leaves. | Having created human bodies or conceived creation, the creator or his representative leaves for a time. Another character, out of malice or incompetence, spoils or tries to spoil the results of the work, creating something that the creator would have done better. Most often, this leads to humans being mortal or susceptible to disease. See motif H40. | 70 | 76 |
| K27z4a In K27 family | The cripple demands the return of his leg, ATU 978. | The cripple claims that the father of the visitor is to blame for his physical disability. The man's wife or the man himself, on someone's advice, promises to return the leg (eye) if the cripple gives him the other one as a sample or brings him a part of a dead person's body and demands money. | 11 | 9 |
| B56 | The crocodile's fiery tongue. | The crocodile/caiman is left without a tongue after swallowing or losing the fire (which it previously possessed); something associated with heavenly fire (lightning, sunbeams, etc.) emerges from the crocodile's severed tongue. | 15 | 17 |
| M56a In M56 family | The crocodile's secret | A weak character hits a crocodile, but the crocodile is safe. He says he would be killed if the attack hit a specific location. Next time, the same character hits this place and kills a crocodile. | 16 | 14 |
| M168b In M168 family | The crooked stick. | A bird or a person who becomes a bird is given the task of bringing a stick that is neither straight nor crooked. This bird is still searching for it. | 3 | 4 |
| M39a6b In M39 family | The Crooked Tower and the Master's Daughter-in-law | The ruler, to whom the master builder went to work, is going to kill or maim him. The master asks to send a person to his house asking him to bring a forgotten instrument or something else. The daughter-in-law understands the true meaning of the request, captivates the messenger and saves her father-in-law. | 12 | 27 |
| B13 | The crossed riverbed. | A character deliberately or accidentally makes a riverbed by digging it out, drawing it on the ground or spilling water as he walks (cf. motif B13A: water rushes in the footsteps of a person against his will, he tries to run away from it). | 20 | 16 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.