| Motif | Name | Description |
| a44 | Moon the protector | A person pursued by an enemy or tyrannized by others asks the Moon to take her or him to the sky. The request is granted and the person is now seen in the Moon |
| f35a | Feeding with the kin’s meat | Person does not know that he or she eats or cooks the meat of the member of his or her household (blood relation, more rare a spouse or servant) or serves it to his or her friends, or uses her or his bones for everyday needs, or slowly kills him ort her |
| f54 | Oedipus | A young man and a woman (Konkani: a young girl and a man) marry and later get to know that they commited incest |
| 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) |
| h1d | The first dead is rejected by the alive people | Person dies and returns soon but people send him or her back, refuse to accept as a member of their community or bury again. Since then death becomes permanent |
| i25 | The bribed guards | Way to the place of a certain person is guided by dangerous creatures (which often stand on the both sides of the pathway). Person placates them by gifts or nice talk, and they let him or her go the both ways, sometimes being punished for this by their master |
| j26 | Babies come out of the water | Baby heroes, embryos or objects from which they emerge are found in a river or lake or come to people out of the water |
| k100b | A grateful dead | A young man helps to bury a man (pays the debts of the dead man, honors a saint). When the young man sets off for a journey, the grateful dead (the saint) in guise of a stranger becomes his protector |
| k119 | Animal helper marries a poor boy to a princess | To make a poor man rich (usually to marry him to a rich girl or to marry a poor girl to a prince), an animal makes other people believe that the groom is rich already. The man becomes prosperous indeed |
| k119a | The ungrateful master | An animal saves a man or helps him but the ungrateful man humiliates the animal, kills or tries to kill it |
| k119b | Wild animals presented to the king | Helpful trickster (usually the fox or the cat) deceives wild animals and brings them to the king saying that they are presented to him by a rich person |
| k12 | Woman is lost and returned | By trick or by force, a rival or adversary kidnaps hero's wife or bride. The man gets her back |
| k120a | The averted incest (sister and brother) | A man is going to marry his sister (often puts certain condition on his future marriage, only his sister complies with them). The girl gets to escape |
| k136a | Girl’s hair picked up from a river | A man finds the woman’s hair that was carried by water and decides to marry its owner |
| k176 | A man in search of the woman | A (young) man sets off to find or to return his bride or his wife |
| 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) |
| k27 (motif is not in the correlation table) | Competitions and difficult tasks | Person is suggested to fulfill tasks that are mortally dangerous or cannot be fulfilled without supernatural helpers or capacities. The person fulfills the tasks and remains alive. A contest between persons has form of a competition or game in which the loser is deprived of his status or life |
| k27n | Difficult tasks of the in-laws | A man must fulfill difficult tasks (to win competition) to receive the permission for a marriage |
| k27z3 | Cat with a lamp | A man trains a cat (monkey, dog) to hold lighted candle (lamp) on its head or to extinguish the light by a signal. When a mouse (a rat) runs through the room, the cat drops the candle (forgets about the lamp) and chases the mouse |
| 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. |
| k32g2 | The executed dauther’s meat is sent to her mother | When powerful person marries a girl, an evil woman replaces her with her own daughter. The false wife is exposed and executed, and her cooked meat is sent to her mother as a special gift |
| k32i | Two sitters at the bed of a sleeping prince | A girl finds a body of a sleeping youth who will wake up at a certain time and marry the girl who would sit nearby. Usually at the last moment the girl goes away for a time and the impostor takes her place. |
| 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 |
| k33c | Girl from a fruit | Young man gets a girl who is inside of a fruit or (rare) a flower or an egg |
| k33c1 | Transformed into lotus | Person is thrown into the water and becomes a flower (usually lotus) |
| k33c7 | One fruit with a girl inside | Young man obtains a fruit from which a girl comes out (rare: two girls from two fruits, both remain with the man). The episode of the loss of girls who were inside other fruits is absent, Cf. motif k33c6 |
| k33h | The cat, the dog and the magic object | A man obtains an object that fulfills his wishes. The object is stolen but brought back by the animals (which had been saved by the man before) |
