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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M39a4d In M39 family | A fool sells property to a lizard | Fool sells property a lizard and believes it will pay him. Trying to get his money, he finds treasure | 4 | 4 |
| M60a3 In M60 family | The Imaginary Physician: Punishing a Scoundrel | Avenging the seized property (a pet or a bird), the hero repeatedly comes to the offender in different guises (girl, doctor, etc.) and brutally mocks him. | 4 | 4 |
| M74c In M74 family | Handsome as a woodpecker | Having noticed the woodpecker's beautiful plumage, the wolf or bear believes that the fox painted it and asks the fox to make him just as beautiful. The fox burns it alive. | 4 | 5 |
| N26 | When wheat grew on ice | said that the action took place when cultivated plants (wheat, cotton) grew on ice or salt. | 4 | 6 |
| N28f In N28 family | The water has no knots | It is said that water has no boughs or twigs | 4 | 8 |
| N9 | Who's coming closer? | Two characters discuss the rider's approach. A person with a higher social status explains that what seems like crows are actually clods of earth flying from under the horse's hooves, and what seems like snow, cloud or fog is falling from his foam or his breath. | 4 | 10 |
| A12e In A12 family | The spider – enemy of the sun and moon. | The spider attacks the sun or moon (usually causing lunar eclipses). | 5 | 5 |
| A12g In A12 family | Revenge on the moon for informing. | The character tries to eclipse the moon for telling on him. | 5 | 5 |
| A13b In A13 family | Ants eclipse the sun. | During an eclipse or at the first appearance of night, ants eclipse the sun. | 5 | 9 |
| A2F In A2 family | Suns – fruits. | Suns grow on tree branches. | 5 | 9 |
| A32j In A32 family | Shaman on the moon. | A shaman with a tambourine ascends to the moon and remains there, visible in the silhouette of the lunar spots. | 5 | 18 |
| A37c In A37 family | The arrow hits the barrier. | The character shoots an arrow into the sky, aiming to hit a celestial body or deity, but the arrow hits an obstacle blocking the target. | 5 | 8 |
| A48 | The moon obtained and lost. | A character brings the moon from another world and uses it as a lamp. Another character drops the moon, and it rises into the sky and remains there. | 5 | 4 |
| A9 | The Moon as protector of humans. | The moon-woman does not allow her son or husband, the Sun, to destroy people. | 5 | 6 |
| B122 | Infants and birds. | Birds (cranes/storks, geese or crows) carry children away to another world or bring them back from there. See motif H6c3, "The Immortal Stork". | 5 | 12 |
| b125c In b125 family | The beaver and the muskrat swapped tails. | Previously, the beaver had the same tail as the muskrat now has, and the muskrat had the same tail as the beaver. | 5 | 5 |
| B24a In B24 family | Transformation into wild pigs: a circle of feathers. | After a character surrounds a group of people with a circle of feathers or throws feathers into their dwellings, the people turn into wild pigs or peccaries. | 5 | 5 |
| B2f2 In B2 family | Carries an unburied corpse. | The character carries the body of the deceased for a long time, unable to bury it or not knowing how to do so, but eventually buries the body in the ground. | 5 | 6 |
| B2g In B2 family | The chameleon walks on soft ground. | The chameleon walked on the ground when it had not yet hardened. | 5 | 8 |
| B49b In B49 family | Cow teats. | In the past, cows had more teats on their udders than they do now. | 5 | 6 |
| B74b In B74 family | The wedding of the owl and the moon. | The owl is forced to part with the moon and now cries out when it sees the moon. Usually, the story tells how the marriage of the owl and the moon fell apart or did not take place. | 5 | 6 |
| B7d In B7 family | Water pours from a bone. | Water pours from a broken bone, flooding the earth. | 5 | 5 |
| B93a In B93 family | Bird bridge over the heavenly river. | Once a year, birds form a bridge across the heavenly river with their bodies. Usually, the feathers on their heads are worn away as a result. | 5 | 9 |
| B95 | Burnt sphincter. | The appearance of the sphincter or buttocks is explained by the fact that a certain character burned his backside. | 5 | 4 |
| B95A In B95 family | The trickster punishes his own backside. | To punish his own backside for misbehaviour, the trickster burns it. | 5 | 4 |
