| Motif | Name | Description |
| a3 | Male sun and female moon | The Moon is female or bisexual, the Sun is male |
| a32b | The Moon toad | Frog or toad are seen in the moon or the Moon is associated with them |
| a4 | Female sun | The Sun is female, the Moon is male or (more rare) also female |
| a5 | The Sun and the Moon are males | The Moon is male, the Sun is also male or (much more rare) asexual |
| a7 | The sun pursues the moon | The Sun and the Moon are two persons one of which is pursuing another in the sky or pursued him or her when they were rising to the sky from the earth |
| a8b | The Sun in the land of the dead | When the Sun descends below the horizon, it shines to the anthropomorphic denizens of the netherworld (the dead, dwarfs, etc.) |
| b13a | Stream follows person | A stream of water (with a monster in it) pursues person who tries to escape from it |
| 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 |
| b30b | Murdered person turns into game animals | Different game animals emerge from remains of a murdered person |
| b41 | The talking dog | Because the dog was spreading some information, altercated with its masters, was talking in a wrong time, etc. it lost the ability to speak |
| b53 | Creatures or objects from cut off genitals | Supernaturally big genitals are cut off and turn into snakes or other creatures and objects |
| b9 | Water in the tree trunk | There is enormous amount of water inside a trunk of a tree or a tree turns into water |
| c8 | The couple of close relations originates the mankind | In the beginning of time or after the natural disaster brother and sister, mother and son, or father and daughters are the only human beings. They marry and the present day people are their descendents |
| c8aa | Brother and sister beget the people | In the beginning of time or after the natural disaster brother and sister are the only human beings. They marry and the present day people are their descendents |
| d11 | Food baked in armpits | Before fire became known, people prepared food using warmth of their bodies (usually putting food in their armpits); or a person keeps fire in his or her armpits |
| d12 | Food baked in the sun | First people or inhabitants of a distant country cook food in the sun; or fire owner lies that he or she cooks food in the sun |
| d4a | Theft of fire | Fire is stolen from its original owner or brought back to the people from somebody who had stolen it before |
| d4e1 | The dog and the fire | Dog obtains fire, daylight or the Sun or steals them |
| d5 | Woman as the owner of the fire | Female person is the owner or inventor (but not the personification) of the fire |
| e30 | The make-believe spouse of wood | Person does not have a spouse, uses wooden fakes for his wife or her husband |
| e30a | Make-believe spouse replaced with alive person | Person does not have a spouse, uses wooden fakes for his wife or her husband till alive person comes to replace it |
| e32 | People born from trees | First people are born by trees or come out of a tree, flower, reed |
| e5a | Mankind ascends from the underworld | The first people (or only the first men or the first women) are not created but come to earth from the underworld (from a cave) or from a small enclosure under the earth or on its surface (tree trunk, rock, gourd, etc.). Many people of both sexes and of different ages or people and different species of animals come out together |
| e5aa | People grew like a grass | The first people grew or crawled out of the earth like a grass, mushrooms, worms, etc. |
| e5b | First couple from the underworld | First man (a group of brothers) or first human couple come out from the underworld (a cave) or from a small enclosure on its surface (tussock, reed, tree, rock, gourd) |
| e5c | People from the sky | The first people or first anthropomorphic divine beings descend to earth from the sky. |
| e8a | People from the fruits | Women or people in general come out of the fruits (orten the coconuts) or (more rare) leaves of the cocos palm spontaneously turn into women |
| f16 | Men and women: exchange of anatomical characteristics | Initially men possessed women's biological traits and vice versa (beard, menses, breasts, bearing children) |
| f18a | The long penis | Penis is so long that he can turn it round his waist or send into a woman who is at a long distance from him. (Only texts considered to describe real events and beings and not anecdotes are included) |
