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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M158a In M158 family | Harvest sharing, ATU 9. | Two animal characters work together on a plot of land. During field work, one of them is lazy (imposing his imaginary services on the other) and then demands (most of) the harvest for himself. | 27 | 29 |
| M30d In M30 family | Holds to a stick carried by birds, ATU 225A | To get into the air, a character without wings (usually a turtle or a frog) grabs a stick with the ends held in their beaks by two birds. | 27 | 33 |
| M39a5b In M39 family | Fish in the furrow, ATU 1381A | The wife throws fish into the furrows or into the beds. My husband believes that the fish ended up there on its own, he is mistaken for a madman. | 27 | 21 |
| M39e1a In M39 family | Mice ate iron, ATU 1592, 1592A | The character claims that the mice ate iron (gold). | 27 | 22 |
| M44c In M44 family | Food thieves are a young hero | A young hero steals the older character's food. He is usually caught, but not punished, but invited into the house. | 27 | 38 |
| M7 | Waiting for transport | The character goes to the lower world, to the sky, to the country on the horizon, etc. and waits for someone to give him a ride to his goal. Usually, some animals/birds or celestial bodies follow by, and the last (often the Sun or Month) delivers. | 27 | 46 |
| M81c In M81 family | Blind people in the sky | A person goes to heaven or (rarely) to the lower world, where he meets blind people (one or two), usually makes them sighted, and returns to earth himself. | 27 | 38 |
| M81e1 In M81 family | A young man returns sight to old people, ATU 321 | A young man lives with an old man whose eyes or eyes were carried away by a giant. The young man goes to the giant, kills him, brings his eyes, the old man sees the light. | 27 | 25 |
| N15 | It flowed down the mustache, but did not get into the mouth | fairy-tale text ends with a formula that says that the narrator ate food and/or drinks, but they did not get into his mouth. | 27 | 106 |
| N3 | Hungry fingers | One finger says he's hungry and/or offers to steal something. The rest of the fingers express their opinion on this matter. | 27 | 32 |
| A2a1 In A2 family | The moon shone like the sun. | At first, the moon was as bright and hot as the sun. | 28 | 40 |
| A2c In A2 family | Extra suns – children of the chief, A736.1.4.1. | The extra suns that existed in the past or may appear in the future are the children of the Sun-father. See motif A2A. | 28 | 45 |
| B85 | Calming the Wind. | The wind blows too strongly, it is forced to calm down. | 28 | 30 |
| B89 | The eagle owl – king of birds. | The eagle owl (owl) was the chief among birds, claimed this position or behaved badly when choosing the head of the birds; now he avoids other birds and/or other birds chase him. | 28 | 26 |
| B97 | The character rewards the bird. | The character rewards (rarely punishes) a bird living by the water, determining its current appearance (crest, beak, feather colouring). | 28 | 27 |
| C1 | Falling sky. | In the past, a catastrophic shift in the layers of the universe occurred or will occur in the future. Among the variants (sometimes combined): the sky fell to the earth; the present earth or underground world swapped places with the sky; the earth turned upside down; it fell into the underworld; the layers of the universe successively collapsed onto the earth or will swap places in the future. | 28 | 41 |
| C10 | The Flood: Wet Tails, A2211.1. | During the flood, some birds or animals escape to a mountain, a tree, a boat, or by clinging to the sky; their tails or other parts of their bodies remain in the water and as a result acquire their current colour or shape. Cf. A2211.7 ("During the flood, birds cling to the sky; their tails acquire their current colour"). | 28 | 42 |
| C31b In C31 family | The wise owl. | The owl is wiser and more intelligent than other living creatures. | 28 | 31 |
| D4j In D4 family | The rabbit obtains fire. | The thief, the thief's assistant, or the owner of fire is a rabbit, a hare, or (ofaye) a guinea pig. See motif D4A. | 28 | 11 |
| D8 | Predator and fire. | The first fire (or summer) is stolen from a large predator – a lion or leopard in Africa, a tiger in Asia, a bear in northern Asia and North America, and a jaguar in South America. | 28 | 33 |
| E25 | Arachne (spider weaver). | People learn the art of weaving from a spider or from a person who later becomes a spider; the spider makes fabrics for humans. | 28 | 29 |
| F18c In F18 family | Girls across the river, K1391. | The character sees a girl on the other side of the river and copulates with her in an unusual way (sends his penis across the river; turns it into a bridge for the girl to cross the river; into a dam that blocks the river in front of her; dives, swimming up to the girl underwater; sends an object into the girl's vagina). See motif F18B. | 28 | 26 |
| F25 | The reason for menstruation: someone else's blood. | Women have been stained with someone else's or their own blood, or with blood-like paint, ever since women began menstruating. | 28 | 38 |
| F43 | Disappearance of women. | The women of the community of the first ancestors kill or abandon the men. | 28 | 46 |
| F83 | News precedes the hero. | The character does something forbidden and indecent in a place hidden from prying eyes, and then asks people what's new. They reply that there is no news – except that so-and-so (the character) did such-and-such. | 28 | 34 |
| F87 | Children transformed by a snake woman, ATU 425M. | The snake forces the girl to promise to marry him and takes her to the underwater world. She is happy there and gives birth to a son (or two sons) and a daughter. Together with her children, she returns to visit her relatives. They learn what words she must use to summon her husband from the water, summon him, and kill him. Seeing the bloody water, the snake's wife (rarely the snake himself) turns the children and herself into birds or trees. | 28 | 50 |
