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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M113a In M113 family | A bird sees blood instead of water. | A certain type of bird cannot drink water from rivers and lakes because instead of water it sees blood, fire, etc. | 7 | 8 |
| M121 | Insects as spies. | A louse or other similar creature (flea, tick, firefly) is sent to follow a certain character. | 7 | 8 |
| M123b In M123 family | A girl ties her kidnapper to a boat. | The trickster deceives the girl into marrying him and takes her away in a boat. The woman asks to be allowed to go ashore to relieve herself, secretly ties the kidnapper's clothes to the boat and runs away. | 7 | 8 |
| M130b In M130 family | The traitor is killed instead of the victim. | A herbivorous animal falls into a hunter's trap. The predator does not want to release it, as it hopes to eat its entrails, but the bird helps it to escape. The hunter tries to kill the bird, but instead kills the predator. | 7 | 7 |
| M138a In M138 family | One hundred and twenty years of life. | At the beginning of time, the supreme deity or his messengers decided that the maximum lifespan of a human being would be 120 years. | 7 | 7 |
| M139 | Released birds. | The fox caught the birds and put them in a bag. Another character secretly replaced them with thorns. | 7 | 11 |
| M13B In M13 family | Sausage sticks to the nose. | People are promised the fulfilment of two (three, four) wishes. Without thinking, they wish for something they do not want at all. The last wish is spent on returning to the original state. | 7 | 9 |
| M141a In M141 family | And who is the mouse to us? | In a gathering of various animals, one of the participants refers to the weakest as insignificant to the others and bearing an ugly name. That one is eaten. This is repeated several times, each time the weakest of the remaining animals is eaten. | 7 | 8 |
| M144a In M144 family | Burning straw on the back of a tiger. | The character asks a large and dangerous animal (a tiger or an elephant) to carry a load of straw and sets it on fire. Then he or someone else advises the victim to run not to the river, but to the mountain. | 7 | 7 |
| M144B In M144 family | A burnt tiger becomes striped. | The stripes on the tiger's skin appeared after it was burned. | 7 | 9 |
| M15 | Tied to a tree. | A man ties a girl or young woman to the top of a tree or places her on the treetop as if on a stake. People try to rescue her. | 7 | 10 |
| M170a In M170 family | The sinful camel. | The predator accuses the herbivore of sin and eats it. | 7 | 9 |
| M194 | Division of a traveller's property. | Several animals take possession of items that belonged to a human. When distributing the spoils, one keeps the food for himself and gives the others items that are more valuable than food but are only useful to humans. The animals that receive these items perish or suffer damage. | 7 | 13 |
| M198b1 In M198 family | A fortune teller named Rak. | An authoritative character asks a man named Cancer to guess what is in a box (under a lid on a plate, etc.). There are crabs or crayfish inside. The man says that now he, Cancer, has been caught, while others think that he has guessed correctly. | 7 | 7 |
| M199m In M199 family | My grandmother's distaff. | A man explains to a demon that the heavy objects lying by the roadside, such as a harrow or a millstone, are just things used by his grandmother or mother, such as a spindle or a comb. | 7 | 8 |
| M201 | Oak and mushroom. | A rapidly growing mushroom (melon) believes that it will soon outgrow the oak tree. The mushroom (pumpkin vine) soon rots, while the oak tree remains standing. | 7 | 5 |
| M21b In M21 family | Every deception is the beginning of the next. | The character consistently harms others in such a way that each person who has been deceived is used as a tool to harm the next. | 7 | 10 |
| M39a4b1 In M39 family | A foolish woman throws away her yarn | Foolish woman throws her yarn ways (into the water, into the bush) and believes that somebody with weave it | 7 | 8 |
| M39a5 In M39 family | Kills goats that have eaten pears | fool led the goats to the fruit tree and killed them because they ate the fruit he had thrown. | 7 | 9 |
| M39a6e In M39 family | Basket Maker, ATU 888A* | A person learns a craft (weaving, painting) in order to earn a living for the family. His wife is kidnapped (separated if he is with him). The wife finds out that her husband is there when she sees baskets or other items he has made. | 7 | 7 |
| 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 |
| M62f In M62 family | One assistant eats another | The character asks others to come to him (to help him with his work or get a debt). Those called come, each next one is stronger than the previous one and eats it (or the previous one runs away when they see him), the last two die when they fight each other. | 7 | 15 |
| M66a In M66 family | A mountain of excrement | After eating a certain food, the trickster leaves a mountain of excrement that is larger than himself. | 7 | 11 |
