Folklore Database · Browse
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B33f1 In B33 family | Mistress of night and day. | By performing certain actions, the (old) woman determines the daily cycle. | 15 | 14 |
| B3c In B3 family | Attempt to drown God. | When the creator, having created the land, lies down to rest, the antagonist tries to drown him, dragging him to the edge of the earth. As a result, the earth expands, and the antagonist is unable to reach its edge. | 15 | 17 |
| B42i In B42 family | Cassiopeia – deer. | Cassiopeia is associated with a deer or elk. | 15 | 12 |
| B42m2 In B42 family | The boastful and hasty. | The stars of the Big Dipper's handle are three hunters chasing a beast. Each has a distinct character (one is boastful, another is hasty, etc.). In Siberia, the hunters are identified with people of different nationalities, and in the North American Northeast, with birds of different species. | 15 | 14 |
| B46a1 In B46 family | The Big Dipper – robbers. | The stars of the Big Dipper – thieves or robbers. | 15 | 26 |
| B46b In B46 family | Seven Star Sisters. | Each of the seven main stars of the Big Dipper is a separate female character. {Included in the online database, but not in the correlation table in *sav)}. | 15 | 14 |
| B55 | Leaf fish. | Fish grow on tree branches or tree leaves turn into fish. | 15 | 19 |
| B56 | The crocodile's fiery tongue. | The crocodile/caiman is left without a tongue after swallowing or losing the fire (which it previously possessed); something associated with heavenly fire (lightning, sunbeams, etc.) emerges from the crocodile's severed tongue. | 15 | 17 |
| B59 | Dancers turn into the Pleiades, A773. | A group of people (usually children, brothers or sisters) play, dance, rise to the sky and turn into the Pleiades or another small constellation. | 15 | 20 |
| B64a In B64 family | Small bones: the war between fish and birds. | Fish and birds fight (usually by shooting arrows at each other). Since then, fish have had many small bones in their bodies and/or birds' legs have taken on their current form. | 15 | 18 |
| B8 | The frog hides the water. | The frog hides the water (usually drinks up a lake or river). Thanks to another character, the water returns to the body of water(s). (Among the Khan, Upper Tanana, and Varikho, the motif is not cosmogonic). | 15 | 30 |
| B84 | Mushrooms and growths (transformation of a cannibal). | After a demonic character (usually a woman who pursues the hero) dies, her flesh turns into objects found on trees - mushrooms, resin, fruits, cones. | 15 | 24 |
| B94 | Trees lose the gift of speech. | Trees (and animals) used to talk, asking people not to cut them down or kill them. | 15 | 25 |
| C10a In C10 family | Birds clinging to the sky, A2211.1. | During the flood, some birds save themselves by clinging to the sky with their beaks. Cf. A2211.7 ("During the flood, birds cling to the sky; their tails acquire their current colour"). | 15 | 19 |
| C8b In C8 family | Brother and sister did not recognise each other. | A brother and sister (or mother and son) find themselves alone, without marriage partners. Both of them (or only the brother, son) refuse to marry, but do so after accepting each other (or the brother accepts the sister, the son accepts the mother) as strangers. They give birth to new people. | 15 | 41 |
| C8c In C8 family | Son and mother give birth to people. | After a global catastrophe, at the beginning of time or when settling a new land, a woman and her son give birth to humans. | 15 | 21 |
| D4n In D4 family | The weeping one demands summer. | A boy or (among the Kutené) a woman cries, demanding the absent elements - summer, fire, rain. See motif D4A (demand for summer). | 15 | 7 |
| E9n In E9 family | The magical wife – an aquatic mammal. | A man marries a female seal, seal or dolphin that has taken the form of a woman and lives with her among people. | 15 | 18 |
| F31 | Snake egg. | A girl or woman becomes pregnant, without knowing it, by a reptile when she unknowingly touches a dead reptile or when a liquid that has leaked from the reptile gets inside her (usually when the contents of a snake egg accidentally flow between her legs). | 15 | 19 |
| G12b In G12 family | Cultivated plants – a gift from the stars. | Cultivated plants – a gift from a male star or female star. | 15 | 27 |
| H1e In H1 family | The first to die opens the way for the rest. | A certain character is the first to enter the world of the dead, after which all people follow the same path; he paves the way to the world of the dead; the first to die becomes the master or guardian of the afterlife. | 15 | 14 |
| H21 | Game or fish kills a boy. | The character controls animals or fish; a boy, young man or girl knows his secret or serves as bait themselves; another character forces the boy (girl) to reveal the secret and/or help him in the same way that he or she helped the first character, or leads the boy to go fishing but kills him, or the boy himself starts hunting, breaking the rules; as a result, the boy or girl is killed or carried away by animals or fish. See motif H18. | 15 | 22 |
| H22a In H22 family | Animals were struck on the nose. | Large game animals were concentrated in one place and were not afraid of people. They scattered after someone touched them, hit them lightly (often on the nose), or smeared them with something. Cf. motif H22. | 15 | 13 |
