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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

Showing 851–900 of 3,494 · Page 18 of 70

Ref	Title	Summary	Traditions ▲	Narratives
F65d In F65 family	The fake dead man: the wife doesn't believe it.	The character pretends to be dying and is left at the burial site. However, his wife (mother, aunt) finds out about the deception and provokes the supposed dead man, forcing him to reveal himself.	10	25
F91	The worm grower.	A man finds or breeds monstrous worms to eat his wife.	10	19
F94	Betrayal in the sky.	A man ascends to the upper world, where he can choose a wife associated with either life or death.	10	10
F95	The wife of one of the brothers.	Two companions or brothers live together. One has a wife, whom he hides. The other suspects her existence, destroys her, or tries to get a wife for himself.	10	12
F9g1 In F9 family	The heavy hand of the bride.	On her wedding night, the bride-heroine throws herself on her groom to crush him.	10	10
G12a In G12 family	Plants from drops of blood.	Cultivated plants arise from drops of blood or flow like blood from cuts on the body of a human or animal.	10	14
H14	The woman flies back.	A woman who has returned from the world of the dead flies back, becoming a bird or a fly.	10	9
H43ab In H43 family	The spat upon is mortal.	Man is mortal because he was spat upon at creation.	10	5
H7b2 In H7 family	Immortal poverty.	A man named Poverty makes Death swear that it will never come to him. Therefore, poverty is inevitable in the world.	10	16
I10b In I10 family	Coloured tiers of the earth.	Individual layers or categories of earth differ in colour (and other characteristics).	10	20
I13e In I13 family	The devoted snake.	The snake agrees to let the man go on condition that he does not tell anyone about their meeting. Under threat of death, the man breaks his promise. The snake teaches him to drink a broth made from its flesh and takes revenge not on the man, but on those who forced him to break his word.	10	7
I25b In I25 family	Wiping the stove with hair.	This refers to women who work without the simplest tools, using parts of their bodies instead.	10	12
I31	The master and mistress of the dead.	In the afterlife, the souls of the dead are met by a pair of mythological characters – a man and a woman, or the master of the dead appears to women in female form and to men in male form.	10	11
I34	Dangerous tree.	It is necessary to approach a tree that is surrounded by fire, spews fire, throws sharp splinters, etc.	10	10
I37d1 In I37 family	St. Peter spits out mushrooms, ATU 774L.	St. Peter secretly eats bread, and when Christ asks him what he is doing, he chokes, spits out the crumbs, and they turn into mushrooms.	10	5
I47a In I47 family	Rainbow – fox wedding.	The rainbow is associated with the wedding of a fox or jackal.	10	16
I59b4 In I59 family	The Milky Way – snow, hoarfrost.	The Milky Way is associated with snow, hoarfrost, and cold.	10	10
I5a In I5 family	Thunder tapir.	The tapir is associated with the upper world (thunder, sky, moon).	10	14
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
I98b In I98 family	The Pleiades – a duck's nest.	The Pleiades – ducks, nest or wild duck egg.	10	16
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
J19a In J19 family	Placing food on the stomach.	When a woman is left alone, a demonic character comes to her. He says that in order to perform certain actions, she must give him a certain part of her body, even though this contradicts logic and custom. After that, the character kills her (cuts open her stomach; tears out her tongue).	10	17
J32b In J32 family	Extended night.	In order to accomplish what he wants, the hero prolongs the night by changing the behaviour of the character on whom the alternation of day and night depends.	10	12
J41a In J41 family	Son turns mother into a bird.	The son returns and finds his mother, who has been humiliated and tortured in his absence. The son turns his mother (and usually himself as well) into a bird of a certain species.	10	6
J41b In J41 family	The returned son burns his tormentors with magic.	The son returns, finds his mother, who was humiliated and tortured in his absence, and burns his tormentor and his men, summoning fire and heat with magic.	10	12
J48	The parrot cuts the rope.	A character climbs up to the sky or descends from the sky to the ground on a rope. A parrot cuts the rope, and the character falls.	10	25
J49	The Moon's wife falls down.	The wife and/or sister of the Moon unsuccessfully tries to climb up to him in the sky or reaches him but returns to earth.	10	14
