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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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| M81e2 In M81 family | It attracts people and animals | By playing an instrument or otherwise, a character is able to attract an animal or person far away from him. | 5 | 5 |
| M82a In M82 family | Tail bells: tied unnoticed | One animal person inconspicuously ties rattles to the tail of another. The latter thinks that he is pursued and runs in panic | 5 | 8 |
| M89a In M89 family | Horned hyena | Only horned animals are allowed to attend the festival. The hyena makes fake horns for itself, exposed. | 5 | 4 |
| N19 | It's still lame | fairy-tale text ends with a formula stating that one or two people who met the narrator after the fabulous feast or were present directly at it at the festival, became bald/lame as a result of hot food and/or a bone or bowl thrown on the head. | 5 | 5 |
| N21a In N21 family | Pea-bogatyr | After swallowing a pea, a woman gives birth to a mighty hero. | 5 | 8 |
| A21a In A21 family | The released moon. | The moon is an object that was accidentally released by its owners or stolen from them and ended up in the sky. | 6 | 10 |
| A22b In A22 family | Hot fire and cold embers. | The sun and its companion burn up. The companion burns in a less intense fire (is thrown into the ashes, etc.); therefore, the moon (or star) is cold. See motif A22. | 6 | 1 |
| B16b In B16 family | The wolverine makes the sea salty. | The sea is salty because a wolverine or a fox bathed in it or urinated in it. | 6 | 8 |
| B1b In B1 family | Two creators. | Two female progenitors participate in the process of creation. The actions of one bring good, the other evil. | 6 | 7 |
| B1e In B1 family | The hero and his ten brothers. | The protagonist of the narrative is one of many (seven or more) brothers with whom he is in conflict, but who are not his irreconcilable enemies. | 6 | 13 |
| B30a In B30 family | The slain person turns into a fish. | A fish emerges from the remains of a killed person or creature. At first, it is concentrated in one place, then spreads throughout the water. | 6 | 16 |
| B32 | Women turn into fish. | As a result of conflict with their husbands, women turn into fish. | 6 | 10 |
| b33e2 In b33 family | March breaks the bull's horns. | The severity of the cold in early spring is said to break the horns of large hoofed animals. | 6 | 5 |
| B36b In B36 family | Birds acquire voices. | Birds find their voices by pecking at a large reptile and smearing themselves with the fluids that flow out of its body. | 6 | 7 |
| B42a In B42 family | Blood or fat sprinkled on the ground. | Hunters chase a bear across the sky and kill it in August-October. The bear's blood or fat falls to the ground in the form of dew or colours the foliage red. See motif B42. | 6 | 4 |
| B49a In B49 family | How many offspring per year. | Powerful animals could have many cubs, but now they give birth to only one every few years. | 6 | 7 |
| B5c In B5 family | Mother and daughter at the beginning of time. | At the beginning of time, there are an old woman and a young woman. One or both of them conceive in a miraculous way. A son or twins are born, who settle the world. | 6 | 15 |
| B66 | The rope turns into vines. | Characters climb to the sky using a rope or chain of arrows; when it falls to the ground, it turns into forest vines. See motif J47. | 6 | 6 |
| B68a In B68 family | The bird is punished: let it carry another. | Birds quarrel, and the one who claimed high status cripples the weak one. For this, the others order her to carry the crippled one on her back. | 6 | 9 |
| B75b In B75 family | Sounds of the era of creation: the creaking of trees. | The creaking or crackling of trees is the voice of a transformed character. | 6 | 9 |
| B77c In B77 family | The serpent pushed back the sky. | A snake-like creature pushes the sky away from the earth. See motif B77. | 6 | 5 |
| B88 | Job. | A man's children all die. He turns to God with a request to explain why he is suffering so much. | 6 | 7 |
| C21 | Drought. | During a severe drought, birds (and animals) go in search of the rainmakers and bring them back. | 6 | 6 |
| C34a In C34 family | Buried in the sand. | A supernatural character goes with people to catch fish or lives on the sand by the river; he is buried in the sand or thrown into the river, into a swamp, or otherwise persecuted. Usually, he himself or his father sends a flood. | 6 | 7 |
| C6h In C6 family | An insect brings soil. | The insect brings soil (from the bottom of the sea or from somewhere far away). | 6 | 10 |
