| Motif | Name | Description |
| a14 | Eclipses: relations between the Sun and the Moon | Coming together of the Sun and the Moon is the reason of their eclipses |
| a14a | The conflict between the Sun and the Moon | The Sun and the Moon are or were enemies, either permanently or in particular situations |
| b2a | The female earth | The earth is a female person (alone or together with a male person); she is female being or associated with a woman |
| b2d | Marriage of the sky and the earth | The male Sky (the Sun, the Thunder, the creator of the sky) marries the female Earth (or its female creator) or the female Sky marries the male Earth |
| b2f | Difficult funerals | (While the earth is still absent or liquid), a bird buries its relative in its own head that usually explains its appearance (a swell on its beak, a crest of feathers) or unpleasant smell |
| b2f1 | Buried in a head | (While the earth is still absent or liquid), a bird buries its relative in its own head that usually explains its appearance (a swell on its beak, a crest of feathers) or unpleasant smell |
| b3 | A primeval swamp | Initially the earth is a swamp, water and dry land are not separated from each other |
| b3a | Primeval waters | Water is the original element, the dry earth appears later |
| b3b | Earth grows big | Original earth was small and later increased in size or the fertile soil grew from a small amount of original substance |
| b3e | Earth falls on waters | In the beginning there are only air and water. 1) Person descends from the sky, creates the dry land or a hard support created for her or him grows into the earth. 2) The earth is sent or dropped from the sky, put on the surface of the water. 3) The earth is brought from somewhere (not from the underworld) and put on the water |
| b42 | Cosmic hunt | Certain stars or constellations are interpreted as hunters, their dogs and game that the hunters pursue |
| b42r | The Belt of Orion: one runs after another | Three stars of the Belt of Orion are three persons or animals who pursue each other |
| b77 | Primeval sky close to earth | Originally the sky was close to the earth, then it has risen up |
| b98 | The bat between birds and animals | Bat (rare: ostrich) makes attempts to join sometimes animals and sometime birds or is excluded from both categories |
| b98a | Bat becomes an outcast | The bat becomes an outcast among other creatures (usually after it makes attempts to join first animals and then birds or vice versa) |
| b98b | Bat and funerals | Bat is in conflict with other creatures because of the incident related to somebody's death or funerals |
| c5b | Animal-scouts | During the creation of the world or after the world cataclysm animals run around making the earth big, reporting about its condition or they are sent to report the size of the growing earth |
| d4l | Fire from the sky | First fire is sent to earth from the sky or the ancestors ascend to the sky and bring from there fire or warmth |
| d9 | Fire and vulture | Raven or other big dark-feathered bird scavenger is the owner, personification, spouse, obtainer or stealer of fire, daylight, or the Sun |
| e5c | People from the sky | The first people or first anthropomorphic divine beings descend to earth from the sky. |
| e9c | Ungulate animal-wife | A man marries a woman who initially has guise of an ungulate animal (buffalo, elk, derr, etc.) |
| f2 | Pregnant limb | Child is born from a tumor or swelling on person's body (on thigh, knee, finger, etc.) or is temporarily placed there or child grows from blood that flew out from a cut |
| f35 | Feeding with the paramour’s meat | Person feeds another with the meat of his or her sexual partner who cooks or eats it without knowing whose meat it is |
| f40b | A man in a village of women | A man gets into the village of women. Usually he has to satisfy every woman against his will or every woman claims him for herself |
| f45 | The Amazons | There are (or were) women who live apart from men in their own village or villages |
| f61 | Trickster rapes a woman who carries him on her back | A man pretends to be weak, ill or injured, asks a woman to carry him on her back. When she agrees, he makes attempt to copulate with her |
| f65 | The false burial | To realize his or her secret desire (illicit sex, refusal to share food with relations), person pretends to die and is abandoned at a burial place |
| f65a | Death feigned to meet paramour | Person pretends to die. His or her wife or husband abandons him or her on a burial place. He or she marries his or her paramour |
| f8 | Women and men come together | Initially women and men live apart from each other. Later they meet each other and become to live together |
| f86 | Conditional signal | Person summons with a certain signal a non-human being (usually his or her sexual partner or his or her protégé). Another person spies, uses the same signal or pronounces the same words and kills the being who comes to him (or uses this being sexually himself) |
