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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| K107d In K107 family | Trying to wake up a wonderful spouse. | After overcoming difficulties, a girl (rarely a boy) finds a magical spouse, but at first cannot wake him (her) up. | 34 | 64 |
| K119c In K119 family | Tsar-Thunder and Tsarina-Lightning. | The antagonist believes that he has been attacked by the lord of thunder (the father of the bride, whom a zoomorphic assistant has tricked into marrying a poor young man, motif K119). | 12 | 16 |
| M62c In M62 family | Tug of war, ATU 291 | A weak character takes turns negotiating with two strong ones to compete in a tug of war. They don't know they're pulling each other's rope or that they're tied to a tree. | 34 | 53 |
| K58b In K58 family | Turn of the watercourse: failure. | The character builds a canal, bridge, or dam. For some reason, the work cannot be completed as planned. | 9 | 3 |
| K36 | Turned into an animal, (ATU 449). | The hero (heroine) is temporarily transformed into an animal (usually a dog/coyote or a donkey, with the face of the former]: 151-152t to the ground; and the strength of 99 men; if she had taken the hundredth, she would have remained a woman; if the young man had ground, a horse). When he or she is helped to regain their former appearance, the antagonist is transformed into an animal. In some texts, either only the hero or only the antagonist undergoes metamorphosis. Cf. motifs K62B, J62b1 (the character transforms many people into animals). | 100 | 150 |
| M13a In M13 family | Turned into stone. | A deity and a human meet so that the former can fulfil the latter's request. As a result, the human is turned to stone. Usually (except for the Squamish), one of the supplicants wants eternal life and is turned to stone. See motif M13. | 12 | 2 |
| J62a In J62 family | Turned into trees. | The character turns those who come to him into plants (trees, flowers). The hero (heroine) remains alive and breaks the spell on those who have been transformed. | 17 | 13 |
| M9a In M9 family | Turning into a tree frog | A character who eagerly sucks honey from a hollow and/or gets stuck in a hollow turns into a tree frog. See M9 motif. | 10 | 2 |
| M29k1 In M29 family | Turtle, Toad, Frog are a loser trickster | A turtle (toad, frog) gets into unpleasant situations due to its own stupidity or carelessness. See the motives in square brackets. The character is named if it is a toad or frog; otherwise, a turtle. | 63 | 15 |
| A39a In A39 family | Twelve months, ATU 294. | Each of the calendar segments (usually months) that make up the year is represented by a special object or creature. | 54 | 92 |
| L19b3 In L19 family | Twelve-headed monster. | A creature with 12 heads is mentioned – either singly or at the end of a series of creatures with fewer heads. | 32 | 59 |
| K93 | Twins and a woman, ATU 303. | After a series of adventures and victories, the hero finds himself in trouble. His twin or brother follows in his footsteps, meets the same characters, but when he encounters the final enemy, he defeats him and revives (frees) the hero. | 94 | 107 |
| B36a In B36 family | Two adorn each other. | Two zoomorphic characters adorn each other, after which one is satisfied with the result and the other is not. | 59 | 89 |
| B38b In B38 family | Two animals adorn each other. | Two quadrupeds (or a quadruped and another creature) adorn each other themselves or are adorned by someone else. | 21 | 30 |
| B38a In B38 family | Two birds adorn each other. | Two birds agree to paint each other. One of them does not become more beautiful as a result and often becomes uglier. See motif B36A. | 38 | 28 |
| K25a7 In K25 family | Two brothers and a winged maiden. | The older brother hunts, the younger brother takes care of the household. After catching the winged maiden, the older brother takes her as his wife, while the younger brother, out of naivety, returns her wings to her. The older brother sets off in search of his wife. | 15 | 23 |
| K25a5 In K25 family | Two brothers and bird maidens. | The older brother is a hunter, the younger brother (rarely a sister) is a housekeeper. Learning that bird maidens come down to the younger brother, the older brother teaches the younger brother what he must do so that the older brother can catch one of them and make her his wife. The wife finds feather clothing and flies away (often the younger brother, out of simplicity, gives it to her), and the husband sets off in search of her. | 12 | 18 |
| B1f In B1 family | Two brothers: the winner and the loser. | In the era of creation, two men have a common origin, are not antagonists, and display their characteristics in a series of episodes. One is intelligent and successful, the other is simple-minded and irresponsible. | 36 | 82 |
| B1 | Two creators, A50. | Two anthropomorphic creators compete in the creation of the earth and/or humans. One is or becomes the master of the underworld or is associated with the spirit world, in contrast to the first, who is associated with the human world. | 90 | 166 |
| B1b In B1 family | Two creators. | Two female progenitors participate in the process of creation. The actions of one bring good, the other evil. | 6 | 7 |
| K70 | Two daughters-in-law: a girl and a frog. | One man marries a girl, another (usually the brother of the first) marries a frog or a toad, or the girl and the frog are the wives of one man. Usually, the wives are given certain tests, and the girl is recognised as a worthy wife, while the frog is recognised as worthless. | 23 | 25 |
| K136d In K136 family | Two flutes. | A young man receives two flutes (pipes, horns) from a cow (buffalo), which produce different effects when played (joy and sorrow, prosperity and a call for help, etc.). | 8 | 9 |
| K54 | Two giants. | When encountering a giant or a snake, a person is afraid of it, but it becomes his friend and asks for help when he is fighting another giant or snake. The person fulfils the request. | 37 | 49 |
| K61a1 In K61 family | Two heads in a sack. | A dangerous character mistakes two people sleeping (hiding) in a sack or two people lying with their feet towards each other for a single creature. | 13 | 13 |