| H24d In H24 family | Still gathering what has been released. | An animal character who released the contents (darkness, insects, reptiles) from a vessel is still trying to gather everything back (etiology of the behaviour of a certain species of animal). | 15 | 26 |
| H25 | Choose life or death. | People are offered a choice between two objects, one of which represents death and the other life, or they are asked whether they want to be reborn or die forever. Death is chosen. | 15 | 21 |
| H36f In H36 family | The raven – an unsuccessful messenger. | The raven is sent to deliver an important item or message. He distorts the message or loses what has been entrusted to him. | 15 | 19 |
| I112 | Monster boat. | The boat is a living creature with a mouth, a fish. | 15 | 20 |
| I113 | The piglet – the golden bristle, (ATU 530A). | A pig or boar made of gold or with golden bristles is a precious object. (In ATU, "a pig with golden bristles" is one of the possible miraculous objects; the presence of a corresponding number in regional indexes does not necessarily mean the presence of an image; only cases where the image is directly named are taken into account). | 15 | 28 |
| I135 | Heavenly skin or cloth. | The sky (Milky Way, clouds) is an animal skin or a piece of cloth. | 15 | 17 |
| I59b2 In I59 family | The Milky Way – St. James' Way. | The Milky Way – St. James' Way. | 15 | 19 |
| I59b3 In I59 family | The Milky Way – the road of salt traders. | The Milky Way – the road of salt traders, "Chumak Way". | 15 | 10 |
| I87ab In I87 family | Only a child can move it. | Strong men or a crowd of people cannot move the body of a dead animal or the leg of a motionless person, but a child or a woman can do it easily. Cf. motif B83. | 15 | 24 |
| I95b In I95 family | Orion – the balance beam. | Orion is a yoke. | 15 | 18 |
| I96 | The bloody rainbow. | A rainbow consisting of blood either heralds war and death. | 15 | 20 |
| J12G In J12 family | Waterfowl or marsh bird. | The false bridegroom is a bird that lives on or near water. See motif J12. | 15 | 9 |
| J16 | Refuses to eat insects. | The character perishes because, being forced to look for insects in the head of another, he refuses to chew insects, spits them out in disgust, or is suspected of doing so. | 15 | 21 |
| J18a In J18 family | Mother eaten, children flee. | A cannibal eats a woman and enters her house. The woman's children (daughter and son, or daughter only) run away, climb a tree or climb a rope to the sky. The cannibal pursues them and perishes. | 15 | 27 |
| J51a1 In J51 family | The helper girl: dismembered and reassembled. | To retrieve an object from a hard-to-reach place, the girl orders it to be dismembered (or just have its fingers cut off) and then reassembled, after which it comes back to life. | 15 | 45 |
| k102c1 In k102 family | A splinter turns into a duck. | The enemy systematically destroys the objects and creatures into which the hero is reincarnated. The hero wins after turning from a splinter into a waterfowl (duck, goose). | 15 | 16 |
| K10d In K10 family | A bird carries the hero away to an island. | A flying monster carries the hero away to a distant island. The hero kills the monster and uses a boat, bridge or rope made from part of the monster's body to return. | 15 | 24 |
| k135a In k135 family | The coward put out the door. | The coward or lazybones has become so tiresome to his family that they leave him outside. He sets off on a journey and defeats powerful enemies, thanks to chance or cunning. | 15 | 21 |
| k136a1 In k136 family | The young man's hair carried away by the water. | Seeing the young man's hair carried away by the water, a woman decides to marry the owner of the hair. | 15 | 17 |
| K168a In K168 family | Food turns into severed body parts, ATU 664*. | A person thinks that they are holding something intended for food (a calf's head, a melon, bread, etc.), but these objects turn into human heads or limbs. Cf. motif K80c1. | 15 | 12 |
| K25a2 In K25 family | Discarded feathers. | An anthropomorphic character flies away or tries to fly away, attaching feathers shed by birds flying in the sky to his body. | 15 | 21 |
| K25a7 In K25 family | Two brothers and a winged maiden. | The older brother hunts, the younger brother takes care of the household. After catching the winged maiden, the older brother takes her as his wife, while the younger brother, out of naivety, returns her wings to her. The older brother sets off in search of his wife. | 15 | 23 |
| K27g1 In K27 family | Task: clean out the stable. | The character must quickly clean the stable or barn of the manure that has accumulated there over a long period of time. | 15 | 22 |
| K27h1 In K27 family | Bringing fruit. | The character is tasked with bringing the fruits of a tree that is difficult to reach. | 15 | 19 |
| K32h1 In K32 family | Placed in a barrel with nails. | The antagonist is executed by being placed in a barrel (with nails) and rolled down a hill or tied to a horse. | 15 | 21 |
| K38f2 In K38 family | A mark made with dragon's blood. | The girl saved by the hero smears him with the blood of the monster he has slain. When the deceiver claims that he killed the dragon, the hero shows the bloodstain on his body, thus proving that he is the victor. | 15 | 20 |
| K42 | Bird woman kills men. | A young bird woman energetically searches among a group of men for one she likes, takes him by force and makes him her husband; she turns into a monster, pursues and kills men, but is ultimately killed herself. | 15 | 32 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.