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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M135 | Two Rams and a Wolf, ATU 122K*. | Two ungulates – usually after the wolf agrees to share the meadow between them – gore the predator from both sides, killing or maiming it. | 35 | 28 |
| M157a3 In M157 family | The demand to milk the bull. | A character demands that another provide him with offspring or milk from a male animal. | 35 | 42 |
| M164 | Traces in one direction, ATU 50A. | The character refuses to enter the predator's lair when he sees that all the tracks lead inside, but not outside. | 35 | 30 |
| M177 | And he had no heart, ATU 52. | A weak predator eats part of its victim's body and explains to the strong one that this part did not exist at all (otherwise he would not have come to a place where he knew he would be eaten). | 35 | 31 |
| M187c In M187 family | Race: crab/crayfish – participant. | Participating in a race, the crab defeats its faster opponent. | 35 | 41 |
| M191b In M191 family | The snake will not forget its severed tail, ATU 285A. | A man does good (does no harm) to a snake (fish, lion) and benefits from it. His son (less often someone else or himself) wounds the snake (usually cuts off its tail) and, if it is his son, dies from the bite. The snake refuses to continue its relationship with the man, and neither of them will forget their loss. | 35 | 22 |
| M29v In M29 family | The dwarf deer is a cunning winner | The character defeats or deceives strong opponents using cunning. The protagonists are dwarf ungulates, usually duker or deer - taxonomically distant from each other, but similar in appearance. In some publications on African traditions, it is difficult to determine which animal we are talking about, but it is certain that these are small cloven-hoofed animals, usually (always?) dukers. See the motives in square brackets. | 35 | 35 |
| M38b In M38 family | Silly wives imitate a sorceress, ATU 898 | The first wife, rejected or taken later than others, performs certain actions with the help of magic. Other wives try to imitate her but are killed, maimed, or disgraced. | 35 | 32 |
| M38d2 In M38 family | Coal, straw, bob by the river, ATU 295 | Several characters (usually three), which are small objects, go traveling and must cross the river. This fails. | 35 | 25 |
| M39a8 In M39 family | Drops a door from a tree, (ATU 1653) | A fool drags the door from the house with him (usually raises it to a tree and drops it, scaring the crowd under the tree). | 35 | 48 |
| M75b4 In M75 family | The Trojan horse: getting a woman | To master a woman, the hero hides inside the hollow figure of a horse (bull, deer) or in an animal carcass. The character guarding the woman takes her to her. The hero gets outside and becomes a woman's lover. Or a woman hides inside the figure of a horse, which is taken to the man's chambers. | 35 | 22 |
| B1f In B1 family | Two brothers: the winner and the loser. | In the era of creation, two men have a common origin, are not antagonists, and display their characteristics in a series of episodes. One is intelligent and successful, the other is simple-minded and irresponsible. | 36 | 82 |
| B42k In B42 family | Cosmic hunting – Pleiades. | In stories about cosmic hunting, the object of pursuit or the hunters are identified with the Pleiades. See motif B42. | 36 | 37 |
| B45 | The Wedding of Winter and Summer, A1153. | The arrival of warm (bright, abundant) or cold (hungry, dark) times is associated with the marriage of a certain character who brings cold, warmth, abundance, etc. | 36 | 48 |
| C13 | Rebellion of things. | During or before the onset of a global catastrophe (flood, darkness) or (surui) at night, household items and/or stones, trees, domestic animals, and cultivated plants turn into wild birds and animals or come to life. | 36 | 50 |
| C18a In C18 family | The sun lures out the rooster. | The hidden sun is lured out by the rooster, or people believe that without the rooster's crow, the sun will not rise. | 36 | 54 |
| E1c In E1 family | Man made of excrement. | Man made from human excrement or (Inupiat) from carrion. | 36 | 31 |
| E4 | Creation from mud on the skin, A1263.3. | From mud on the skin (rarely: from under the fingernails), the character creates the earth, people or other creatures. | 36 | 62 |
| F9f1 In F9 family | Snake inside a woman. | Inside the woman there is a snake (snakes, scorpions, just poison) that comes out of her mouth. {Motifs F9f1 and K100C are almost identical, but the first can be included in the cosmological-etiological category and is associated with the idea of a dangerous woman, while the second belongs to the adventure category}. | 36 | 59 |
| H1c In H1 family | Trampled grave. | People cease to be reborn (or no longer come to the living) after the deceased is buried in the ground for the first time or someone tramples the earth on a fresh grave, preventing the deceased from rising from the grave. | 36 | 40 |
| H33 | Children walk from birth. | At first, children walked, had to walk, or could walk immediately after birth. | 36 | 35 |
| I115a In I115 family | Orion and the Pleiades – men and women. | In the same narrative or ritual context, Orion and the Pleiades are contrasted with each other as a man or men and a woman or women. (Orion is usually associated with the masculine principle, and the Pleiades with the feminine; among the Mentawai, d'Antracast, and Toba peoples, the opposite is true (due to regional influences? In Indonesia and eastern South America, the Pleiades are usually a group of young men). | 36 | 50 |
| I138 | Glass Mountain. | The glass mountain (tower, bridge) is mentioned as an unusual (inaccessible) locus. | 36 | 62 |
| I35c In I35 family | Craftsman god. | One of the mythological characters who, using his craft skills, first makes (usually forges) tools and natural objects; he is the patron of craftsmen (usually blacksmiths). | 36 | 62 |
| I48a In I48 family | Those who fell through the earth. | The hero's adversary descends into the underworld. | 36 | 36 |
| I80 | The thunderbolt's apprentice. | A character who finds himself in the locus of a deity responsible for atmospheric phenomena violates certain prohibitions or instructions, thereby causing excessively strong thunderstorms, rain, snowfall or wind. | 36 | 51 |
