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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E9j In E9 family | The magical wife – monkey. | Before meeting the hero, his beloved (wife) has the image of a monkey, or the man hides the woman and pretends that the mistress is a monkey. | 20 | 24 |
| F42 | Men leave. | Feeling wronged, men leave their wives or sisters. | 20 | 32 |
| G13b In G13 family | Mushrooms as inferior food. | Before the advent of cultivated plants, people ate mushrooms. Creatures of a non-human nature feed on mushrooms. Mushrooms are imaginary, inferior food. | 20 | 24 |
| I118 | The spider-advisor. | A female spider (less commonly, an old spider) protects the hero or heroine, who live with her, and the hero marries her daughter. (Texts in which the spider only lifts the hero up to the sky or lowers him to the ground are not included; see motif I117). | 20 | 47 |
| I139 | Throwing an axe, F531.3.2.3. | Two (rarely three) men or women are at a distance from each other, but regularly throw or pass something to each other. This is a sign of their unusual size, strength, and agility. | 20 | 39 |
| I20c2 In I20 family | Dwarves in the land on the horizon. | The inhabitants of the land on the horizon (where the sky meets the earth) are dwarves. | 20 | 27 |
| I23 | Slamming door, K736. | The door of the house opens and slams shut by itself, crushing those entering or leaving. See motif I22. | 20 | 26 |
| I35a2 In I35 family | Thunder – rolling stones, vessels. | Thunder is heard when stones or large vessels are rolled, dragged or overturned in the sky. | 20 | 22 |
| I66 | Ashes on the Milky Way. | The Milky Way is ash or smouldering embers. | 20 | 30 |
| I7c In I7 family | Rain or dew – urine. | When a character in the upper world urinates, it rains (dew falls) on earth. | 20 | 23 |
| I8G1 In I8 family | Giant at the pillar of the world. | At the foot of the world pillar is an anthropomorphic character, or a character identified with a tree or pillar on which the world rests, or a character holding ropes on which the world is suspended. | 20 | 26 |
| J39 | Who killed the rabbit? | The antagonist makes the woman his slave. Other characters secretly come to her and kill a small animal or bird for her. The antagonist suspects that the woman could not have caught the game herself, but she insists that she did. | 20 | 16 |
| J9 | Children from their mother's womb show her the way. | Even before they are born, children speak from their mother's womb, showing her the way. | 20 | 39 |
| K102a In K102 family | Father knew what he was doing. | A man orders the killing of a young man's sister, wife or mother. The young man does not allow such an order to be carried out, and then repents of this. | 20 | 24 |
| K102c In K102 family | Having changed his appearance, the hero recovers the magical object (ATU 318). | The enemy seizes the object that makes the hero invulnerable and kills him. The hero is revived. Changing his appearance, he provokes the enemy to put the magical object on the ground, seizes it again and kills the enemy. | 20 | 25 |
| K116a In K116 family | Nesmeyana (the disguised tsar perishes). | The king takes or is about to take the poor man's wife. She suggests that the king put on clothes that are not his own (usually those that belonged to her husband). After that, the king is killed by his own soldiers (dogs), who believe him to be a poor man (jester, devil). | 20 | 24 |
| K116b In K116 family | A dog instead of a beauty in the chest. | In order to take possession of the girl, the antagonist creates a situation in which her relatives are forced to put her in a chest (barrel, sack, etc.) and leave her there. The girl is secretly replaced by a ferocious dog or other animal. When the antagonist opens the chest, the animal usually kills or mauls him. | 20 | 24 |
| K119e In K119 family | The Miller: A Success Story. | The poor young man who was helped by an animal assistant, who presented him to the king as a rich man, is a miller or a miller's son. | 20 | 25 |
| K132a In K132 family | The husband's rooster and the wife's hen, ATU 219E*, 715A. | The husband (rarely: the wife) sends the rooster out to earn money, and it brings back money. The wife (husband) sends the hen (cat, her half of the rooster, etc.) and receives only mice, filth, etc. Or, instead of money, the rooster brings the wife something bad or nothing at all. | 20 | 15 |
