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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M147 | The fox runs ahead of the tiger. | A weak animal tells a strong animal that everyone is afraid of him, the weak one, and suggests testing this. He walks in front of the strong animal, everyone runs away, and the strong animal believes that they are running away from the weak one. | 6 | 6 |
| M140a In M140 family | The fox ties up its companion. | The fox cunningly ties up the wolf or man and runs away. | 8 | 13 |
| B44f In B44 family | The fox wants daylight. | In the dispute over whether the world should be bright, the fox is on the side of light (almost always against the bear). | 11 | 10 |
| E9aa In E9 family | The fox wife in the burrow of all animals. | A man searches for a missing woman, who is a fox by nature, and comes to the burrow where she has hidden. Various bird or animal women come out of the burrow and offer themselves in place of the fox. Then they let him inside. | 4 | 6 |
| H36hh In H36 family | The frog betrays the man. | The frog or toad is to blame for the fact that humans are mortal. | 25 | 32 |
| B8 | The frog hides the water. | The frog hides the water (usually drinks up a lake or river). Thanks to another character, the water returns to the body of water(s). (Among the Khan, Upper Tanana, and Varikho, the motif is not cosmogonic). | 15 | 30 |
| J35 | The frog kills its pursuer. | A tree frog kills or neutralises a demon or beast pursuing the heroes. | 12 | 12 |
| K44a In K44 family | The frog pretends to be a mother. | A frog or toad (coastal Koryaks: triton) kidnaps or finds a boy and lies that she is his real mother. See motif K44. | 4 | 5 |
| K113b In K113 family | The Frog Princess – Mistress of the Storm. | The younger prince marries a frog. She must first arrive at his parents' house. A thunderstorm begins. Rain, lightning, and thunder signify that the prince's wife is washing, dressing, travelling, etc. | 5 | 3 |
| K76a In K76 family | The frog son and the frog husband. | A frog or toad marries a beautiful woman, or a handsome young man marries a frog. | 25 | 34 |
| A12b In A12 family | The frog swallows the sun. | During an eclipse or at sunset (marked *), the luminaries are swallowed by a toad or frog. | 23 | 34 |
| I84a In I84 family | The frozen son of a god. | Contrary to the warning of his father or mother, a young man or woman sets off on a journey in winter and freezes to death. Cf. motif B33A ("Frozen in Spring"). | 10 | 16 |
| L104 | The fugitive and the pursuer change their appearance (ATU 325). | The fleeing character successively takes on the appearance of various creatures or objects; the pursuer also changes his appearance, each time transforming into someone who is dangerous to the pursued in his current form. | 135 | 174 |
| M21 | The fugitive hides with his protector. | The character runs away from his pursuer. The person, animal or object that the character asks for help hides him (and kills the pursuer). | 170 | 258 |
| B77a In B77 family | The giant pushed back the sky. | One or more anthropomorphic characters push the sky away from the earth. See motif B77. | 52 | 40 |
| M199h In M199 family | The giant's torn belly, (ATU 1088). | The character hides a bag under his clothes, secretly putting food in it. After cutting open the bag, he pretends to have cut open his own belly. His opponent decides to do the same and, after cutting open his own belly, dies. Cf. motif M91A, "The Blood Blister." In the definition of plot 1088 in ATU, the motif of the giant's torn belly is optional. | 21 | 27 |
| G17 | The gift of the reptile. | Cultural or important food crops, partially cultivated plant species owe their origin to snakes, moray eels or crocodiles/caimans. | 30 | 48 |
| L33e In L33 family | The gifted cloak. | The trickster demands back or takes the cloak belonging to the skale or another character (usually he himself had previously given this cloak as a gift). | 15 | 24 |
| M10 | The girl and the honey. | A girl or woman gets stuck in a hollow while extracting honey, or greedily sucks honey in some other way and as a result dies or undergoes a metamorphosis; a woman stuck in a narrow passage turns into honey, into a honey bee. | 16 | 19 |
| K89 | The girl and the witch: gifts from relatives. | After getting married, the heroine and her rival (witch, frog) must bring gifts from their relatives. The heroine finds her brother, brothers or sister who went missing at the beginning of the story and receives rich gifts from them, while the gifts brought by her rival are worthless. | 20 | 31 |
| K73c In K73 family | The girl in the bird's nest, (ATU 705A, 709A). | A girl finds herself in a bird's nest (usually the bird carries the baby girl away). The bird takes care of the girl, who grows up to be a beauty. | 27 | 28 |
| K130a In K130 family | The Girl in the Brothers' House, (ATU 709A). | Several young men (brothers) live far away from other people. A girl comes to them, or she is miraculously born in their house, and they treat her like a sister. After some time, the girl finds herself in danger, but is ultimately saved. | 77 | 108 |
| K155c In K155 family | The girl on the scales. | The father regularly weighs his daughter and learns of her pregnancy when she becomes heavier. | 4 | 4 |
| K101a In K101 family | The girl rising from the coffin, ATU 307. | A man spends several nights next to a dead girl who has become a dangerous demonic creature. As a result, the girl is exorcised. | 41 | 38 |
| L77 | The girl seems like a pineapple. | The character devours people because he sees them as a delicacy. | 9 | 12 |
| K56ab In K56 family | The girl takes off her shirts, the snake takes off its skin (ATU 433B). | A girl marries a monster. On their wedding night, he orders her to take off her shirt, and she orders him to take off his skin. The girl survives, and the monster becomes handsome – usually because she has more shirts (or skins worn in advance) than he does. | 12 | 12 |
