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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| D13B In D13 family | Menstruation passes to women. | Menstruation passes from men to women after women laugh at an old man. | 3 | 3 |
| D13e In D13 family | Hunters laugh at the carcass of an animal. | Hunters perish because they laughed at the killed (and revived) animal. | 3 | 3 |
| D13i1 In D13 family | The one who showed his teeth was exposed. | The characteristics of a character can be determined by his teeth. By laughing and showing his teeth, the character reveals himself. | 3 | 5 |
| D4f In D4 family | Beavers or fish allow themselves to be roasted. | Once in the fire, the beaver (in North America) or fish (in South America) scatters and/or carries the fire away from its original owners. See motif D4A. | 3 | 6 |
| D4k In D4 family | The deer obtains fire. | The deer obtains fire for humans. See motif D4A. | 3 | 2 |
| E1a1 In E1 family | Soaked by rain (why there are cripples). | A deity or ancestor moulds people from clay. Some of the figures got wet, which is why there are cripples among people. | 3 | 9 |
| F100b In F100 family | A minor transgression by a chaste woman. | Thanks to her virtue, a woman is capable of doing what others cannot, but she succeeds only after she remembers a minor transgression she committed in her youth. | 3 | 3 |
| F45C In F45 family | Men without wives. | There were men who lived separately from women. See also motif F8. | 3 | 4 |
| F54b In F54 family | Stuck feathers. | A young man or boy copulates with his mother or sister. This becomes known from the remains of paint or feathers with which he was covered during sexual intercourse. | 3 | 3 |
| F54c In F54 family | Recognised by nail marks. | A husband sees someone's fingernail marks on his wife's body and gathers the men to find out who left the marks. | 3 | 3 |
| F77C In F77 family | Penis-rope. | The character climbs a tree or descends a huge penis, which turns into a rope or vine. | 3 | 3 |
| F9f2 In F9 family | The cobra's hood in the wife's handbag. | A woman places a piece of flesh from her slain snake lover in her handbag and poses a corresponding riddle. If her husband fails to guess the answer, she has the right to kill him. The husband accidentally learns the secret and kills his wife. | 3 | 3 |
| H28c In H28 family | Mosquitoes bring back wives. | The character creates blood-sucking insects to influence the behaviour of a mating partner. | 3 | 4 |
| H36g2 In H36 family | The beetle distorts the message. | When a character, who later became a dung beetle, was ordered to convey certain instructions to people, he distorted them. | 3 | 3 |
| h7g2 In h7 family | Escape from death from land to water. | Knowing that Death is approaching, a person hopes that it will seek him on land, so he settles on the surface of the water or under the water. But Death finds him. | 3 | 4 |
| I100c In I100 family | The Pleiades and the Cuckoo. | God turned the husband into a cuckoo, and the wife and children into the Pleiades. | 3 | 4 |
| I140 | Moses' rod. | The staff thrown to the ground turns into a living snake. | 3 | 3 |
| I25b1 In I25 family | Hair instead of rope. | This refers to women who pull buckets of water out of a well using their own hair instead of a rope. | 3 | 6 |
| I27b In I27 family | The dog-ferryman. | A dog carries a person across a river to another world. See motif I27. | 3 | 5 |
| I27d In I27 family | The mouth of a black dog. | There is a certain black or red dog that (is associated with objects in the night sky and) negatively affects people's lives. | 3 | 3 |
| I28a In I28 family | Animals cause earthquakes. | Large animals that are hunted go underground and cause earthquakes. | 3 | 3 |
| I37e In I37 family | Mushrooms cry out. | Tree mushrooms cry out like people. | 3 | 5 |
| i50a1 In i50 family | The dog's severed legs. | The character sequentially tears off the dog's legs, but the dog continues to do what it considers necessary. | 3 | 3 |
| I5b In I5 family | Thunder Jaguar. | The flying jaguar causes storms, rain, and thunderstorms. | 3 | 4 |
| I82e In I82 family | The star that sold its mother. | It is said that Venus or another star sold her mother or father in order to adorn herself luxuriously and dress up. | 3 | 8 |
| I82j In I82 family | Venus – husband of the Moon. | Venus-man or another star is the husband of the Moon-woman. See motif I82a. | 3 | 3 |
| J19b In J19 family | Burnt belly. | An evil spirit kills a woman by burning through her body. | 3 | 7 |