| f30 | Snake paramour | A woman or a girl takes a snake, an eel (i.e. Pacific snake-eel), a lizard, or a worm for husband or paramour. People kill or badly injure him, the woman and/or her progeny or the woman herself is transformed into snake. Cf. motif k76b: the snake-husband becomes and remains a handsome man |
| f30a | Worm-baby | Woman is nursing a worm (caterpillar, reptile, fish) as her baby. People kill the monster |
| f34b | The paramour is not a human being | A girl (a woman, a group of women) intentionally takes a penis-being, a snake, an eel, a lizard, a worm, a big water animal or water monster or a big terrestrial mammal for paramour. People kill or maim the paramour, the woman and/or her progeny or she is transformed herself into an animal. She is blamed for her behavior |
| 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 |
| f38 | Women and sacred knowledge | Women were possessors of the sacred knowledge, sanctuaries or ritual objects which are now taboo for them or they made attempts to acquire such a knowledge or objects |
| f40a | Husband of the first women | An anthropomorphic male or an androgyne is the only possessor or leader of women |
| 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 |
| f43 | The women disappear | The women of the ancestral community kill or abandon the men |
| f45 | The Amazons | There are (or were) women who live apart from men in their own village or villages |
| f55 | What do you want? | A woman cannot understand what does her partner want. She points at, names or suggests different things. At last she points at, names or exposes her genitals. This is the right answer |
| f62 | Incognito at the feast | An (ostensibly) sick (ugly, weak, poorly clad) person remains at home when others go to the feast. The person comes by himself or herself looking like a handsome man or beautiful girl. The man (woman) does not recognize him (her) and feels against her (him) sexual interestю (All texts with motif k57, Chinderella, are also included into f62) |
| 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 |
| f80 | Primeval people have no genitals | The first men and/or women have no genitals |
| 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) |
| g13b | Fungi as a false food | Before acquisition of cultivated plants people ate fungi. Fingi is a food of non-human beings. Fungi is a false food of inferior quality |
| g18 | Person wants to be sacrificed | A person asks people to abandon him or her in the forest, to burn or drag him or her around the future garden plot, to burn her in her house, etc. People fulfill the person's wish and find cultivated plants growing on the place |
| g20 | Woman turns into plants | Food crops emerge from remains of a woman or girl |
| g23a | Alive being turns into plants | Person or creature is transformed. Separate parts of its (his, her) body give origin to different plants, mostly edible or cultivated |
| g23b | Alive being turns into nations | Different body parts of a being turn into people of different ethnic affiliation or such people receive their names and characteristics according to body parts that they got |
| g6 | Primeval tree | One of the trees is the principal, original one (emerged before all the other; ancestor of wild or cultivated plants; ocean or rivers inside it; world axis; higher than all the others; overshadows sky) |
| h12 | The alive person comes to the land of the dead after somebody’s death | The alive person comes to the land of the dead to bring back somebody who has recently died (besides stories about shamans who journey to the other world to bring back the soul of a sick person) or, having no particular aim, goes there in company of somebody who had recently died or following his or her tracks |
| h12b | Ghosts feed on excrements | Inhabitants of the land of the dead eat excrements |
| h12c | Orpheus: to return the dead wife | Husband follows his dead wife to the other world but is unable to bring her back or succeeds to do it but loses her once again |
| h34a | Controversy over conditions of life | Person has a series of suggestions how to make the world easy for living and free of hard work and death. His companion successively rejects them. Their dialogue forever defines conditions of human life |
| h36e | Death and the rat | Rat is responsible for introduction of permanent death |
| h37 | Magic device lost by a failure | Magic object, device that makes hunting or fishing easy gets into possession of a person who is unable to operate it or abuses it. The device kills or injures the failure himself, other people and/or disappears |
| h4 | The shed skin | Those who change their skin become young again |