| K155 | The prince grew up in seclusion. | A person (usually a king) raises a son (daughter) in isolation. One day (usually by chance), the young man (woman) sees the outside world and leaves his (her) confinement. | 20 | 26 |
| K164 | A wife is not a best friend, ATU 921B. | The person himself or someone else creates a situation in which he becomes convinced that his wife is not his best friend. Usually, the treacherous wife is contrasted with a loyal dog. | 20 | 17 |
| K175 | The wind blew away the flour, ATU 759C. | A man was carrying flour, but the wind blew it away. The man complains to an authoritative figure and usually receives compensation. Cf. motif M57d3 ("The Wind-Giver"). | 20 | 24 |
| K24c In K24 family | An old man helps to obtain a bird wife, ATU 413. | A young man comes to an old man (less often – to an old woman), who teaches him how to get a magical wife by hiding her bird clothes. Usually, the young man gives away the clothes for the first time and lives with the old man until the girls fly back. | 20 | 19 |
| k34a In k34 family | A rival lures a woman onto a swing. | A rival puts a woman on a swing to get rid of her by throwing her into the water. She (almost) drowns or temporarily loses her human form, but manages to return to the world of humans. | 20 | 22 |
| K40 | One will be eaten today, another tomorrow. | Two (rarely more) characters consider themselves doomed to death, but the one whose death will come later rejoices, while the one whose death will come earlier grieves. Cf. motif N30. | 20 | 27 |
| K43b In K43 family | The bird brings meat. | People leave a boy, a girl, a sister and brother, a young woman or young spouses alone and leave, or drive them away. Those who are left behind or driven away discover unusual abilities or helpers, obtaining blood and food. Those who are abandoned eat their fill, while those who abandon them go hungry. A character (often a bird - a crow, magpie, seagull, etc.) visits the abandoned and brings a piece of fat or meat to the camp of the starving. | 20 | 24 |
| K56a5 In K56 family | The Old Woman Becomes Beautiful, ATU 877. | An old or ugly woman unexpectedly becomes a young beauty or acquires wealth. Usually, another woman tries to repeat her actions and either dies or suffers damage. | 20 | 21 |
| K57a In K57 family | The Beauty from the Land of Soap, (ATU 510B). | A noble young man, who treated a lowly servant girl rudely and contemptuously, does not recognise her in the guise of a magnificent beauty and does not understand her hints about the relevant episodes. Or the younger brother responds to the hints of his older brothers after they first beat him and then fail to recognise him in the guise of a handsome hero. | 20 | 40 |
| K61b In K61 family | Learning names. | In order to learn the names of strangers, the character finds or creates a situation in which they call each other by name aloud. | 20 | 21 |
| K66b In K66 family | Princesses given to companions. | Travelling from one place to another, the hero leaves one of his companions in each place (usually marrying them to the princesses he has received as a reward), and continues on his way. When he gets into trouble, his companions come to his aid. | 20 | 28 |
| K76c In K76 family | Pumpkin child. | The son (rarely – daughter) or foster child of a married couple emerges from a pumpkin (rarely: watermelon, nut) or is found inside it. | 20 | 22 |
| K80a4 In K80 family | Hair turns into grass, (ATU 780A). | The hair on a character's head turns into grass (thorns, bamboo, bushes). | 20 | 23 |
| K89 | The girl and the witch: gifts from relatives. | After getting married, the heroine and her rival (witch, frog) must bring gifts from their relatives. The heroine finds her brother, brothers or sister who went missing at the beginning of the story and receives rich gifts from them, while the gifts brought by her rival are worthless. | 20 | 31 |
| L111 | Hook from the sky. | The inhabitants of the sky or shamans catch or want to catch earthly people with a hook, net, noose, etc., dragging them up into the sky (somewhere above) like fishermen pull fish out of the water; the inhabitants of the earth fish with hooks for fish, which in their own world are people or domestic animals. | 20 | 23 |