| M195 | Two horses: which one is older? | The character must guess which of the two horses or cows is older. He does this by knowing the behavioural characteristics of these animals. | 25 | 36 |
| K56e In K56 family | Two Hunchbacks, ATU 503. | Two people have the same physical defect (a bump, a hump). The first one finds himself in a place where spirits gather, and they rid him of his defect. The second comes to the spirits, and they double his defect, giving him what they took from the first person. (Uther 2004 mentions Kasevich, Osipov 1976, No. 171; the Karen text is published there and does not correspond to the definition of the motif). | 51 | 58 |
| K117d In K117 family | Two in bed with the princess, ATU 850. | The princess, lying between two suitors, must choose blindly the one she likes best. The suitor of low birth arranges things so that his noble rival emits a foul odour (while he himself emits a pleasant fragrance). The princess turns to him. | 40 | 22 |
| L68 | Two in the night. | Left alone (usually at night in a deserted place) with his companion, a man undergoes a monstrous metamorphosis. | 55 | 92 |
| K33g In K33 family | Two kinds of fruit, ATU 566. | The person who eats the fruit (leaf, etc.) grows horns (long nose, etc.) or turns into an animal, while the other fruit (leaf, etc.) returns to its normal appearance. | 83 | 113 |
| K32i In K32 family | Two nurses beside a sleeping man, ATU 894. | A girl finds the body of a young man who shows no signs of life and must sit next to him for a certain amount of time so that he comes back to life and takes her as his wife. Usually, she leaves at the last moment and an impostor becomes the wife of the revived man. | 41 | 43 |
| J22a In J22 family | Two of one. | Two men or a brother and sister emerge from a single body or embryo cut in half, or the second emerges from a part of the body or from the secretions of the first. Cf. motif M37. | 37 | 43 |
| M181 | Two people are going to a festival. | Two characters are invited to a festival. (On the way and) upon arriving at the destination, one deceives the other. | 28 | 34 |
| M135 | Two Rams and a Wolf, ATU 122K*. | Two ungulates – usually after the wolf agrees to share the meadow between them – gore the predator from both sides, killing or maiming it. | 35 | 28 |
| J47b In J47 family | Two ropes. | When a character runs away from a pursuer, a strong rope (chain, etc.) is lowered (thrown) to him. A rotten rope is lowered to the pursuer, it breaks, and the pursuer crashes (drowns). | 13 | 27 |
| L37c In L37 family | Two Shares, ATU 735. | A person encounters the incarnations of Fortune (and Misfortune) – his own or someone else's. He manages to influence their behaviour and change (for himself) the course of events for the better. | 39 | 33 |
| J13 | Two sisters. | Not one woman or girl, but two sisters (or more than two, but only two play an important role in the narrative) wander and meet an unwanted deceiver instead of a desired husband or fiancé, or encounter dangerous creatures. See motif J12. | 58 | 55 |
| K88 | Two Travellers (Truth and Falsehood), ATU 613. | Two people set off on a journey or argue about which is stronger: truth or falsehood (stinginess or generosity, etc.). The evil one abandons the good one, crippling or robbing him, but the good one regains his health and achieves success. The villain usually perishes. | 117 | 141 |
| H55a In H55 family | Two under one blanket. | Finding himself in another world, a man sees a husband and wife trying to cover themselves with a single blanket, which is not big enough for them, or they do not have enough room for two on the bed. See motif H55A. | 7 | 9 |
| L79 | Two wives: a girl and a monster. | The girl marries a powerful, benevolent character; his first wife is a monster; he kills her or is satisfied that she has been killed by his new wife. | 16 | 22 |
| J22b In J22 family | Two women from one. | A woman is cut or torn in half, and two new ones appear. | 11 | 19 |
| B1d In B1 family | Two workers. | Two characters are building the world, one works poorly, the other well, so different parts of the universe (or a specific island) have different appearances. | 8 | 8 |
| A6A In A6 family | Two-faced moon/month. | In the same ethnic group, the gender of the moon/month varies in different texts; it changes depending on the phases; the moon is a married couple; the moon is a woman who used to be a man. See motifs A3 - A5. {The material is incomplete. For Western European traditions, data contained in fairy tales is not included}. | 75 | 48 |
| M11 | Unclean food. | The character gives others food extracted from his or someone else's body or contaminated with bodily secretions, without revealing the source of the food. | 114 | 148 |
| M21a In M21 family | Under the pretext of illness. | The character is pursued by an enemy. An animal hides the fugitive in its mouth or on its body, and when the pursuer appears, it refuses to open its mouth or expose part of its body. (Usually simulates illness – toothache, etc.). Cf. motif i87ad. | 20 | 30 |
| M39e In M39 family | Under which tree? ATU 1543D* | When reviewing the dispute, the judge asks about the secondary circumstances of the case. The offender is exposed by showing that he knows (or, on the contrary, does not know) about them. | 30 | 33 |
| I20 | Underground dwarves, F451. | The inhabitants of the underworld or the land on the horizon where the sky meets the earth are dwarves. See motif I14A. | 76 | 131 |
| L66 | Underground passage beneath the monster. | To help the hero, a small animal digs an underground passage beneath the lying monster, and the hero strikes it from below. | 29 | 43 |
| H7c In H7 family | Unfinished prayer, ATU 1199. | Death promises to take a man after he finishes his prayer or song (formerly ATU 1199B). The man breaks off his prayer (song) in the middle, and Death cannot take him. | 33 | 23 |
| K29a In K29 family | Unharmed by fire. | The hero demonstrates his magical abilities or cunning by remaining alive in a hot bath, oven, fire, or among burning vegetation. | 176 | 258 |
| F54e In F54 family | Unintentional killing of a father. | Not knowing who is in front of him, a young man kills his father. | 45 | 28 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.