| h5 | People and snakes | Reptiles or invertebrates possess the medicine of immortality; are contrasted with men as immortal with mortals and/or are responsible for originating of death; or a snake's bite inflicts the first death |
| i119 | The dead shake the earth | The earthquakes are produced by the dead who are in the underworld or during the earthquakes the inhabitants of the lower world try to come out; try to understand are there still living beings on earth |
| i14 | No-anus people | Person or creature has no anus opening |
| i15 | No-mouth people | Anthropomorphic beings have no mouths |
| i16 | Body anomalies of the first people | First human beings have no mouth, anus or genitals, their women do not know how to give birth |
| i27 | Chthonic canine | A dog is the lord, guard or guide of/to the land of the dead; or dogs live on the way to the land of the dead |
| i28 | Animals in the underworld | Game animals live inside a mountain, in a cave or in the underworld where they often look like humans and have a master |
| i3 | Weapon of Thunder | The lightning (and thunder) is (produced with) an object (axe, sword, mirror, belt, stones, skin, etc.) in hands of anthropomorphic being |
| i30 | Master of the dead welcomes women | Master or mistress of the realm of the dead copulates with every new human soul of the opposite sex who arrives to his or her realm |
| i31 | Master and mistress of the dead | In the Beyond, two mythological personages, one male and another female, meet the newcomers, or the same person meet the women in the female and the men in the male guise |
| 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 |
| i42 | Rainbow is a pair of creatures | Rainbow is two creatures or persons, usually a male and a female |
| i45b | Not to point at the rainbow | It to point at the rainbow, pointing finger or entire arm will rot, wither or become crooked |
| i5 | Thunder is an animal | Thunder looks like a quadruped mammal (pig, buffalo, camel, anteater, tapir, dog, cat, leopard, monkey, etc.) |
| i7 | The cloud serpent | A flying reptile produces rain, thunderstorm |
| i72 | Stars are people | Stars are people, ghosts, anthropomorphic beings (interpretations of unique star objects like Venus or Polaris as persons not considered) |
| i72a | Stars are children of the Sun and the Moon | Stars are children of the Moon and/or the Sun |
| i7c | Rain or dew is urine | When a person or creature who lives in the upper world urinates, it rains (dew falls) on earth |
| i82b | Venus is female | Morning and/or Evening Star is a female personage |
| i82c | Venus is the Moon’s wife | Venus or some other bright star seen near the eastern or western horizon is female and wife of the Moon |
| i8f | One support of the world | Only one pole or mountain supports the earth or the sky |
| i8g | Atlas | One giant supports the earth or the sky |
| i8h | A man and a woman hold the earth | Two anthropomorphic beings, a male and a female, are in the underworld and support the earth |
| j22a | Two men from one | Two men or a man and a woman appear from two halves of the cut in two anthropomorphic body or embryo; or another man appears from part of the body of the first one or from his body discharge |
| j44 | The broken bridge | Person or his helper draws his enemies on the unstable bridge and destroys it. The enemies fall into water, into a precipice |
| j64 | Person moves on clouds of smoke | Not being burned in a fire, person ascends to the sky or gets across a river on clouds of smoke |
| k15a | Substituted weapon | Hero substitutes powerful person's weapon or amulet with a fake |
| k19a | Star-wife | A man maries a star-woman |
| k2 | The destroyed ladder | Hero climbs up (e.g. to a tree) or down (e.g. into a deep cave) by ladder, rope, from branch to branch, etc. The rope etc. breaks or is intentionally destroyed and the hero cannot return to the ground. (All cases of motif K2A, besides the Koreans, also contain motif K2) |
| k25 | Magic wife | A man consciously marries a woman related to the non-human world |
| k25 | Magic wife | A man consciously marries a woman related to the non-human world |
| k25a6 | Magic wife does not forgive the unfaithfulness of the man | A wife from the non-human world agrees to live with the mortal man but abandons him when he becomes unfaithful to her (when he visits his mortal wife) |
| k25e | Magic wife is an ancestor | All humans, members of a particular ethnic or social group or a ruling dynasty are believed to descend from a mortal man and a woman of supernatural origin |
