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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B33d1 In B33 family | Days of the week – (demonic) characters. | In narrative folklore, the days of the week (most often Friday and Wednesday) are special (female) characters with a more or less pronounced demonic nature. | 14 | 30 |
| B39 | The narrow waist of an insect. | An insect or character, which later turns into an insect, knows where food (cultivated plants) or water is located, but refuses to share this knowledge. To find the valuables (usually to force the insect to reveal its secret), the first ancestors pull on a rope tied around the character's waist (the origin of the bridge between the abdominal and thoracic sections of insects). | 14 | 19 |
| B42s In B42 family | Wounded by a spear. | The Big Dipper or Polar Star – a small animal (ermine, marten, forest marmot) or anthropomorphic character with animal features, struck by a spear or arrow. | 14 | 14 |
| B5a In B5 family | The pair of creators: dialogue. | At the beginning of time, female and male characters meet and engage in dialogue. | 14 | 18 |
| B77b3 In B77 family | Placing a pancake on the sky. | In the past, either in a distant country, the sky was or is so low that various objects are placed on it as needed. | 14 | 17 |
| B87c In B87 family | Rider. | Alcor (the faint star next to the second star of the Big Dipper's handle) – rider, driver, coachman. | 14 | 26 |
| B99 | Termite nest. | A person or their head left on a tree turns into an insect nest. | 14 | 20 |
| C6e In C6 family | Diver – crab, shrimp. | A crustacean retrieves earth from under water or from the underworld. | 14 | 18 |
| D13g In D13 family | Meat on the teeth. | When the character starts laughing, people see his or her scary mouth (lots of teeth, human flesh on the teeth); they kill the monster or run away. | 14 | 21 |
| E3 | New people from the bones of the old. | After the destruction of the previous world, new people (rarely: new earth) are made from the remains of the dead. | 14 | 14 |
| E31 | Imaginary Pygmalion. | A man makes a wooden doll and behaves as if it were alive. It does not come to life, or comes to life only partially or temporarily. A real woman replaces the figure and marries the carver. | 14 | 19 |
| E31a2 In E31 family | One is her father, another is her brother, and this one is her husband. | The girl must be given to one of several men. She herself or someone else explains that one of the suitors can be called her father, another her brother (etc.), and only one can be her husband. | 14 | 14 |
| E9l In E9 family | The magical wife – mouse. | Before meeting the hero, his beloved (wife) has the image of a mouse (rarely: a rat). | 14 | 13 |
| F15 | Character sticks his penis out of the ground, K1315.2.1. | The character sticks his plant-like penis out of the ground (provoking a woman to sit on it). | 14 | 16 |
| F18d In F18 family | Long clitoris. | Female genitals were enormous in size. | 14 | 15 |
| F28a3 In F28 family | Pleasant for girls, dangerous for others. | A girl (woman) possesses an object that is pleasant (useful). Once in the hands of others, it becomes harmful (dangerous). | 14 | 14 |
| F28b In F28 family | Penis made of wax. | A woman uses a penis made of wax, wood, fruit or root. Usually her husband or male relative smears it with pepper, and the woman is maimed or killed. | 14 | 18 |
| F28c In F28 family | Bear penis in the hands of an old woman. | A woman masturbates with the penis of a large animal that one of the men killed while hunting. | 14 | 18 |
| F37 | Calabash on the water. | To summon her lover, the character taps on a calabash placed on the water. | 14 | 22 |
| F41 | Husbands kill wives. | Ancestral men kill women who behave contrary to social norms. | 14 | 24 |
| F64b In F64 family | Incestuous woman. | A woman pretends to be someone else in order to seduce her son, brother, daughter or grandson. See motif F64. | 14 | 20 |
| F70d In F70 family | The disgraced informer. | A girl pretends to be a man or a eunuch, or a girl hides a disability, or a man pretends to be a girl. Someone reveals a secret. At the last moment, the hero or heroine magically gets rid of the disability (acquires male or female nature), the informer is disgraced (executed). | 14 | 14 |
| F79 | Animal wives, B600.1. | The character successively marries various women of non-human nature, but each time (usually, except for the last) he is disappointed. | 14 | 20 |
| G26 | Swallowed food: obtained for people. | After swallowing or hiding food in their mouth, the character brings it to earth (passes it on to people). | 14 | 19 |
| H22 | Sense of smell in animals. | Large game animals did not have a sense of smell. They acquired it and began to flee from hunters after someone created olfactory organs for them or gave them a strong smell to smell. Cf. motif H22A. | 14 | 22 |
| H24c In H24 family | Death in a vessel. | People open a vessel (a bundle, a basket, etc.) containing death (or old age, illness), and therefore they are mortal. | 14 | 17 |
