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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D2 | Birth of the sun/fire. | A woman gives birth to a son who is very hot. | 11 | 17 |
| D4d In D4 family | The opossum obtains fire. | The opossum obtains fire for humans. See motif D4A. | 11 | 14 |
| D4h In D4 family | The swallow obtains fire. | The swallow obtains fire for people. See motif D4A. | 11 | 12 |
| E8a In E8 family | People in fruits. | Women or people in general emerge from fruits (often coconuts), or fruits or, less commonly, leaves turn into people or only women. Cf. motif k33c. | 11 | 17 |
| F19 | Dangerous relationship with a frog. | After copulating with a frog, a man's penis is crippled (unless otherwise stated: it becomes long, see motif F18A). | 11 | 16 |
| F67 | An old woman pretends to be a man. | An old woman lives with her (adopted) daughter, niece or daughter-in-law. She (supposedly) turns into a man, marries a girl or tries to do so. | 11 | 12 |
| F70f In F70 family | Accidental change of gender. | Finding themselves in a deserted place, people accidentally change their gender. | 11 | 16 |
| F98 | God and the cow. | A heavenly anthropomorphic deity descends to earth and mates with a cow. | 11 | 24 |
| H34c In H34 family | Flying rice. | Rice flew (came) from the field to the house. | 11 | 15 |
| H34f In H34 family | Baskets carried heavy loads themselves. | Baskets or clay vessels carried heavy loads themselves. | 11 | 11 |
| H36e In H36 family | The rat betrays man. | The rat is to blame for the fact that man is mortal. | 11 | 12 |
| H36g1 In H36 family | The bull distorts the message. | When a bull (ox, cow) is ordered to convey certain instructions to people, he confuses them or deliberately distorts them. | 11 | 16 |
| H52a In H52 family | Death provokes touching the ground. | Returning from the land of immortality, a person must not touch the ground. However, he dismounts from his horse to help an old man (old woman). Death, who has taken the form of an old man, immediately kills him. Rarely: at the last moment, the hero decides not to perform actions that are fatal for him. | 11 | 19 |
| H6c3 In H6 family | The stork and the otherworld. | Large birds that fly in wedge formations (storks, cranes, swans, geese – German: Zugvögel) are associated with the otherworld (they bring children from there, carry children away to the non-human world, control living and dead water, etc.). | 11 | 18 |
| H9b In H9 family | Children as plant shoots. | People have become like plants, which, although mortal, live on in their descendants (shoots). | 11 | 18 |
| I111 | Reptilian Earth. | The earth as a whole or a mountain range is the body of a crocodile, dragon, or snake (eel). | 11 | 16 |
| I114 | The Golden Fleece. | Describes a ram or sheep with golden wool or the skin of such a ram. | 11 | 17 |
| I117a In I117 family | The bat helps to descend. | The bat helps the hero descend to the ground from a high cliff. | 11 | 13 |
| I120a In I120 family | Entering the ear of an animal. | Entering the ear of an animal (usually a horse or a cow) and coming back out, the character becomes beautiful (well-fed, well-dressed). | 11 | 23 |
| I122 | The Pleiades – a beehive. | The Pleiades – a beehive, a nest, a cluster of bees or wasps. | 11 | 10 |
| I24A In I24 family | The snake bridge to another world. | The body of water over which the snake bridge is thrown separates our world from another. | 11 | 12 |
| I38a In I38 family | Dogs – husbands of women. | The husbands of human women are dogs or dog-headed creatures. | 11 | 17 |
| I64a In I64 family | Race on the Milky Way. | Two different hoofed animals race across the sky. Usually, the Milky Way is the dusty trail they leave behind. | 11 | 13 |
| I87ad In I87 family | Hidden in a tooth cavity. | A giant hides a persecuted person in his mouth – usually (perhaps always) in a tooth cavity; or the person remains alive in the giant's mouth, hiding in a tooth cavity. Cf. motif M21a. | 11 | 10 |
| I98C In I98 family | Pleiades – a flock of birds. | The Pleiades - a flock of (flying) birds. | 11 | 10 |
| J15b In J15 family | Woman at the toad's house. | While travelling, a woman finds herself in the house of a frog or toad. See motif J15. | 11 | 12 |
| j1b In j1 family | Heroic avengers - with a missing or altered plot start: it is unclear whether the characters with whom the heroes live are their real or adoptive parents; the hero's mother herself tries to destroy him in infancy. | Heroic avengers - with a missing or altered plot start: it is unclear whether the characters with whom the heroes live are their real or adoptive parents; the hero's mother herself tries to destroy him in infancy. | 11 | 20 |
| J22b In J22 family | Two women from one. | A woman is cut or torn in half, and two new ones appear. | 11 | 19 |
| J22d In J22 family | Animals cut in half. | Foreigners or animals of two different species emerge from a single person or animal cut in half. | 11 | 15 |
