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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L81b In L81 family | The hero's severed legs. | The hero's rivals abandon him, cutting off his legs (usually leaving a sword at the entrance to his tent, and when the hero rushes out, the blade wounds him). | 22 | 32 |
| K48 | The hero's singing bird, ATU 550. | The antagonist orders the wonderful bird captured by the hero to sing or talk, but it remains silent or cries out inappropriately. The bird begins to sing (talk) after the hero has triumphed over his opponents. | 64 | 80 |
| K1d In K1 family | The hero's wife's brothers abandon him. | The hero's wife's brothers try to kill him by leaving him on an island. | 8 | 14 |
| K102 | The hero's woman helps his enemy, ATU 315 (sister), 590 (mother). | A woman who is initially friendly to the hero (his sister, mother, less often his wife or lover) then tries to destroy him by acting in concert with his enemy. To this end, she persuades the hero to take actions that are fatal to him. | 124 | 202 |
| K33a8 In K33 family | The heroine is transformed into a dove. | A woman transformed into a dove by the machinations of a rival tries to establish contact with her children or husband. | 34 | 47 |
| K32M In K32 family | The heroine is transformed into an animal (not drowned). | To take the heroine's place, her rival turns her into an animal or bird without pushing her into the water. Cf. motif k33. | 44 | 73 |
| K33a5 In K33 family | The heroine is turned into a duck. | A woman who has been turned into a duck (goose) by her rival's scheming tries to establish contact with her children or husband. | 10 | 19 |
| K33a3 In K33 family | The heroine is turned into a turtle. | A woman, turned into a turtle because of her rival's intrigues, tries to establish contact with her children or husband. | 12 | 15 |
| I129 | The Heron Constellation. | The rainy season is associated with the appearance of the Heron constellation in the sky. | 4 | 4 |
| A37a In A37 family | The hidden archer. | A small animal (marmot, rabbit, mole, toad, frog, earthworm) or a person who turns into such an animal tries to hit the heavenly body with arrows or helps the archer. Since then, this animal has been hiding in burrows and in water. | 14 | 19 |
| K147 | The horse brings the hero's remains, and he is revived. | The enemy dismembers the hero's body. The remains are tied to the horse's saddle, or the horse itself picks them up and brings them to friendly characters. They revive the hero. | 31 | 42 |
| B40b In B40 family | The horse changes with the cow. | The horse changes with the cow, gives up its horns and/or gets teeth. | 10 | 10 |
| K150 | The horse eats coals. | A magical horse (rarely: dog) eats (hot) coals, nails, etc., or attempts are made to feed these to the horse. | 18 | 30 |
| K181 | The horse from the dungeon. | The hero finds a suitable horse in the dungeon (in the basement, in an empty castle, in deep mud, etc.), where it has stood for many years. | 19 | 32 |
| L65a1 In L65 family | The horse's legs eaten away. | A demonic character successively devours parts of the horse on which the hero arrived, each time returning to the hero and then leaving to devour another part. (Often asks whether the hero arrived on a three-legged, two-legged or one-legged horse). | 27 | 34 |
| K85a In K85 family | The horse-thought and the horse-wind. | When assessing the speed of a horse, the speed of thought (lightning, or something else) and wind are compared. | 12 | 14 |
| A22a In A22 family | The Hot Sun and its Companion. | Two characters burn; one turns into the present sun, and the other into a less significant celestial object. See motif A22. | 14 | 2 |
| D4g In D4 family | The hummingbird obtains fire. | Hummingbird steals, finds or spreads fire. See motif D4A. | 19 | 8 |
| B42o In B42 family | The Hunchback Constellation. | A certain constellation is represented by a person who has been struck or wounded in the back. | 7 | 7 |
| L121 | The hunter and his werewolf wife. | An animal or cannibal (man-eater) transforms into a woman and marries a hunter with the sole intention of killing him. Usually, the wife takes on her true form when she goes into the forest with the hunter. | 18 | 37 |