| g23 | Alive being turns into many objects | Person or creature is transformed. Separate parts of its (his, her) body give origin to different objects or creatures (only etiological narratives are considered) |
| g9a | Cultivated field turns into the virgin soil | People break ground but in the morning it is intact again |
| h16a | Rivers of blood | Rivers (lakes) of blood (also of puss, bones, sweat or water used for washing of corpses) are mentioned in narratives (in different context) |
| h34d | Piece of sky bitten off | Animal person climbs (or attempts to climb) to the sky or to the Moon to bite off a piece of it |
| h34d1 | Edible sky | Sky or sky objects were edible but later this source of food became inaccessible or used only by the inhabitants of the distant land where the sky and the earth meet |
| h39 | Snakes become dangerous (the spilled poison) | Certain creatures (snakes, insects) get access to special substance that proved to be out of control and become poisonous or immortal; creatures obtain their characteristics (usually becomes poisonous) after drinking or licking a particular medicine |
| h43 | One creates the body, another the soul | One supernatural creates the body of the first people, another revives them |
| h47 | Offended sky or earth | The sky (or the earth) is offended by people’s behavior in respect to it and reacts accordingly (e.g. rises higher than it was before) |
| h7 | The personified Death | Death (also Old Age, Disease, etc.) is a particular person not identical with the Master of the Dead. He kills people usually carrying away their souls |
| h9 | Strong and weak | People are mortal because they have been likened to something subject to decay and easy destruction (e.g. to the soft wood and not to the stone) |
| i108 | The Pleiades are a person | The Pleiades are only one anthropomorphic being, not several persons |
| i116 | Milky Way is the border between the seasons | The Milky Way is the border-line between seasons of the year or parts of the universe (the wet and the dry seasons, the sky and the earth, etc.) |
| i35c | God the craftsman | One of mythological characters using his skills in crafts creates for the first time tools and valuable cultural and natural objects; is a patron of craftsmen (usually of blacksmiths) |
| i41 | Rainbow serpent | Rainbow is a reptile (usually a snake) or (more rare) a fish, or it is related to snake, to its tongue, breath, or to scorpion's tail |
| i48a | Falling down into the underworld | At the terminal part of the narrative the antagonist of the hero descends into the underworld |
| i5 | Thunder is an animal | Thunder looks like a quadruped mammal (pig, buffalo, camel, anteater, tapir, dog, cat, leopard, monkey, etc.) |
| i88 | Animal with many tails | There is a zoomorphic being with many tails |
| i92 | Rainbow transforms sex | Person who gets to walk under, over or through the rainbow changes his or her sex |
| i98a | The Pleiades are a hen with its chickens | The Pleiades are a brooding hen, hen with its chickens, chickens |
| j42 | Waters split apart | When person comes to the water body, waters are split apart so the person reaches the other bank walking on the dry ground |
| k117a | To make a mute woman speak | A girl who keeps silence is promised to one who would make her speak; a man with much difficulty makes his magic wife speak |
| k118 | The prohibited room | Master of the house allows person to feel himself (herself) free bit not to look into particular place. The person breaks prohibition |
| k153 | Grateful animals, ungrateful man | Человек оказывает услугу нескольким (потенциально опасным) животным и другому человеку. Благодарные животные помогают ему, а человек предает и вредит |
| k24 | Stolen clothes of supernatural woman | Women (rare: men) who possess supernatural power and usually come from a non-human world (from sky, from under the water, they are winged beings, bird- or animal-persons; rare: a girl of higher social status than the hero) take off their clothes (feather skins and the like) or part of it. Because a person hides the clothes (of one of them), their owner(s) have (has) to marry him or help him (rare: her) |
| k25 | Magic wife | A man consciously marries a woman related to the non-human world |
| k25a1 | Magic wife finds her clothes | Magic wife abandons her mortal husband when she finds her clothes (often, her feathers if she is a bird-woman), makes herself the new clothes, receives them from her kin or her husband gives her her clothing believing that she will not abandon him. (Versions with magic wife abandoning her husband because she feels herself offended is not alternative to the “found clothes but in most of the texts these motifs are not combined) |
| k33 | Drowned woman remains alive | A young woman is transformed into an animal, pushed into the water, into the underworld or she herself has to plunge into water (acquire animal form). Her connection with the human world is not completely lost, however, and usually she is helped to return to the people |