| k35 | False husband | An imposter pretends to be the hero to take his position and/or to marry or to violate his woman |
| k37 | Recognition-test | To return or to get his or her son, wife, husband, domestic animal or (rare) object, person must recognize her, him or it among several identical persons, animals or objects |
| k49 | Dead mother returns to nurse her baby | A woman who is transformed into animal or driven out of the human world returns to her baby to feed and to care for him |
| k57 | Cinderella | A girl who conceals her beauty and/or is poor and oppressed by her stepmother puts on a splendid attire and comes incognito to a feast where a man of high status falls in love with her. He marries her after identifying her by an object given to her or lost by her or (rare) seeing how she changes her clothes |
| k72 | Three maidens | Powerful person listens in conversation of three (rare: two or four) women. Each of them tells what she would do if the person marries her. One promises to bear his son (children) who would have wonderful qualities, two others promise to practice some kind of work or (more rare) marry people of lower status |
| k73 | Children of the youngest wife | A young woman promises to bear a wonderful children (wonderful son). In her husband's absence other people (co-wives, mother-in-law, etc.) try to kill the mother and/or the child, usually slandering the young woman |
| k73a | Baby child substituted with object or animal | Hostile women substitute baby of the newly made mother with an animal or an object (inform the baby’s father that his wife has given birth to an animal or an object) |
| k73a4 | Baby child substituted with a pup | Hostile women substitute baby of the newly made mother with a pup (inform the baby’s father that his wife has given birth to a pup) |
| k77b | The animals in night quarters (Bremen town musicians) | Domestic animals abandon their masters. They find an empty house or build a house. Robbers or the predator animals come there. The domestic animals attack (or just frighten) them. The robbers (predators) do not understand who are their enemies, are scared and run away |
| k77c | Ones who hide in a house frighten dangerous enemy | Objects and/or domestic animals live in a house. When dangerous enemy comes, they attack him, he dies or escapes (all texts with K77A and K77B included) |
| k80 | Repetitive reincarnation | Person (usually a young woman) turns into different objects or creatures which another person destroys one by one. However, the person is reincarnated again and again and ultimately acquires her or his original form |
| k80a | A bird or an object tell about a murder | An object or a creature that emerged from remains, decorations, etc. of a killed person tells about his or her fate. Usually a reed grows from the person's grave and a pipe made from the reed tells the story |
| k80d | The stuck in pin | Person is bewitched (transformed into a bird, faints) when a pin or other sharp object is stuck into her (rare his) body |
| k83 | The sons on a quest for a wonderful remedy for their father | To cure a sick person or to make him (rare: her) young again it is necessary to bring a remedy from a distant country. The medicine is brought and the sick person is cured (becomes young) |
| k92 | King Lear | A man puts his children questions that seem easy to answer (how they love him, who is the elder in the family, etc.). The elder children flatter, the youngest daughter (rare: son) is reserved and her father drives her away or deprives of inheritance. Later her noble nature becomes evident to him |
| l128 | You are Deo but I am Mahadeo | When a demonic person or a predator animal gives his name, the hero or a herbivorous animal invents such a name for himself that suggests his superiority over his opponent |
| l40 | Reflection and shadow | Person discovers (rare:still fails to discover) another getting to see his or her shadow or reflection in water |
| l42g | Hansel and Gretel | Step mother or more often father (persuaded by his wife) abandons children in a desolate place. Getting to the ogre or ogress, children (or at least one of them) survive and ultimately achieve success |
| l42g1 | Chops are heard, woodcutter is gone | Father (step mother) abandons children in the forest. He (she) hangs a plank (gourd, shoe, etc.) on a tree that is striking trunk under the wind. Children believe that he is still nearby cutting woods |
| l93a | Helpful fox | Cunning fox, jackal or coyote saves particular person or many people, helps them |