J50b In J50 family	The father remains half-dead.	The father (alone or with his brother) is only partially resurrected and is unable to live among people (he cannot be a warrior). The hero leaves him (in another world) or allows him to die completely.	10	8
J58c In J58 family	Bridge of arrows.	A chain of arrows forms a bridge across a water barrier.	10	10
K107e In K107 family	Delayed childbirth.	A woman remains pregnant for many years and gives birth only after her wonderful husband, who has left her, or someone else allows her to do so.	10	10
K10h In K10 family	The bird feeds, but does not let go.	A bird carries a woman or boy to its nest, feeds them, but does not let them go. The captive runs away.	10	8
K123b In K123 family	Broken spinning wheel.	A boy or young man damages an elderly woman's spinning wheel or yarn. This episode forms the basis of the rest of the story.	10	8
K136b In K136 family	Rubies from the river, (ATU 467).	A character finds precious stones or unusual flowers (usually in a river) and learns where they come from.	10	13
K168b In K168 family	The bewildered man became a bear.	A person makes another person believe that he has turned into a bear (wolf), found himself in the forest, etc. When he wakes up, the bewitched person finds himself where he was before.	10	9
K22c In K22 family	Birds are attacked.	Inhabitants of another world who are birds (bird-people) are afraid of birds or animals that are not dangerous to ordinary people, but which regularly attack them.	10	16
K25c In K25 family	The boy under the onion.	While digging roots, gathering shellfish, etc., a woman finds a baby. He grows up and enters into a struggle with dangerous characters.	10	13
K27g3 In K27 family	One falls – all fall.	To fell all the trees in the forest, a man fells one (lightly touching it with an axe), after which all the trees fall.	10	10
K27v1 In K27 family	To hit a needle with an arrow.	The character must hit the eye of a needle with an arrow (the eye of a needle).	10	16
K29c In K29 family	Brings a tree.	They hope to kill the hero by knocking a tree down on him or tying him to a tree. He comes back alive, dragging the tree behind him.	10	14
K33a2 In K33 family	The witch distorts what is said.	A brother takes his sister to her fiancé. She cannot hear her brother's words, and the witch distorts them (as if the brother is telling his sister to throw herself into the water, to blind her, etc.). Having got rid of the heroine, the witch replaces her with her own daughter.	10	14
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
k33c2 In k33 family	Girl in a pomegranate.	A young man obtains a girl who is inside a pomegranate.	10	12
k33f1 In k33 family	Source of oil according to a vow.	A person promises to create a source from which a valuable product (most often oil) flows and honestly fulfils their promise (rarely: promises to distribute a large amount of such a product).	10	16
K35a5 In K35 family	A sign by which the patron recognises the visitor.	An authoritative character leaves an object (a letter) for a little boy, by which he will be able to recognise him when he grows up and comes to him.	10	10
K51a In K51 family	Pushes a rival into boiling water.	One woman comes to another in the absence of a man and kills her by pushing her rival's head into boiling liquid or pouring boiling water or hot fat into her ear. See motif K51.	10	9
K56a5a In K56 family	Skinning oneself to rejuvenate (ATU 877).	To become a young beauty, an old or unattractive woman asks to have her skin stripped off. Cf. motif H4.	10	12
K56a5d In K56 family	Conversation with Moroz.	A person responds kindly to a question from a character embodying cold, praises him, and is rewarded. Another expresses dissatisfaction and is punished.	10	24
K76h In K76 family	The magical groom threatens disaster.	A young man, temporarily having a strange or monstrous appearance (freak, animal, etc.), woos a princess, but is rejected. Then he causes natural disasters or creates personal troubles for the king, who is forced to give up his daughter.	10	13
L100d1 In L100 family	Mullah in the cradle.	A person endowed with (spiritual) power comes to a woman in the evening. When there is a knock at the door, the woman, having agreed in advance with her husband, tells the guest to lie down in the cradle and replies to her husband who has entered that their son is in the cradle. The man begins to turn the adult into a baby or threatens to do so: he shaves off his beard, knocks out his teeth, and grabs an axe to chop off his legs. The disgraced and exhausted guest runs away.	10	12
L134	The Third Wave.	The hero's adversary (usually a demonic woman) is inside a sea wave (the third or ninth) or embodies the wave.	10	9

Showing 851–900 of 3,494 · Page 18 of 70

Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.