| J34 | Grandchildren scare their grandmother. | After killing a dangerous enemy, the heroes make a scarecrow out of him to frighten the household. | 11 | 14 |
| J53c1 In J53 family | Grizzly bear and black bear. | Two women live together, both have children. One of them kills and (then) eats the other. The killer is associated with a grizzly bear, and the victim with a smaller species of bear. | 11 | 17 |
| J59b In J59 family | The arrow falls, the dead person comes back to life. | To revive the dead, the character shoots an arrow into the sky or throws an object. It is assumed that the dead, fearing the falling object, will come back to life and run away. | 11 | 15 |
| J69 | Murders in jest and in earnest. | A person is killed (with a cold weapon, dead water) and then revived. Another person asks for the same thing to be done to him, but is not revived. | 11 | 13 |
| J7a In J7 family | Bringing lunch to father. | A girl (less often a boy) brings lunch to her father or brothers who are working in the field (in the forest), but encounters a demonic character. | 11 | 12 |
| K10b In K10 family | The Carried Away Cage. | A huge bird carries away to its nest a cage, bag or other container in which people are located. See motif 10A. | 11 | 12 |
| K10c In K10 family | Wrapped in entrails. | The hero (twins) is weighed down with the blood-filled intestines of an animal. A bird pierces them with its claw, blood flows, the bird thinks its prey is dead, and brings the man to its nest. He kills the adult bird and either kills or transforms the chicks. Cf. motif M91A. | 11 | 20 |
| K124 | It's not a miracle! | An animal killed by a hunter runs away. The animal itself or someone else explains that this is not a miracle (or that it is not a tragedy), but that the real miracle (tragedy) happened somewhere else. A story about what happened follows. | 11 | 26 |
| K137a In K137 family | A girl disguised as a young man finds a wife for her brother. | The brother is killed. The sister, dressed in his clothes, finds a woman. The brother comes back to life, the sister puts on women's clothes again, and the woman believes that the girl's brother was the one who married her. | 11 | 12 |
| K143 | The bird catcher hero. | The protagonist of the narrative is a bird catcher or bird hunter, or the son of a bird catcher (hunter). | 11 | 11 |
| K149 | Three knots. | The character has a rope or reins with three knots, allowing him to move faster or slower. Usually, untying the first and second knots causes the character's ship to sail faster (thanks to the rising wind) or his horse to gallop faster; however, contrary to the warning, the character (when almost reaching the goal) also unties the third knot and as a result loses the ship, the horse, ends up not where he wanted to be, etc. | 11 | 16 |
| K156 | Will the flowers under the pillow wilt? | A girl pretends to be a man. To determine who it really is, flowers are placed under the pillow or mattress. If a man is sleeping, they will remain fresh, but if a woman is sleeping, they will wilt by morning (or if a woman is sleeping, the milk left under the bed will sour). | 11 | 10 |
| K27n3c1 In K27 family | The hero's adversaries – polar bears. | The inhabitants of the polar bear village – relatives of his wife – set the hero difficult tasks and trials. | 11 | 16 |
| k27q2 In k27 family | Gusli-samogudy. | The hero is sent to obtain a musical instrument, usually a gusli-samogudy. | 11 | 16 |
| K27v3 In K27 family | Shooting an arrow through a ring. | The character must hit a small ring with an arrow or shoot it through several rings. (The main materials were identified by Y.V. Vasilkov and presented in Vasilkov 2018). | 11 | 11 |
| K27yy In K27 family | Approach a dangerous tree. | The hero is sent to a tree that is supposed to fall on him. | 11 | 9 |
| K27yy4 In K27 family | Obtaining tree bark. | The hero must obtain tree bark, which is fraught with danger. | 11 | 14 |
| K27z4a In K27 family | The cripple demands the return of his leg, ATU 978. | The cripple claims that the father of the visitor is to blame for his physical disability. The man's wife or the man himself, on someone's advice, promises to return the leg (eye) if the cripple gives him the other one as a sample or brings him a part of a dead person's body and demands money. | 11 | 9 |
| K27zz4 In K27 family | The wife who cannot be beaten (ATU 888A). | A conceited prince (the son of a merchant) beats his wife every day (he marries on the condition that he will beat his wife every day). She saves him by demonstrating her superiority. | 11 | 9 |
| K2a1 In K2 family | A commoner witnesses the abduction of a princess. | A demon carries off a girl of noble birth. A commoner accidentally witnesses the abduction or accidentally finds evidence of it. The girl's father sends him to search for his daughter. | 11 | 15 |
| K37d In K37 family | Recognised by teeth marks. | The character recognises the presence of another by noticing traces of their teeth or nails on fruit or leaves. | 11 | 12 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.