| K136a In K136 family | The girl's floating hair. | Seeing the girl's hair carried away by the water, the man decides to marry the girl to whom the hair belongs. | 48 | 61 |
| H36i In H36 family | The goat betrays man. | The goat or sheep is to blame for the fact that man is mortal. See motif H36. | 12 | 15 |
| L108a In L108 family | The goat kills the antagonist. | A predator or cannibal swallows people and animals. A goat (rarely a sheep) punishes it and usually rescues those who have been swallowed (most often by cutting open its belly, allowing those who have been swallowed to escape alive). | 66 | 81 |
| K77b3 In K77 family | The goat with three bellies. | Goats encounter a wolf. One goat has one stomach, the second has two, the third has three, and so on. The goat with the most stomachs kills or scares away the wolf. | 5 | 7 |
| K56c In K56 family | The Golden Axe, ATU 729. | A man loses his axe. A spirit or chief offers him a golden one, but the man says that the axe is not his and for this he receives axes of gold and silver as a reward. Another man deliberately loses his ordinary axe, seeking to obtain a golden one, but suffers a fiasco. | 39 | 25 |
| K151 | The Golden Fish, ATU 555. | A magical helper grants a poor man's simple wish. The poor man or his wife ask for more and more. In the end, the helper punishes the beggar (usually by taking away everything that was given). {Many references to texts outside Europe in Uther 2004 are not related to the plot of ATU 555 and do not contain the K151 motif. This applies in particular to the Arabic and Ossetian variants}. | 69 | 77 |
| I114 | The Golden Fleece. | Describes a ram or sheep with golden wool or the skin of such a ram. | 11 | 17 |
| C35a In C35 family | The good advisor is punished. | A zoomorphic character gives wise advice concerning the state of the Sun. The advice is accepted, but the advisor is punished by the Sun or is henceforth pursued by the Sun. | 8 | 9 |
| K56a8a In K56 family | The good girl returns with her fiancé. | A girl goes to another world, behaves correctly, returns with an animal or an object, inside which her groom is found. Usually, another girl behaves incorrectly and suffers damage. | 7 | 8 |
| L5f In L5 family | The good skull. | Head, face or skull – a woman's husband, fiancé or son; not dangerous to her, brings wealth, saves from hunger, etc. | 35 | 40 |
| K100b In K100 family | The Grateful Dead Man, ATU 505. | A person helps to bury a dead man (pays his remaining debt, honours a saint). The revived dead man (saint) helps him overcome difficulties. See motif K100A. | 55 | 85 |
| I106 | The Great Bear is a single character. | The Great Bear is one anthropomorphic character, not a group of people. | 26 | 31 |
| B42g In B42 family | The Great Bear – a hunted animal. | The Big Dipper (as a whole or only the dipper) is identified with an animal (animals) pursued by hunters / attacked by other characters. | 44 | 94 |
| B46c In B46 family | The Great Bear – seven characters. | Each of the stars of the Big Dipper is a separate character (people or animals). | 103 | 184 |
| I101 | The Great Bear – stakes. | The Big Dipper or several bright stars of another constellation are stakes, pillars supporting a platform, or some object is stretched, dried, or stored on these stakes. | 19 | 41 |
| B42o1 In B42 family | The Great Bear – the fisher. | The Big Dipper is identified with the fisher (Mustela pennati). | 7 | 5 |
| I87aa In I87 family | The Great Bull, ATU 1960A. | Describes a giant bull (rarely: horse): head in one field, body in another; a bathhouse on its tail, a lake on its back; people standing at its head and tail have to walk a long way to meet each other; etc. Usually the bull is killed and eaten (by people in Baltic-Finnish traditions and in Olonets antiquity; by birds in most southern traditions). | 28 | 50 |
| G8g In G8 family | The Great Oak and Its Inhabitants. | There is a unique tree that must be bent or felled. Different creatures inhabit its separate parts and/or objects of special importance are made from its wood. | 6 | 7 |
| M203 | The Great Pan is dead, ATU 113A. | A supernatural being conveys a message to an unknown recipient through a passer-by. By fulfilling the request, the person provokes an unexpected reaction from another supernatural being (usually living in his house). Most of the material was collected by K.Yu. Rakhno. | 33 | 47 |
| J12k In J12 family | The groom and the deceiver live in the same house. | Desirable and undesirable marriage partners live in the same house. The undesirable partner is a servant or junior partner, usually pretending to be the master. | 1 | 1 |
| B3b In B3 family | The grown earth. | Initially, the earth or the world as a whole was small in size, then it grew; fertile soil grew from a small amount of initial substance. See motif B3A (the earth grows from a piece of solid substance thrown onto the surface of the water). | 234 | 277 |
| M93a In M93 family | The guard was punished | The character punishes a part of his body (burns his ass, breaks his eyes) for not sounding the alarm. See Motive M93; cf. Motive M142. | 18 | 19 |
| M179b In M179 family | The guest ruined the house, ATU 80. | One zoomorphic character asks another (or a human) to let him in to dry off, warm up, etc. Once inside, he wreaks such havoc on the dwelling that it becomes difficult for the owner to stay there. Usually, in response to reproaches, he says that if the owner doesn't like it, there's the door. | 11 | 5 |
| K27x8 In K27 family | The guiding frog. | Only the frog (toad) knows the way to the object that is unattainable for ordinary people, which the hero is looking for (and helps him get there). | 13 | 14 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.