| H3 | Funeral games end in death. | Death is sent to people as punishment for excessive sympathy for a dead animal or for funeral games, during which they bury an animal, tree, etc. | 14 | 16 |
| H33a In H33 family | Throwing children over the roof. | God wanted to throw a newborn baby (over a fence, house, etc.) so that it would immediately stand up and start walking, but the woman was frightened and did not allow it. Therefore, children do not walk from birth. See motif H33. | 14 | 16 |
| H34h In H34 family | Firewood came home. | Firewood and brushwood came by themselves, flying into the house; there was no need to specially harvest and deliver them. | 14 | 15 |
| H49d In H49 family | The Innocently Slain Parrot, ATU 916(4). | A character (usually a bird) brings a healing (rejuvenating) fruit (seed, branch). Accidentally or maliciously, poison gets into the fruit. The person whom the fruit-bearer wanted to help kills or is about to kill his benefactor, and then learns of his mistake. | 14 | 19 |
| H7f2 In H7 family | Death becomes invisible. | The character embodying death had a body visible to humans. Then death became invisible. | 14 | 4 |
| I25D In I25 family | Lubricate the gate with grease. | On the way to a dangerous character, a person greases the gate (door hinges) with grease or oil. On the way back, the grateful gate refuses to hold him back. | 14 | 22 |
| I35a In I35 family | Thunder – an old woman. | Thunder is produced by an old woman in the sky. | 14 | 18 |
| I49 | Runner-earthquake. | Earthquake – an anthropomorphic character (or category of characters) that moves around, shaking the earth. | 14 | 15 |
| I4d In I4 family | The stolen weapon of Grom, ATU 1148B. | An enemy steals a weapon (usually a musical instrument) used by the thunder god to summon a storm. The thunder god or his assistant comes unrecognised to the thief, takes possession of his weapon and kills his enemies. | 14 | 6 |
| I61a In I61 family | The Milky Way – belt. | The Milky Way – the heavenly belt. | 14 | 11 |
| I63 | The Milky Way – the tapir's path. | The Milky Way is the tapir's trail; the tapir can be seen on the Milky Way. | 14 | 20 |
| I77 | The lame thunderer. | A powerful character associated with thunderstorms and rain, lame. | 14 | 13 |
| I81a In I81 family | Chthonic crab. | The giant crab causes earthquakes or floods, closes or can close the water outlet. | 14 | 22 |
| I81b In I81 family | Charybdis (ebb and flow). | During high tide, a certain creature spews seawater or displaces it with its body, and during low tide, it swallows the water or makes room for it (or it is simply reported that the water is either spewed or recedes). | 14 | 15 |
| I85a1 In I85 family | The North Star – a hole in the sky. | The North Star – a hole leading to the upper world. | 14 | 13 |
| J10 | Wasp sting. | A woman loses her way after being stung by a wasp (or bee, ant, snake). She slaps her stomach (either to kill the insect or to punish her unborn sons, because of whom she went to pick a flower and was stung; see motif J11). The offended sons fall silent, ceasing to show the way. See motif J9. | 14 | 17 |
| J12H In J12 family | Opossum. | The false groom - the opossum. | 14 | 25 |
| J20 | The sinister guest: the broken taboo. | While the husband or brother is hunting, an evil spirit comes to his wife or sister; he kills or maims her or her brother after she breaks the taboo of opening the door to the guest, looking at him or talking to him. See motif J19. | 14 | 1 |
| J26a In J26 family | Boys and puppies. | Among children of a woman or two women living together, there is a boy and a puppy, or a puppy was placed with a woman, and her son was thrown out. The puppy lives with the woman and helps her. | 14 | 14 |
| J41 | Foxes mock the abandoned. | The hero leaves for a long time. When he returns, his relative does not immediately believe that it is really him. All this time, someone has been mocking him or her, imitating the voice of the departed, saying that he has returned and/or throwing ashes in his or her face. | 14 | 14 |
| K148 | Missing foals. | Every night or every year, a mare gives birth to a foal, and every time someone steals it. | 14 | 20 |
| K182a In K182 family | The sleeping defender. | A mighty warrior residing in a cave (or crypt, etc.) will eventually emerge into the light (to assist his people), or he could emerge but chooses not to. | 14 | 20 |
| k185 | Father fights son. | Not recognising his son, the father fights him and kills him. {In this formulation, the motif is rare, and in more general ones it has no clear boundaries}. | 14 | 13 |
| K19e In K19 family | Wolverine under a tree. | Returning from the sky to earth, a woman or two sisters encounter a male wolverine who tries to capture them. Usually, the women who have descended first find themselves in a tree. Some animals cannot or will not help them descend to the ground. The wolverine descends to take the sisters as wives; they run away from him. See motif K19B. | 14 | 11 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.