| c6h1 In c6 family | Earth was taken from the belly of an invertebrate. | The earth brought from the underworld was found in the belly of a worm or insect, from where it was taken. | 5 | 6 |
| E15b In E15 family | Birds sew a boat. | Bird women sew the birch bark covering of the hero's boat. See motif E15. | 5 | 5 |
| E38c In E38 family | The first humans are mute. | The first humans were mute and began to speak after being struck by something, made to laugh, etc. | 5 | 5 |
| F20a In F20 family | People and dogs. | At first, people mated as dogs do now, but then it became as it is now. | 5 | 7 |
| F21 | Penis stuck in a tree. | While the character copulates with a woman, she turns into a tree or a rock. His penis gets stuck in her. | 5 | 5 |
| F28a2 In F28 family | Penises grow in the field. | The owner of the field, either intentionally or having misheard the question, replies that he grows penises. After that, penises grow in the field instead of crops. | 5 | 5 |
| F43b In F43 family | Women hide underground. | Leaving the men, the women of the community of the first ancestors hide in a hole underground. | 5 | 11 |
| F49B In F49 family | In a distant land, they do not know how to give birth. | The hero comes to a people whose women do not know how to give birth. See motif F49. | 5 | 3 |
| F75 | Siren and tapir. | A hunter sees a tapir summoning a woman who lives in the water with a secret signal; she emerges from the lake or river, and the tapir mates with her. The hunter himself summons the woman and becomes her lover. | 5 | 8 |
| G12 | Tree – human. | A huge tree bearing various fruits and/or containing water in its trunk grows out of a human body or is a transformed human being. | 5 | 11 |
| G14 | The swallowed one brings plants. | A man swallowed by a water monster is carried away to an underwater or overseas world, obtains plants, and returns to people. | 5 | 5 |
| H12a In H12 family | Dead wife haunts her husband. | The wife dies, the husband comes for her, or he kills her himself for adultery; she turns into a monster and haunts him. | 5 | 9 |
| H1bb In H1 family | They did not spare the dog. | One character refuses to resurrect another's beloved dog, and this conflict is linked to the loss of the ability to resurrect people. | 5 | 5 |
| H28b In H28 family | Mosquitoes made from animal wool. | Shorn hairs on animal skins or ash and smoke from burnt skins covered with wool turn into blood-sucking insects. | 5 | 6 |
| H38 | The owner of the valuables comes to retrieve them. | A supernatural character changes appearance and comes to the hero's children (less often to the hero himself). Unaware of the trick, they hand over the magical object they have obtained to its former owner, and the character disappears with it. | 5 | 5 |
| H54c In H54 family | Crucified eyelids. | The character's eyelids are crucified so that he cannot close them, or he does so himself on the advice of another. | 5 | 7 |
| I132a In I132 family | Girl on the swings of the sun. | A girl sits on a swing and it lifts her up to the sky. | 5 | 5 |
| I15a In I15 family | Vertical incision of the mouth. | Due to ignorance or haste, the mouth of anthropomorphic creatures is first cut vertically. | 5 | 5 |
| I22g1 In I22 family | Colliding stones. | In another world, the hero sees many strange things, including colliding stones (but they do not block his path). | 5 | 5 |
| I35b1 In I35 family | Icy sky. | The sky is made of ice. | 5 | 3 |
| I55a In I55 family | Stars – lakes. | Stars – lakes on one of the heavenly tiers. | 5 | 7 |
| I81a1 In I81 family | Crab and snake. | The struggle between the crab and the snake (eel) determines the features of the relief of a particular area or has cosmic proportions. | 5 | 6 |
| J22c In J22 family | Conjoined women. | There is a demonic character in the form of Siamese twins – two semi-fused women. | 5 | 5 |
| J25a1 In J25 family | A child born in a grave saves his mother. | A woman dies, but remains incorrupt and gives birth to a child in the grave. He is found and brings his mother back to life. | 5 | 4 |
| j4c In j4 family | The young man from the egg. | An egg remains from the deceased water character. The young hero who emerges from it avenges his father. | 5 | 6 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.