| k26 | A hole in the firmament | Finding a hole in the ground or making it, person gets to see below another world. Usually the earth is seen from the sky |
| k28 | Father or uncle is rival and enemy | Maternal uncle or father (or grandfather if he replaces father who is not mentioned) of the young man is his rival or enemy and tries to kill him |
| k29b | Posthole murder | Hero is asked to climb into a hole or pit. When he does it, they fill it with soil or throw down a post, a stone, etc. The hero demonstrates his magic capacities coming back uninjured |
| k31 | Wooden seal | Person makes a sea mammal or fish of wood, it carries another person or persons into the open sea or kills him or them |
| k32 | The false wife | An ugly, old, lazy, etc. woman or (in Chaco) a male trickster comes to man under disguise of his wife or bride who is driven out, confined to the underworld, killed, etc. |
| k32f | Bird-son rescues his adopted mother | An evil spirit abandons a girl or a young woman in a tree or islet. She takes care for a nestling of bird of prey, he grows big, rescues her |
| k56b | The worthy man is rewarded, the unworthy punished | First one, then another man meets a powerful person or persons. The first man is worthy and rewarded with treasure, prestige or the like. The second man (or two men) follows him, behaves in a wrong way and is punished |
| l105 | Invisible missile | Animal, fish or person wounded by hero runs or swims away, usually with the man's projectile in his or her body. Local doctors are not able to cure the wound (usually because they do not see the projectile). The hero or his companion comes to the place where the wounded one lives and cures him or her (usually extracting his projectile from the wound) |
| 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 |
| l107 | The ear-sleepers | Anthropomorphic beings have huge ears (use them for blankets, umbrellas, etc.) |
| l15d | The external soul | Life of a person or creature is preserved outside of his (her, its) body. Person or creature dies after the corresponding object is destroyed |
| l19a | Beings with even number of heads | Beings (any besides birds) with even but not more than ten number of heads are described in tales or represented in art. Beings that with even number of heads named in a row with other multi-headed beings and the highest number is even or bigger than ten are not considered |
| l19b | Beings with odd number of heads | Being (any besides birds) with more than ten heads or with odd (but more than one) number of heads are described in tales or represented in art. If beings with ever more number of heads are named, the row ends with a being that has odd (or more than ten) number of heads |
| l20 | Eater of the raw meat | Two persons hunt or fish. One of them is or becomes a cannibal. He or she reveals his or her nature eating the quarry raw |
| l23 | Proteus | Person gets hold of another. Trying to free himself, the latter turns into different materials, elements, animals or (Urarina and Setebo) orders different dangerous creature to attack the person |
| l23d | Metamorphosis of the caught female person | Being seized by a person, a female person turns into different materials, elements or animals (Urarina and Setebo: sends different dangerous creature to attack the one who caught her) |
| l23e | Metamorphosis of the caught male person | Being seized by a person, a male person turns into different materials, elements or animals |
| l4 | The unmasked murderer (Blue Beard) | Person kills girls (rare: his nephews or younger brothers of his wife) in succession (usually the male person kills his wives). The last of potential victims escapes, usually after finding remains of those who had been killed or imprisoned earlier |
| l42 | Hero carried to ogre’s home | An ogre or ogress catches a person and brings him to his or her home where he or she plans to cook and eat him. The hero escapes |
| 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 |
| l5c | Rolling head is a dangerous monster | Rolling head is a dangerous mobster (pursues celestial bodies, people etc.) |
| l6 | Demon clings to person | A demonic being demands that a person would carry it permanently, clings to his shoulder or back |
| m60a | A hunter comes to one whom he wounded | An animal or a supernatural creature is wounded but escapes. Local doctors are helpless. The hero or his companion, masked as a doctor, comes to the wounded one and either cures or kills him. |
| m81 | Blind persons | A man travels and comes to two or several blind (usually old) persons |