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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B28d1 In B28 family | Knives turn into deer antlers. | Not understanding who he is facing, the man promises to kill the Transformer. The Transformer turns his weapon into deer antlers and him into a deer. | 12 | 18 |
| B35a In B35 family | The tree turns into a bear. | The tree asks not to be cut down and fulfils the man's wishes. When they go beyond what is reasonable, the tree turns the man into a bear. | 12 | 14 |
| B46d In B46 family | Star brothers with different properties. | Men, each of whom excels others in a particular art, turn into stars. | 12 | 21 |
| C24 | The world is in danger of falling. | Someone is gnawing or chopping at the pillar supporting the sky or the earth; certain creatures are trying to destroy the barrier separating their world from the world of humans; if the work is completed, humans will perish. | 12 | 17 |
| C28 | Rash promise. | A demonic character takes possession of a valuable item without which another character (and people) will perish. The demon is tricked into returning the valuable item. | 12 | 14 |
| C31c In C31 family | The wise bat. | The bat turns out to be smarter and wiser than other living creatures. | 12 | 15 |
| C6f In C6 family | Retrieving a drowned person. | The characters attempt to retrieve a living creature or part of its body that has sunk to the bottom of the water. See motif C6. | 12 | 13 |
| E1b1 In E1 family | Prohibited work for a daughter-in-law. | A man who has married an unusual girl is warned that she must not perform certain tasks or eat certain foods. Other members of his household ensure that the young woman breaks the prohibition, and as a result she dies or disappears. | 12 | 12 |
| E27 | People from drops of blood. | People arise from drops of blood from a wounded anthropomorphic creature. | 12 | 19 |
| E30b In E30 family | Pygmalion. | A man makes a figure or receives a woman. She comes to life and becomes his wife. | 12 | 8 |
| F29a In F29 family | The worm is scalded with boiling water. | To kill a woman's lover, who has the appearance of a worm or snake and crawls into her vagina from under the ground, boiling water, resin or hot coals are poured on him. | 12 | 17 |
| f2a In f2 family | Improper birth. | The child deliberately leaves its mother's womb in an unusual way, making a hole in her body and often killing her. This is a sign of its malice and/or supernatural power. | 12 | 14 |
| F49a In F49 family | An animal teaches how to give birth. | A small animal (mouse, rat, rabbit, two-wombed animal, bird) explains how to give birth. See motif F49. | 12 | 8 |
| F87a In F87 family | The snake wife and her children: transformation into birds. | A snake crawls onto the clothes of a girl bathing, climbs down in exchange for a promise to marry him, and takes her to the underwater world. She is happy there and gives birth to children. Together with them, she visits her relatives. They call the snake out of the water and kill it. After that, the wife transforms her children and/or herself into birds. | 12 | 26 |
| F87b In F87 family | The snake wife and her children: transformation into trees. | A snake crawls onto the clothes of a bathing girl, climbs down in exchange for a promise to marry him, and takes her to the underwater world. She is happy there and gives birth to children. Together with them, she visits her relatives. They call the snake out of the water and kill it. After that, the wife transforms her children and/or herself into plants. | 12 | 14 |
| G4 | Mountain of abundance. | Cultivated plants found on or inside a mountain. | 12 | 7 |
| G9a In G9 family | The field turns into virgin soil. | The field that was cultivated the day before turns back into virgin soil by morning. | 12 | 18 |
| G9B In G9 family | Stop working – there will be a flood. | A man clears a plot of land of vegetation, but by morning it has grown back. At night, a certain character orders the trees and grass to rise up, turning the cultivated field back into virgin soil. He explains that there will be a flood, that there is no point in working, and advises people to prepare a means of transportation. | 12 | 27 |
| H15 | Yawning and whispering. | The dead or spirits cannot hear cries when the living call them, but they can hear whispers, yawns, gurgles, etc. See motif H12. | 12 | 22 |
| H31 | Death: man and the heavenly bodies. | God summons several characters, including man and the heavenly bodies, and makes man mortal and the heavenly bodies immortal. | 12 | 20 |
| H36i In H36 family | The goat betrays man. | The goat or sheep is to blame for the fact that man is mortal. See motif H36. | 12 | 15 |