| J50 | Attempt to resurrect the dead. | The father or mother of twin heroes dies or is killed. An attempt to revive the deceased fails. | 36 | 40 |
| J52a In J52 family | Antagonist – female bear. | A she-bear or bear treacherously kills his companion, neighbour, etc., who is associated with a herbivorous animal or a weaker predator. The victim's children take revenge by killing the murderer's children or flee. See motifs J52, J54. | 36 | 19 |
| K107a3 In K107 family | Beauty and the Beast, ATU 425C. | When her father leaves, the daughter asks him to bring her a flower (leaf, etc.). The father picks it in the garden of an enchanted prince who has a monstrous appearance. The monster demands the daughter from her father and, thanks to the girl, regains his princely appearance. | 36 | 45 |
| K1h In K1 family | Walled up in a hollow. | The character finds himself inside a tree trunk or inside a rock; someone frees him by making a hole from the outside. | 36 | 58 |
| K24a In K24 family | A supernatural man hides a woman's clothes. | A man, usually of non-human nature, hides the clothes or sits on the clothes of an ordinary earthly girl. To get her clothes back, she is forced to enter into a romantic relationship with him. Traditions in which the character is a snake or dragon (ATU 425M) are marked with an asterisk*. | 36 | 39 |
| K27m In K27 family | Obtain an animal of unusual colour. | Task: to kill and bring an animal of a certain (often unusual) colour or shape. See motif K27. | 36 | 30 |
| K27z6 In K27 family | The Stone of Patience, ATU 894. | Having fallen victim to injustice and endured suffering, a young woman tells her story to certain inanimate objects (often a "stone of patience"), or her husband tells the story after learning of his wife's fate. The woman is saved, justice is restored. | 36 | 38 |
| K33b In K33 family | Friends abandon a beautiful woman. | A girl goes with her friends to the forest, to the river; everyone returns home, but she is forced to stay or return. She escapes from a dangerous creature, becomes the wife of a supernatural character, a leader, etc., or dies, but is avenged. | 36 | 56 |
| K35c In K35 family | The Dev in the Well, ATU 677, 677*, 986. | The dev (ajdaha, sea king) did not kill the man who descended to him, as people assumed, but rewarded him because he greeted him and/or answered his question correctly. | 36 | 47 |
| K65a In K65 family | Spirits fall from the sky. | After being thrown from a height or expelled, various creatures end up in different locations, acquiring corresponding functions and names. | 36 | 54 |
| K97 | Tested fear, ATU 537. | A man prepares to kill a large bird, but does not kill it. When the bird later carries him, it pretends to leave him on a rock or throw him down. In doing so, it makes it clear how frightened it was. Either the bird first drops and catches the man, and later he makes her experience fear herself (the Volyn variant is slightly different). | 36 | 38 |
| L135 | The Wanderer. | A person leaves home and finds himself in unfamiliar places. His journey is marked by encounters with various strange creatures. In the end, he either returns home or leaves the earth for another world. (With an abundance of episodes, the story often either breaks off or does not contain the initial episodes explaining the reason for the hero's departure from home). | 36 | 47 |
| L94b1 In L94 family | The demon collects the riches back into the box. | A man receives a box (bag, horn, etc.) as a gift, which he must open only at home. Driven by curiosity, he opens it on the way, and everything that should make him wealthy (houses, livestock, etc.) spills out. The demon who appears agrees to return everything, but sets a condition, the severity of which the man does not immediately understand. | 36 | 43 |
| M137 | A weak predator imitates a strong one, ATU 47D. | A weaker predator tries to imitate a stronger one, but cannot perform the actions that the strong one performs easily. | 36 | 32 |
| M142 | The Punished Tail, ATU 154. | A zoomorphic character accuses his tail of hindering his escape from pursuit (usually punishes it and dies as a result). (ATU data not entered; plot 154 includes several independent motifs; which of them are present in the traditions referred to by ATU cannot be determined without referring to the original sources). | 36 | 46 |
| M197e In M197 family | Unknown beast, ATU 1091. | A man smears himself with resin, rolls around in feathers, crawls backwards on all fours, lets his hair down, etc. The demon thinks he is facing an unknown beast. The man escapes. | 36 | 38 |
| M93 | Part of the body as a watchman | When falling asleep or going to do something else, the character tells a certain part of his body to wake him up in case of danger. The organ did not give a signal or the character himself did not listen to it, as a result, the misfortune happened. | 36 | 52 |
| H13 | The returned dead come back to life. | The character comes to the underworld, brings back the dead person or brings back their remains. The dead person comes back to life and (for a while) remains among the living. | 37 | 47 |
| H36c In H36 family | The lizard betrays man. | The lizard is to blame for the fact that man is mortal. See motif H36. | 37 | 31 |
| H36gg In H36 family | The coyote betrays man. | The coyote is to blame for the fact that humans are mortal. | 37 | 64 |
| I2 | Lightning from the eyes or mouth. | Lightning bolts fly from the eyes or mouth {specified} of a creature embodying a thunderstorm. See motif I1. | 37 | 34 |
| I27c In I27 family | Four-eyed dog. | Dogs with two spots above their eyes stand out and are usually called two- or four-eyed. | 37 | 35 |
| I43a In I43 family | Cosmic serpent. | A giant reptile, serpent, fish, or chain of fish stretches across the earth and/or supports the sky. Usually associated with the Milky Way, sometimes with a rainbow. | 37 | 78 |
| I43b In I43 family | The Milky Way – snake, fish. | The Milky Way is a reptile, fish or chain of fish. | 37 | 67 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.