| k56 | The kind and the unkind girls | One of (step)sisters, co-spouses or young female neighbors meets a being that is able to reward and to punish. She behaves herself properly and is rewarded. Another (other) girl comes to the same being but behaves in a wrong way and is punished (not rewarded). |
| k56a2 | If asked to do in a bad way, do otherwise | Person (usually a girl) gets to the powerful person (usually an old woman) who asks her to act in a strange and harsh way (to put room in disorder, to bring unclean water, and the like). The person does not according to order but in a rationale and polite way and is recompensed. Another person acts according to the direct sense of the words and is punished |
| k76 | A strange son | A boy born into a family or found by his adoptive parents has a strange guise (ball of meat, nut, bag, half of a man, an animal). He possesses magic power, becomes a handsome man and usually marries a girl of high social status. The magic spouse of a princess originally has a non-human or monstrous appearance |
| k80c2 | The treasure finders who murder one another | Three (two, more) men find (rob) a treasure. One of them goes away for a while. Those who stay kill him when he returns but die later from eating food (drinking wine) which he had poisoned |
| k8aa | Jonah: swallowed by bird | Giant bird swallows people. The hero kills the bird and lets people free or being swallowed himself remains alive and comes out |
| k8c | Jonah: swallowed by terrestrial animal | Person gets into the belly of ground animal or bird. He kills it from the inside and/or returns to earth by himself (i.e. not extracted by other people) |
| k99a1 | Smart man is rescued from prison | An imprisoned man is rescued and exalted because only he gets to resolve problems that trouble the king or to save the princess (prince, the king himself) |
| l106 | Lost object claimed back | An antagonist makes a demand to the hero which is correct in form but really is unjustified. The hero fulfills the claims or is punished. Now antagonist takes an object or animal possessed by the hero, is unable to give it back and is punished |
| l106b | Journey to the other world in search of the lost object | In search of a lost object, usually carried away by water or wind, a girl or (rare) a boy comes to a powerful person, gets the object back and/or is rewarded. The object is related to the everyday life, it has no ritual significance and is not a weapon |
| l108 | The wolf and the kids | An (animal) person gives a signal (special song, etc.) to his relative or friend who lets him or her in. Antagonist imitates the person's voice or guise and the relative lets him in |
| l113 | The ogre bridegroom | A girl (rejects suitors for a long time but at last) falls in love with a handsome man who proves to be a demon or animal. Usually she eventually escapes from him |
| l115 | Perfect gentleman | A girl who rejected suitors finds at last a really handsome man. He escorts her to his place and distributes on the way all his clothes and body parts that he loaned before. Only his skull (head) remains |
| l116 | Singing girl in a bag | A cannibal (old man, Gipsy, etc.) carries away a girl. He walks from village to village forcing her sing or dance. People recognize her (or her voice) and release her |
| l121 | Demonic woman marries hunter to kill him | A wild animal, ogress or ogre turns into woman and marries a hunter with a special aim to kill him. Usually she goes with the hunter to the forest and acquires there her real guise |
| l46 | Head downward | Person ascends, descends, walks head downward or sees the world upside down |
| l53 | Stones into the maw | A monstrous being is killed or neutralized by (burning hot) stones (pieces of metal, heavy fruits, etc.) thrown into its maw or anus or the being retreats when they menace to throw a stone into its maw |
| l65b | Dogs save their master | A demonic woman or (rare) her paramour or a monster is going to kill a man usually after driving him up a tree. At the last moment the man's dogs or other animals or birds who are the man's pets come and kill the demon |
| l65b3 | The escape on the tree | Persons climbs a tree and thanks to this escapes from a demon (who usually tries to fell the tree) |
| l94c | Son or daughter to be sacrificed | Asking the deity to destroy an enemy, a person promises that if his (her) plea will be granted he (she) would sacrifice anybody who will come to meet him (her) at home. His (her) own son or daughter comes. |
| m104 | Make believe killing of kinsfolk | Person conceals his or her close relatives (children, mother, brothers) and tells another that he or she has killed them. Another believes and agrees to kill his or her own children, mother, etc. |
| m105 | Make believe killing of mother | Person conceals his mother or (rare) wife or mother-in-law, tells another that he has killed or sold her, another really kills or sells his mother (wife, mother-in-law) |