| m116a | Ungrateful son reproved by naive actions of own son | When an aged father is banned from the table and served his meals in a wooden cup by his son and his daughter-in-law, the little grandson starts to build a similar cup for his parents to use when they grow old. Thereupon the couple starts to reflect on their undignified behavior. Thinking of their own old age, they bring the old father back to the family table (previously type 980B). A son gives his father half a blanket (carpet, cape, cloth) to keep warm. Thereupon the little grandson keeps the other half of the blanket and explains that he will save it for his parents for when they are old (previously type 980A.). An aged father is abandoned by his son in the wilderness (abyss) in a cart (sledge, basket). The grandson keeps it in order to use it in the same way for his parents when they have grown old. They reflect on their behavior. (previously type 980C). The ungrateful son drags his old father out of the house. At the threshold the father says, "Do not drag me further; I dragged my own father only this far!". The son reflects on his bad behavior |
| m131 | Biting tree-root | A stronger (animal)-person gets to seize a leg or tail of a weaker one. To get free the weaker one pretends that his pursuer got hold of a tree root, and the pursuer lets his enemy free |
| m131 | Biting tree-root | A stronger (animal)-person gets to seize a leg or tail of a weaker one. To get free the weaker one pretends that his pursuer got hold of a tree root, and the pursuer lets his enemy free |
| m151 | Hello, house! | Dangerous animal pretends to be an inanimate object, dead or absent. The potential victim sais aloud that the real dead (object, place) has to act in a particular way or to say particular words. The animal does accordingly betraying himself. |
| m152 | Why only one wolf? | When a weak animal or a person gets to see a predator animal or an ogre, he says in a loud voice (or asks to say his wife or children) something that frightens the predator (ogre): why the predator (ogre) brought to him is lean (small; only one instead of several), or it is good that more food gets to his house, etc. The predator (ogre) runs away |
| m152a | Animal tied to another for safety | A stronger and a weaker predator animals (ogre and an animal) tie together for safety. When the stronger one runs away, he drags the weaker one along with him |
| m157 | The impossible giving birth | Person claims that a man or a male animal had given birth (or is menstruating) or that a female gave birth to a young of another species or that a woman gave birth to an animal |
| m169 | Medicine for the sick lion | In the presence of powerful person one of his subjects is plotting against the other. The other answers that the problem can be resolved if the first one would be maimed (usually a part of his body used as a medicine). The schemer is killed or injured |
| m179 | A house of bark and a house of ice | Two animal persons live nearby, the house of one of them is destroyed, he asks another to let him in and usually drives the host out of his house. Strong animals are afraid of the intruder but a weak or small one succeeds to return the house to its original owner |
| 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 |
| m192 | Trapped in the animal hide | An animal or person who crawled into a fresh carcass or put on a fresh animal skin cannot free himself (usually because the carcass or the skin becomes dry). He gets free when the skin becomes soft again or somebody helps him |
| m193 | Flight inside pumpkin | To pass unnoticed dangerous animals on his or her way back, person crawls into a gourd, a big cattle, etc. and is rolling inside it along the road, or he walks transforming his appearance in a bizarre way |
| m29b | Trickster-fox, jackal or coyote | In episodes related to deception, absurd, obscene or anti-social behavior the protagonist is fox, jackal or coyote |
| m29b3 | The fox (jackal, coyote) is a failure | Because of its stupidity and unsocial behavior, the fox, jackal or coyote suffers a reverse, is injured or dies |
| m29o1 | The monkey is a failure | Because of its stupidity and unsocial behavior, the monkey suffers a reverse, is injured or dies |
| m29w2 | The tiger is a failure | Because of its stupidity and unsocial behavior, the tiger suffers a reverse, is injured or dies |
| m29w3 | The lion is a failure | Because of its stupidity and unsocial behavior, the lion suffers a reverse, is injured or dies |
| m38 | Stupid imitation (all versions) | Person sees how others act using magic or according to their animal nature. He or she imitates their actions and gets into trouble. Actions are not heroic deeds, competitions or tests and refer to everyday activity, mostly to providing and cooking food |
| m57a | Beads discharged from the body | Instead of common body discharges a man or a woman urinates, spits, etc. beads, flowers, gold and other valuables; valuables are produced by the very presence of particular person |
| m57a3 | Female person is the producer of valuables | Instead of common body discharges a a woman urinates, spits, etc. beads, flowers, gold and other valuables; valuables are produced by the very presence of particular female person. See motif m57a |