| M75b3 In M75 family | Trojan horse: victory over enemies | Enemies are shown a life-size or larger image of a horse or bull. Not realizing that this is a ruse, they bring the figure to their own territory and are defeated as a result. | 7 | 19 |
| M83c In M83 family | Who gets drunk faster | Animals argue who of them gets drunk easier. The last one falls down because he becomes drunk as soon as somebody talks about alcohol | 7 | 8 |
| M84b2 In M84 family | Birds eaten and animated | The character carefully preserves the bones of migratory birds eaten (not fish or animals) and the birds come to life again. (Episodes of reviving a domestic goose or rooster are not taken into account in everyday tales). | 7 | 10 |
| M88 | Involved in a dance | The character follows the dancing girls and dies. | 7 | 8 |
| M8b In M8 family | Birds are hammering the rock: extracting water | Animals, and often birds, struggle to break through the rock to get water or honey hidden inside it. | 7 | 7 |
| M90c In M90 family | Stepladder instead of wife | man agreed with another that he could take the first thing he touched from his house. The visitor is going to take his wife, but when he takes up the stepladder to go up to the woman, he is told to pick up the stepladder and leave. | 7 | 7 |
| M99a1 In M99 family | Leaky beaks of birds | The character is going to pierce all the birds with their beaks (to string them on a rope) or cut them off altogether. | 7 | 11 |
| N17 | Paper suit, X1853 | fairy-tale text ends with a formula stating that the narrator met with the characters described and that he wore clothes made of paper, glass, oil, etc. | 7 | 8 |
| N28d In N28 family | Sea cover | In a list of things that do not exist in the world, a lid or covering for the sea, ocean or river are mentioned | 7 | 9 |
| N28h In N28 family | A horse doesn't have horns | In a list of things that do not exist in the world, horns of the horse are mentioned | 7 | 6 |
| N35 | Jelly shores | Somewhere milk rivers flow with banks made of jelly (porridge) - a sign of abundance (impossible in reality). Cf. H16B motive. | 7 | 12 |
| A10 | The sun finds its eyes. | The sun gets its sparkling eyes (eye) from an animal. | 8 | 13 |
| A19b In A19 family | In summer on a snail, in winter on a bird. | Moving across the sky, the sun changes its mounts depending on the season – in summer it rides on a slow animal, in winter – on a fast one. Or in winter the sun is carried by a young man, and in summer – by an old man. | 8 | 6 |
| A24a In A24 family | First day or night: transformation into spirits. | At the moment of the first day or the first night, people transform into supernatural characters. | 8 | 6 |
| A32m In A32 family | Gypsy sun. | The moon is called the "Gypsy sun". | 8 | 9 |
| A42a In A42 family | The sun imitator falls from the sky. | Having risen into the sky, the character unsuccessfully performs the role of the sun and as a result falls or is thrown down to earth. | 8 | 19 |
| A43a In A43 family | The moon in one moccasin. | The moon or character currently visible on the moon hastily ascends to the sky. He is missing one trouser leg or shoe on one foot. Cf. motifs A43 and K13A. | 8 | 14 |
| A5a In A5 family | The Sun from the swaddling clothes of the infant Moon. | The younger brother (usually the Sun) is made from the urine and swaddling clothes of his older brother (usually the Moon), who was kidnapped as a baby. See motif A5. | 8 | 1 |
| B115a In B115 family | Knots in wood, ATU 774H. | Angry at the carpenters, the character (St. Peter) asks another (Christ) to make the knots in the wood or branches iron. The latter only makes them very hard. | 8 | 9 |
| B123 | A fly instead of a nail, ATU 772*. | A fly lands on the chest of the crucified Jesus. His persecutors, who intended to drive a nail into his heart, do not do so, believing that the nail has already been driven in. | 8 | 11 |
| B1a In B1 family | Three worlds: division of the universe. | Anthropomorphic characters agree to divide the tiers of the universe among themselves – heaven, earth and the underworld. | 8 | 11 |
| 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 |
| B1g In B1 family | Four brothers-transformers. | Four brothers change the world, freeing it from monsters, transforming its inhabitants and obtaining valuable resources (water, fire, cultivated plants, etc.). Usually one of the brothers is the leader, and the others help him. All four often have a common name. | 8 | 15 |
| B20 | Expedition to the upper world. | People ascend to the sky to hunt, fish, or gather honey; they do not give honey, fish, or good meat to the person who remained below; that person makes sure that they remain in the sky forever. | 8 | 13 |
| B22a In B22 family | Boys and the tapir. | Boys climb a tree to eat fruit and refuse to throw the fruit down to the tapir, who tries to kill the boys. | 8 | 11 |
| B24 | Transformation into wild boars. | People who have entered into conflict or violated a prohibition are transformed into wild boars or peccaries. | 8 | 8 |
| B33g In B33 family | Three horsemen (sun, moon, night). | Horsemen or horses represent celestial bodies or different periods of the day. | 8 | 12 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.