| m106 | Meaningful name | Person lies that his name is so and so. Others understand it not as a name but as a common word and behave accordingly |
| m106c | My name is “For the Guests” | Person tells his companions that his name is “The Guest”, “For the Guests” etc. and eats alone all the food prepared for all of them |
| m112 | Animals dig a well | An animal person refuses to dig or clean a source of drinking water together with other animals or birds but takes advantage of the results of the work |
| m116 | Wisdom of hidden old man saves kingdom | People are ordered to kill their fathers or (rare) mothers (the Nyoro: to deprive them of power and property; the Baluch: not to take them setting off for the journey). An old man concealed by his son helps to resolve difficult problem |
| m118 | Source of values is destroyed imprudently | Person or animal gets access to values that are inside an animal, a tree, a rock or other enclosure. Later he himself or more often somebody else tries to do the same but destroys source of values, blocks access to it or makes it too dangerous |
| m126 | The speaking skull | Person comes across speaking head, skull or tortoise and tells others about his experience. When the information is controlled, the skull keeps silence and the man is punished as a liar |
| m156 | The ungrateful one returned to captivity | An (animal) person saves a dangerous animal from a snare or the like. The saved one is going to kill his savior but the third person saves the second (usually tricks the first one to captivity again) |
| m156a | Objects that give the answers | Dangerous animal seeks to kill a person or other animal who rescued it from captivity. The dangerous animal and its victim agree to ask somebody else if a good deed should be repayed with a bad one. Inanimate objects are among those who answer to this question |
| m172 | The hare makes the lion his horse | To demonstrate that a strong animal is his slave or his riding animal, a weak animal tricks the strong one to carry him. People believe that the strong one is really a slave of the weak one |
| m172 | The hare makes the lion his horse | To demonstrate that a strong animal is his slave or his riding animal, a weak animal tricks the strong one to carry him. People believe that the strong one is really a slave of the weak one |
| m182 | The tarbaby | The (animal) person threatens another to beat him and sticks to him with all his limbs in succession. Usually it is a figure smeared with some sticky substance that the person takes for somebody alive |
| m23 | Mock plea | Person or creature pretends to be afraid of a particular sort of treatment that really cannot do him any harm |
| m29k | The turtle (tortoise, toad, frog) wins thanks to his smartness | Being smart and persistent, the turtle (toad, frog) overcomes strong adversaries |
| m29k1 Not used in statistics | The turtle (toad, frog) is a tricky failure | A turtle (tortoise, toad, frog) behaves foolishly creating serious problems for himself |
| m29w3 | The lion is a failure | Because of its stupidity and unsocial behavior, the lion suffers a reverse, is injured or dies |
| m30 | Trickster falls down | Person or creature who has no wings or is unable to fly on a long distance attempts to ascend to the sky or to fly far away but falls down or, deprived of his wings, remains in a place from which he is unable to return |
| m30c | Flying person falls down after breaking taboo | Person flies across the air but falls down when, despite warning, looks down to earth, flies above villages, becomes to talk, etc. |
| m30d | The tortoise lets itself be carried by birds | An animal (usually a tortoise) is carried up into the air by two birds who hold onto a stick which the tortoise holds in its mouth |
| m42 | Eyes: taken out of orbits and lost | Person loses his eyes because of his playfulness or negligence. He makes new eyes of some substance or/and takes eyes of another person |
| m5 | Provoked insult | Being in a situation when his life depends on a good will of a demon or animal, person either resists or does not resist the temptation to insult or to beat, bite, etc. the latter |
| m57d | Beat, cudgel! | Person gets one by one magic objects that bring food or treasure. Other people replace them with common objects or take them away by force. The person takes his property back (usually beating the thieves with magic cudgel or whip) |
| m62a | Quarrel provoked by action [not in correlation table] | Hero imperceptibly causes detriment to two persons or creatures. They accuse each other and fight |
| m62c | Pulling a rope | A weak animal-person agrees separately with two strong ones to pull a rope with him. They do not know that are engaged into tug-of-war with each other or that the rope is tied to a tree. (In New World motif borrowed from Afroamericans) |
| n3 | Hungry fingers | One of the fingers says that he is hungry and/or suggests to steal something. Other fingers express their opinion on this behalf. |