| L112 | Attaining physical completeness. | A physically defective boy is born (tiny, with one head, half a body, etc.). After a series of adventures, he gains physical completeness. | 20 | 27 |
| L116 | The Singer in the Sack, ATU 311B. | A cannibal (old man, gypsy) grabs a girl, carries her away, and forces her to sing (beg). People recognise the girl's voice and free her. | 20 | 25 |
| L118a In L118 family | Imitation: knife to the throat. | In order to get rid of a dangerous but foolish character, a person performs certain actions, which the character imitates, not realising that he is harming himself. | 20 | 18 |
| L44b In L44 family | The blind man saw, the lame man ran. | The blind and deaf (lame) began to live together, helping each other. After being mortally frightened or fighting, both (less often, one of them) got rid of their disabilities. | 20 | 21 |
| L59 | The stingy woman: metamorphosis. | A woman eats the best food or eats fruit before it is ripe; as punishment, she undergoes metamorphosis. | 20 | 23 |
| L99 | Bring the skewer! | Having captured the character, the ogre orders him to bring wood or a spit to roast him. The character deliberately procrastinates, brings the wrong thing, or is helped to escape by some animal. | 20 | 19 |
| M103 | Children with beautiful spots. | One character asks another how her (his) children acquired valuable qualities (became beautiful, obedient, etc.). The other replies that children must be baked in ashes, kept in fire, burned, etc. The first character does so, and her or his children die or are maimed. | 20 | 25 |
| M111 | Monkey on a banana. | Two animals (usually a monkey and a turtle) agree to gather fruit. The one who can climb trees eats the good fruit and throws one peel or rotten fruit to its companion. The companion takes revenge. | 20 | 24 |
| M114e In M114 family | Tie to winter or summer. | A girl offers a visitor to tie his horse to winter or summer, which means to a sleigh or a cart. | 20 | 17 |
| M115 | The eaten wolf. | The character kills an animal that is dangerous to him by cunning. Relatives or friends of the killed animal find out about this and come to take revenge. The character escapes. | 20 | 25 |
| M120b In M120 family | A nurse with a pleasant voice. | The character is looking for a nanny (nurse, wet nurse, shepherd, husband) and consistently rejects those whose voice he does not like. He settles on the one with the most beautiful voice, but the choice turns out to be unsuccessful (usually the nurse eats the child, the sick person, the sheep, etc.). | 20 | 31 |
| M126 | The talking skull. | A man sees a talking skull (turtle) and reports this to the chief, the king. In the presence of the king, the skull (turtle) remains silent, and the man who found it is accused of lying and punished. | 20 | 19 |
| M171c In M171 family | In exchange for a thorn, ATU 2034F. | At the request of a character, another character removes a thorn from his body (cuts off the tip of his tail, etc.). The thorn (tip of the tail) disappears, or when it is removed, the character is wounded. As a result, he receives something more valuable than what he has lost. | 20 | 23 |
| M21a In M21 family | Under the pretext of illness. | The character is pursued by an enemy. An animal hides the fugitive in its mouth or on its body, and when the pursuer appears, it refuses to open its mouth or expose part of its body. (Usually simulates illness – toothache, etc.). Cf. motif i87ad. | 20 | 30 |
| M38b1 In M38 family | The young woman is waiting for her husband to guess | After the wedding, the wife is silent until her husband says certain words that indicate her origin. {In North Africa, the Pyrenees and the Arabs of Western Asia, the motive is very popular, which suggests that the list of traditions in which it is known may include some records that have so far been supported only with links to pointers, but not by the texts themselves}. | 20 | 15 |
| M72 | Hand in the back of the tapir | The character puts his hand into the anus of a tapir or other large herbivore and is unable to pull it out. The animal rushes to run and drags a person with it for a long time. | 20 | 26 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.