| H52b In H52 family | The search for immortality, ATU 470B. | Setting out in search of a land where there is no death, a man encounters characters engaged in tasks that can only be completed in an impossibly long time. However, the man needs eternal life, and so he continues on his way. | 12 | 12 |
| I102 | The Milky Way – a tree. | The Milky Way – a tree, the trace of a tree. | 12 | 14 |
| I107 | Stars – nails. | Stars are nails or stakes driven into the sky, or stars are nailed down. | 12 | 14 |
| I119a In I119 family | Earthquake – are there any survivors? | Creatures shake the earth, either upon learning that there are no longer any inhabitants on it, or to check whether they are still alive, or to show that they themselves are still there. | 12 | 11 |
| I37C In I37 family | Mushrooms: erotic associations. | Mushrooms have erotic associations. See motif I37. | 12 | 9 |
| I4c In I4 family | Thunder in captivity. | The enemy of the thunderer temporarily defeats and captures him. | 12 | 17 |
| I67 | Emu and nandu in the Milky Way. | The giant figure of an emu (in Australia) or a rhea (in South America) is visible in the Milky Way. | 12 | 31 |
| I68a In I68 family | The night of magical water. | Once a year, water briefly acquires unusual properties. | 12 | 14 |
| I80a In I80 family | Junior Thunder. | Upon meeting the Thunders, a person becomes one of them. | 12 | 14 |
| J12I In J12 family | Spitting beads. | A desirable marriage partner secretes beads instead of saliva or excrement. See motifs J12 and M57. | 12 | 2 |
| J2 | Tree husband. | Husband or lover – tree (temporarily transformed into a human). | 12 | 17 |
| J35 | The frog kills its pursuer. | A tree frog kills or neutralises a demon or beast pursuing the heroes. | 12 | 12 |
| K101b1 In K101 family | Black becomes white. | The enchanted character (the castle where the action takes place) gradually changes its appearance over several days as the spell wears off: it acquires human features, turning from black to white, from ugly to beautiful. | 12 | 19 |
| K102a4 In K102 family | The wolf across the river. | A hostile young character is located behind a water barrier. The young man's sister or mother helps him cross and becomes his lover. | 12 | 17 |
| K107a2 In K107 family | Shepherdess instead of princess. | A nobleman (king) is forced to promise his daughter or son to a demon (monster, predatory beast). He tries to replace her or him with other girls or boys, but this does not work. | 12 | 21 |
| K10e In K10 family | Rescued people. | In the bird's habitat, the hero finds the people it has kidnapped and helps them return home. | 12 | 15 |
| k117c1 In k117 family | To play before death. | A man sentenced to death asks to be given something from his possessions, usually a musical instrument. Once he has it, he gains power over those gathered and is saved. | 12 | 12 |
| 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 |
| K136 | The young man and the cows. | The young man turns out to be the owner and leader of a herd of cattle, and with his herd of cows or buffaloes he is summoned to the king (usually after his hair is found by the princess). | 12 | 15 |
| K138 | Body swap (king and vizier), ATU 678. | A person gains the ability to revive the dead by incarnating in their body. While they remain in it, their own body is dead. Another person takes the body of the first, leaving them with the body of an animal. | 12 | 13 |
| 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 |
| K167 | The Child King. | A boy plays, pretending to be a king and demonstrating wisdom and/or magical abilities. | 12 | 8 |
| K171 | The weaver creates an army. | The heroes fight, but the number of enemies does not decrease, because someone is constantly weaving (forging) new warriors. | 12 | 13 |
| K18c In K18 family | A boy urinates on his father's hands. | The man in whose arms the boy urinates will be recognised as his father. See motif K18. | 12 | 4 |
| 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 |
| K27l1 In K27 family | Frozen in ice. | Voluntarily subjecting himself to trials, the character allows himself to be frozen in ice and cannot free himself. | 12 | 22 |
| K27z2d In K27 family | The sparrow's quarrel with her husband. | A conflict arises between a pair of birds (sparrows, pigeons, etc.), in which the male is more likely (and more often clearly) to be at fault. This episode serves as the starting point for a story about the relationships between people of noble origin. | 12 | 12 |
| K32l In K32 family | Horses are given for fattening. | The ruler distributes horses (cows) to his subjects for fattening. Only the heroine returns hers well-fed. | 12 | 14 |
| 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 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.