| G8d In G8 family | The fall or growth of a tree threatens the world. | A tree (pillar, mountain) is cut down (gnawed, ground down) or prevented from being cut down in order to save the world (or the gods, the king, etc.) from danger. | 28 | 36 |
| G9 | The felled forest is reborn, D1602.1+. | The forest cut down during clearing is reborn by morning. | 28 | 53 |
| I87aa In I87 family | The Great Bull, ATU 1960A. | Describes a giant bull (rarely: horse): head in one field, body in another; a bathhouse on its tail, a lake on its back; people standing at its head and tail have to walk a long way to meet each other; etc. Usually the bull is killed and eaten (by people in Baltic-Finnish traditions and in Olonets antiquity; by birds in most southern traditions). | 28 | 50 |
| I8e In I8 family | Four hold up the world. | The sky or the earth is supported by four anthropomorphic male characters located at the four cardinal points. | 28 | 31 |
| J53 | Fawns and bear cubs | The children of a character associated with a hoofed animal (deer, antelope) come into conflict with an enemy associated with a predator or a larger hoofed animal. They kill his children and/or run away from him. See motif J52. | 28 | 20 |
| K120a5 In K120 family | Luring a woman onto a ship. | To obtain a woman, a man lures her onto a ship (boat, flying machine, etc.) and takes her away. | 28 | 34 |
| K12b In K12 family | The sorceress's husband breaks the ban, ATU 400(1). | The hero enters a world beyond the human world and marries there. His wife allows him to visit his former world, but on certain conditions. The hero breaks these conditions, which leads to (irreparable) misfortune. Cf. motif F94 (the hero betrays his fairy wife in her world); K25a6 (the hero visits his world together with his fairy wife). | 28 | 33 |
| K156a In K156 family | Trials: girl or boy? | People suspect that the young man is a girl in disguise. Tests are proposed to determine this, but the girl manages to avoid exposure (for a long time). | 28 | 31 |
| K27x1 In K27 family | The invisible servant ("Bring me that, I don't know what"), (ATU 465A). | Having received a difficult task (usually: to bring an object or creature that has no specific characteristics, such as "something, I don't know what," "a strange wonder," etc.), the hero meets an invisible man who serves others; he is kind to him, and the man becomes his assistant. (This motif is certainly present in some texts of the ATU 465A plot, but it is not specifically highlighted in the definition). (Cf. motif K131B). | 28 | 39 |
| K27z4 In K27 family | The dice player's trained animal. | The character always wins bets or outplays others thanks to a trained cat (mouse, rat) that holds (or extinguishes in time) a lamp, turns dice, etc. The hero releases the mouse (or cat, mongoose, respectively), the cat rushes after it (or the mouse is afraid to come out), and the character loses. | 28 | 24 |
| K27zz In K27 family | The Cannibal and the Blinded Wives, ATU 462. | A man does not suspect that his (new) wife (less often his mother) is a cannibal/witch/treacherous woman; she persecutes (former) wives (his wife) and/or blinds them or throws them into a pit, or her husband does so at her instigation. Contrary to the cannibal's plans, the son of one of the wives survives, kills the cannibal, and rescues his mother and sisters. | 28 | 34 |
| K8c1 In K8 family | Swallowed by a herbivore, then by a wolf. | A tiny man is first accidentally swallowed by a large herbivore, then carried off by a wolf that began to eat the carcass of this animal. | 28 | 36 |
| L15c In L15 family | Who is afraid of what (hero and adversary). | A dangerous character asks the hero how he can be killed, what he is afraid of. The hero lies, saying that the named object does not harm him. | 28 | 32 |
| L49 | Parts of the body fall down. | Individual parts or pieces of a character's body are successively thrown down. (In American variants, those below usually mistake them for game, honey, or fish). | 28 | 42 |
| L55 | Boiling water in the mouth. | To neutralise a dangerous enemy, a caustic or boiling liquid is poured into one of the openings of its body. | 28 | 27 |
| L58 | The stingy man. | A man refuses to give food to his closest relatives or spouse; as punishment, he or his food changes its nature. | 28 | 32 |
| L81c In L81 family | The legless, the blind, and the armless. | The legless man lives together with the blind and armless man (or with one of the two). By working together, they are healed. | 28 | 37 |
| L9b In L9 family | Knife elbows, G341. | The sharp elbows or (rarely) knees of the character resemble knives or awls. | 28 | 31 |
| M114a In M114 family | Stone coat. | The character is offered to sew clothes or shoes from stone or iron, or to remove the skin from the stone. | 28 | 34 |
| M114j In M114 family | All women are the same, ATU 983. | A woman does not refuse those who harass her, but calmly explains that there is no point in trying to possess many, since they are all the same (they differ no more than eggs painted in different colours). | 28 | 16 |
| M144 | The King's Drum, ATU 49A. | One character manages to convince another that dangerous and inedible objects are attractive and delicious (a wasp's nest is a drum, a snake is a flute, dung is a delicacy, etc.). | 28 | 41 |
| M181 | Two people are going to a festival. | Two characters are invited to a festival. (On the way and) upon arriving at the destination, one deceives the other. | 28 | 34 |
| M193a In M193 family | Kolobok, ATU 2025. | A woman baked a flatbread (pancake, pie, dough figure). It rolled away (ran away). On its way, it encounters various people and/or animals who want to eat it. It rolls away from each of them, but a fox (rarely another animal) eats it. | 28 | 18 |
| M198a1 In M198 family | Elder: round, middle: hard, younger: nut! | Three characters sequentially and without apparent reason determine the characteristics of an object or person they have not seen. | 28 | 23 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.