| M60a In M60 family | The hunter comes to the one he wounded | The creature/character runs away or swims away with a hook, harpoon, arrow, or other object thrown by the hero in his body. Local shamans can't heal an existence/character. The hero or his friend comes to the wounded man's village, takes out the object that caused the injury, or drives him even deeper into the body. The patient recovers or dies accordingly. See L105 and M60 motifs. | 53 | 53 |
| L121a In L121 family | The hunter's secret. | The hunter has the ability to avoid danger by transforming himself into various objects. His shapeshifting wife tries to recognise them in order to destroy the hunter. | 7 | 15 |
| M38d4 In M38 family | The Hunting Needle, ATU 90 | Several characters that embody small objects (and a squirrel with them) travel together. The needle penetrates the body of a large animal and kills it. (In the Baltic-Finnish texts, the needle first finds items that others find useless, but after the animal was caught, everything found turned out to be in demand for cooking meat). | 4 | 5 |
| F3 | The husband gives birth after eating what was intended for his wife (ATU 705A). | A man accidentally eats a magical remedy intended for a woman to become pregnant and gives birth to a child. The child comes out of a tumour on the man's leg, or in some other way, but the man remains alive. | 25 | 22 |
| B119 | The husband of a magical wife turns into a rooster. | A woman of non-human nature agrees to live with a man, but leaves him upon learning of his real or imagined infidelity. | 3 | 4 |
| K132a In K132 family | The husband's rooster and the wife's hen, ATU 219E*, 715A. | The husband (rarely: the wife) sends the rooster out to earn money, and it brings back money. The wife (husband) sends the hen (cat, her half of the rooster, etc.) and receives only mice, filth, etc. Or, instead of money, the rooster brings the wife something bad or nothing at all. | 20 | 15 |
| M29x In M29 family | The hyena is a loser and a loser | As a result of its stupidity or antisocial behavior, the hyena dies or suffers damage. See the motives in square brackets. | 66 | 68 |
| J12l In J12 family | The hypocritical murderer. | The murderer pretends to mourn the victim along with everyone else. The deception is revealed, and the murderer is pursued. See motif J12. | 10 | 6 |
| K145a In K145 family | The image kills. | A person is predicted to die at the hands of an animal. He is killed (or attempted to be killed) by a living image of an animal or a statue in the form of an animal that falls on him. | 12 | 11 |
| F65 | The imaginary dead man. | To satisfy their secret desire, which involves breaking social norms (forbidden sex, refusing to share food with relatives), the character pretends to be dying, abandoned at the burial site. | 119 | 26 |
| F65b In F65 family | The imaginary dead man: eats alone, K1867. | The character fakes death in order to eat greedily alone. | 34 | 57 |
| F65a In F65 family | The Imaginary Dead Man: Meeting with a Lover, ATU 885A. | The spouse leaves the character at the burial site; the (pretend) dead person comes back to life and leaves to be with their lover. | 59 | 68 |
| F65c In F65 family | The imaginary dead man: the boy reveals the deception. | A man pretends to be dead (in order to marry his daughter or to be able to eat the meat of hunted animals alone). One of his younger children recognises their (adoptive) father or notices that the supposed dead man is alive (he runs away from the funeral pyre, laughs, etc.). | 22 | 12 |
| M198b In M198 family | The Imaginary Diviner, ATU 1641. | A man who is unable to find lost items and expose thieves successfully does so thanks to a fortunate coincidence. | 101 | 113 |
| M198b5 In M198 family | The imaginary fortune teller: an overheard conversation. | The fake fortune teller accidentally overhears someone's conversation, otherwise he would not have been able to give the correct answer. | 5 | 6 |
| M198b4 In M198 family | The imaginary fortune teller: names of thieves. | The fake fortune teller, expecting to be exposed, utters words that reflect his state of mind. The thieves standing nearby perceive some of the words as their names, believe that the fortune teller has found out about them, and ask him not to reveal them. | 19 | 22 |
| M60a3 In M60 family | The Imaginary Physician: Punishing a Scoundrel | Avenging the seized property (a pet or a bird), the hero repeatedly comes to the offender in different guises (girl, doctor, etc.) and brutally mocks him. | 4 | 4 |