| C8a1 In C8 family | Let the thread enter the eye. | Finding themselves alone and without other marriage partners, a brother and sister make their marriage possible by the occurrence of an incredible event: a thread far from the needle must enter the eye of the needle. | 6 | 11 |
| C8c1 In C8 family | Father and daughter give birth to humans. | At the beginning of time or after the destruction of the rest of humanity, a father and daughter (daughters) remain. They marry and give rise to humans or certain ethnic groups. | 6 | 6 |
| C8D In C8 family | Having had smallpox, they did not recognise each other. | A brother and sister survived the flood. They married after having had smallpox and therefore did not recognise each other. | 6 | 9 |
| c8f In c8 family | Salvation in a drum during the flood. | During the flood, a brother and sister float in a drum. | 6 | 11 |
| D2a In D2 family | Mother dies giving birth to fire or the sun. | A woman gives birth to a son who is the embodiment of fire or the sun and dies from burns. | 6 | 13 |
| D4h1 In D4 family | The robin obtains fire. | A small songbird (redstart, robin, wren) obtains fire for humans. | 6 | 12 |
| E14a In E14 family | Masks reproduce slain demons. | People kill demons, examine their bodies, make ritual costumes and masks, reproducing the appearance of the slain. | 6 | 6 |
| E15a In E15 family | The boat as a bird's breastbone. | The bow of the boat is modelled on a bird's breastbone. | 6 | 10 |
| E19 | The origin of drugs. | Narcotic plants arise from the body of a human being torn to pieces by others. | 6 | 10 |
| E24 | Knees and elbows. | Joints appeared in humans after the first ancestor (or several first ancestors) fell from a height, breaking their arms and legs. | 6 | 10 |
| E6a In E6 family | The path through water. | People walk across a (frozen) body of water to reach their current place of residence, while some remain on the other side or drown. | 6 | 12 |
| F100 | Test of chastity (queen and maid). | A magic potion reveals that the only chaste woman is the maid, an orphan, etc. The king chooses the maid. | 6 | 6 |
| F26 | Cause of menstruation: loss of sacred objects. | The transfer of sacred musical instruments (horns, trumpets) from women to men is associated with the onset of menstruation in women. | 6 | 10 |
| F51a In F51 family | Aggressive sister. | After incest is discovered, the sister openly demands her brother as her husband, turns into a monster, and kills people. | 6 | 6 |
| F51d In F51 family | Ginseng child. | Ginseng roots – boys or girls who help the hero. | 6 | 8 |
| F73a In F73 family | The vulva as a wound (first humans). | The vulva is an unhealed wound on the body of the first women, or the first humans did not copulate because they thought that the vulva was a wound. | 6 | 6 |
| F85 | The Moon: women against men. | The moon/moon leads women in their confrontation with men or takes women away from men. | 6 | 5 |
| F93a In F93 family | The talking penis and the mother-in-law. | A man's penis begins to talk incessantly, falling silent only after his mother-in-law takes it in her hand. | 6 | 3 |
| F97a In F97 family | The snake loses its legs. | The snake is to blame for others eating food forbidden by the deity. For this, it is deprived of the limbs it once had. {The Efik variant may not be related to the biblical one, but the South Asian ones are most likely related. | 6 | 6 |
| G19 | Burnt men bring plants. | After a conflict in the community of the first ancestors, a group of men or young people (pareisi: boy and girl) burn in a bonfire (jump over it, etc.). As a result, people acquire cultivated plants, mainly corn. | 6 | 7 |
| G27 | Harvest from urine. | Cultivated plants appear together with urine or in the place where the hero urinated. | 6 | 10 |
| G8e In G8 family | Cutting down a tree on the moon. | A character unsuccessfully cuts down a tree growing on the moon. | 6 | 9 |
| G8g In G8 family | The Great Oak and Its Inhabitants. | There is a unique tree that must be bent or felled. Different creatures inhabit its separate parts and/or objects of special importance are made from its wood. | 6 | 7 |
| H24g In H24 family | Woman in a vessel. | A woman returned from the other world or obtained there disappears when a man opens the vessel in which she is kept prematurely. | 6 | 8 |
| H34d In H34 family | A piece bitten off the sky. | A zoomorphic character climbs or attempts to climb up to the sky or the moon to bite off a piece of them. | 6 | 8 |
Tradition and narrative counts are the stored catalogue totals for each entry.