| j23f In j23 family | Temporarily incarnated in a human being. | Something inanimate incarnates in a human being to solve people's problems and then returns to its original state. | 3 | 3 |
| J25b In J25 family | Dead mother brings food to her child. | A pregnant woman dies and is buried. Her spirit leaves the grave to bring food to the child. The child is found and grows up. | 3 | 2 |
| j25c In j25 family | Raised by a wolf. | A she-wolf nurses an abandoned infant. He becomes an outstanding leader. | 3 | 4 |
| J56a In J56 family | Transformation into frying pans. | Heroic brothers are transformed into pots or frying pans, but only the elder is able to sit in the fire long enough. | 3 | 5 |
| J6a In J6 family | Mother eaten, daughter saved. | A pregnant woman with a young daughter fall into the hands of cannibals. The cannibals find and eat the woman, but her daughter and the baby in her womb are saved. | 3 | 3 |
| K108a In K108 family | He who kills his wife loses everything. | A man acquires a magical wife. Another woman orders him to kill her or divorce her, then she will become his wife. Having fulfilled the request, he loses everything. | 3 | 4 |
| K115A In K115 family | Dove at the entrance. | When a character hides in a shelter, a dove builds a nest there. The enemies decide that no one has entered the cave or room for a long time and leave. | 3 | 4 |
| K167b In K167 family | What is a lamb in the womb of a sheep? | A boy is able to determine the sex and colour of a young animal in the womb. | 3 | 3 |
| K16a In K16 family | Slipping, he drops the stuffed animal. | In an effort to show that he is a good hunter, a man regularly walks in front of a girl, pretending to carry prey. Once he slips, and the imaginary prey turns out to be a scarecrow stuffed with ashes or a bundle of termites. | 3 | 6 |
| K32h2 In K32 family | Left to be eaten by ants. | A man executes his wife by leaving her to be eaten by ants. | 3 | 4 |
| K38b3c In K38 family | The hero shields the sleepers from the sun. | Seeing sleeping fairies or their children, the hero covers them from the scorching rays of the sun. For this, they do him a favour. | 3 | 6 |
| K47c In K47 family | The origin of dogs. | The marriage of a woman and a dog gave rise to dogs – friends and helpers of humans. | 3 | 6 |
| K56a8b In K56 family | A girl's hand in a cobra's hole. | A virtuous girl (usually the daughter of a dog) wants to kill herself and puts her hand in a snake's hole. The snake does not bite her, but rewards her. | 3 | 4 |
| k73a5a In k73 family | A baby is replaced by a monkey. | Malicious women replace a newborn baby with a monkey (telling the father that his wife has given birth to a monkey). | 3 | 4 |
| K73b7 In K73 family | The hero kills the enemy of his enchanted wife. | The hero saves the magical wife from her enemy at a time when both the future wife and the enemy have zoomorphic appearances. Later, the rescued woman becomes a woman. | 3 | 3 |
| k80bb In k80 family | Grown from the remains of the slain. | A boy is killed and eaten. His sister gathers his remains, from which a tree grows, and on it – the dead boy, often in the form of a bird. | 3 | 4 |
| K9a In K9 family | The punished person is suspended between heaven and earth. | The punished character is suspended on a chain or metal thread between heaven and earth. | 3 | 6 |
| L108g In L108 family | Wash away the black. | The character is black and must sit in water until he turns white. The antagonist carries him away. | 3 | 5 |
| L15b1 In L15 family | Deer antlers – a weapon against evil. | In the battle between positive and negative creators, the positive one chooses the deer horn as a weapon – usually because this is the only weapon that the enemy fears. | 3 | 5 |
| L40c In L40 family | He who buys the bridle leads away the camel. | Relying on the ambiguity of the statement, the buyer of a cheap item claims rights to a much more valuable one. | 3 | 4 |
| L76 | Severed testicles. | When a female cannibal attacks a man, she devours or tears off his testicles. | 3 | 7 |
| L94d In L94 family | The tale with a tail. | A demonic character accuses a man of stepping on (tearing off) the tail of a fairy tale. Cf. motif K100E, "Dangerous Fairy Tales". | 3 | 3 |
| M105B In M105 family | Carries his mother on his back. | The character replies that the load, hump or bulge on his back or head is his deceased mother or grandmother. Another kills his mother or wife and places her on his back or head. | 3 | 4 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.