| M60a2 In M60 family | The imaginary servant licks his heels | The servant must lick the master or mistress's feet or wound. The hero comes disguised as a servant and instead of licking his heels, touches them with the animal's cut off tongue. | 18 | 19 |
| H6c In H6 family | The immortal raven. | The raven (crow, vulture) is associated with death or contrasted with humans as immortal among mortals (sent to bring the elixir of immortality or water that revives the dead; drinks this water himself; teaches people funeral rites; etc.). | 54 | 86 |
| K80 | The indestructible woman. | The character transforms into objects or creatures, which another character systematically destroys. However, the character (usually a young woman) is reborn each time in a new form and eventually in her original form. | 106 | 174 |
| H49c In H49 family | The Innocently Slain Falcon, Th B221.2.2; ATU 178C. | A tame bird (rarely: a domestic animal) shows visible aggression towards its owner (usually a falcon knocks a bowl out of the hands of a thirsty man). The man kills the bird (animal) and then discovers that they saved him from death. | 22 | 28 |
| H49d In H49 family | The Innocently Slain Parrot, ATU 916(4). | A character (usually a bird) brings a healing (rejuvenating) fruit (seed, branch). Accidentally or maliciously, poison gets into the fruit. The person whom the fruit-bearer wanted to help kills or is about to kill his benefactor, and then learns of his mistake. | 14 | 19 |
| N10c In N10 family | The insides are visible | A girl is described, through whose body you can see her internal organs or the food she has swallowed. This is a sign of beauty. | 11 | 14 |
| A45 | The insulted moon. | A man teases and insults the moon and is punished as a result. | 46 | 68 |
| D3 | The invention of fire. | The first fire was obtained by friction or striking; a certain character gives fire or shows how to obtain it, teaches how to cook food on fire; fire was obtained from lightning. {The section is incomplete, there is much more data. A specific plot of the invention of fire hardly exists. Variants involving abduction and invention are often intertwined in the same narrative}. | 74 | 92 |
| K132 | The Invincible Rooster, ATU 715, 715A. | A small character (usually a rooster) comes to a powerful enemy. Thanks to creatures and objects that he encounters along the way and hides in his body or bag, the character remains unharmed after all attempts to destroy him. Cf. motif L126. | 64 | 86 |
| K91 | The invisible battle. | Dogs, the hero's horse, or the hero himself fight the enemy in the underworld. Those watching from a distance judge the course of the battle by the colour of the water or foam rising to the surface, the colour of the first animal to emerge, etc. | 37 | 34 |
| L105 | The invisible hook, B5482.3. | A wounded animal, fish or anthropomorphic character runs or swims away – usually with a hook, harpoon, arrow or other hunting or fishing implement stuck in its body; local healers cannot cure the wounded creature (usually because they cannot see the object that caused the wound); a person comes to the wounded person's village and successfully treats them (usually by removing the object that caused the wound). Cf. motif M60A. | 54 | 63 |
| F54a In F54 family | The invisible scar (the husband turns out to be the son). | In her husband's appearance, the woman discovers signs that are not immediately noticeable, indicating that he has hidden his true nature from her and is not the right marriage partner (he is an animal, or her son, brother or father); or the husband discovers in the same way that his wife is his sister. | 16 | 18 |
| K27x1 In K27 family | The invisible servant ("Bring me that, I don't know what"), (ATU 465A). | Having received a difficult task (usually: to bring an object or creature that has no specific characteristics, such as "something, I don't know what," "a strange wonder," etc.), the hero meets an invisible man who serves others; he is kind to him, and the man becomes his assistant. (This motif is certainly present in some texts of the ATU 465A plot, but it is not specifically highlighted in the definition). (Cf. motif K131B). | 28 | 39 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.