| Motif | Name | Description |
| a14a | The conflict between the Sun and the Moon | The Sun and the Moon are or were enemies, either permanently or in particular situations |
| a20 | Childhood and youth of the Sun and Moon | The Sun and the Moon (rare: the Sun and a star, the Moon and a star) are two siblings who live on earth and then ascend to the sky being still young persons |
| a31 | The incestuous Moon | As a result of some intimate contacts and/or love affair, the Moon acquires its present appearance (often, the stains on his face) and/or ascends to the sky |
| a31a | The cut off breast | When a woman gets know that her husband or lover did something against accepted rules of behavior, she cuts off her breast and shows it to him |
| a32 | Figure on lunar disc | A figure or an imprint of some being or object are seen in the Moon. (For statistical analysis motifs A32A – A32J are also included into A32) |
| a32c | A man and a dog in the Moon | A human being and a dog together are seen in the moon |
| a32d | Man in the Moon | Human being or imprint of human being is seen in the moon |
| a35 | Spots on the lunar disc | Dark spots on the lunar disc are dirt, blood, paint, traces of beating, burning, scratching, etc. on the Moon person's body or face (Kiliwa: spots on the Sun) and do not form any particular figure |
| a4 | Female sun | The Sun is female, the Moon is male or (more rare) also female |
| 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 |
| a7a | Torches in hands of celestial bodies | Light of the Sun (Moon, Venus) is a torch in hands of the celestial body |
| 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 |
| b31 | Women turn into water mammal | A woman (usually after a conflict with a man or remaining alone) or a man and a woman (married couple, lovers, brother and sister) turn into water mammals |
| b36a | Two creatures decorate each other | Two zoomorphic personages decorates each other or somebody decorates each of them |
| b38 | The ruined painting | Person paints birds or animals or they paint each other. Some of them are not satisfied with the result |
| b38a | Two birds decorate each other | Two birds decorate each other, one becomes worse than it was before |
| b38c | Raven and loon paint each other | Raven and loon paint each other |
| b42c | Sky hunters pursue a bear | In the cosmic hunt tale the game pursued by the hunters is a bear |
| b42f | Ursa major is an ungulate | Ursa major (seven stars or only four stars of a dipper) is identified with an ungulate (elk, deer, mountain sheep, etc.) |
| b42k | Cosmic hunt and the Pleiades | In the cosmic hunt tale either hunters or game is identified with the Pleiades |
| b42t | Ursa major is a big mammal | Seven main stars of Ursa major are interpreted as a figure of a mammal: bear, deer, mountain sheep, camel, dog |
| b44a | Council on seasons: units of time | Animals (Melanesia: persons) discuss the number of discrete units of time that should be in a certain calendar period or in the night |
| b44c | Should warmth and light exist? | It is discussed if darkness or light, cold or warm periods should exist |
| b54 | Chips turn into fish | Chips of wood, branches or pieces of bark thrown or fallen into the water turn into fish and/or aquatic animals |
| b71 | Aurora borealis | Aurora borealis is spirits (of the dead) who run holding burning torches, play or fight with each other |
| b78 | Shaking bed makes snowfall | When person or creature shakes himself or itself, shakes his or her bed, clothes, plucks birds, etc., snow falls down to earth |
| b82 | The white raven | Raven or other carrion-eating bird of dark color and a similar size was originally white |
| b85b | Bag of winds | Wind was or is in a particular enclosure (bag, cave, etc.). It was released from it or comes out from time to time |
| d13h | The dead should not laugh | Person should not laugh in the world of the dead |
| e1b | Person of unfit materials | Certain person is made of improper material and proves to be short-lived or unfit for fulfilling his functions |
| 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) |
| e9 | The mysterious housekeeper | Person observes traces of some activity that takes place in his (rare: her) house in his (her) absence and then takes by surprise the responsible one |
| e9a | Fox-wife | Man maries fox-woman |
| e9i3 | Goose-wife | A man marries supernatural woman who is a goose |
| 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 |
| f33 | Water creature paramour | Certain woman or a group of women take for paramour a big water animal (caiman, otter, sea-lion, whale, anaconda; rare: water bird, crab), water spirit or monster. Husbands, brothers or (adoptive) children kill or maim paramour and/or (sometimes) the woman |
| 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 |
| f40a | Husband of the first women | An anthropomorphic male or an androgyne is the only possessor or leader of women |
| f51 | The clandestine lover | Person who conceals his or her identity comes to his or her lover (at night). Next time, the lover puts a mark on the stranger's face, body or clothes doing this intentionally (to recognize him or her) or by chance (that leads to the identification) |
| f51c | Provocative behavior after incest | When a girl gets to know that her night visitor was her own brother, she demonstrates him her genitals or her nake breasts and suggests to take what he had been desired so much. After this she runs away and he pursues her |
| f53a | Bat or owl hides his face | A man hides his face from his wife because she does not know that he is a nocturnal being (a bat or an owl) |
| 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 |
| f67 | Old woman pretends to be man | An old woman makes herself false penis and testicles, marries or attempts to marry her (step)daughter |
| f9 | A dangerous woman | For different reasons, sexual contact with a woman is deadly dangerous for a man |
| f91 | A worm-breeder | A man lets his wife to be eaten up by worms. She either dies or has a narrow escape |
| f9d | Scorpions in the genitals | Small creatures in female or male genitals are dangerous for the partner |
| h24 | Container opened too early | Container with valuables or with dangerous creatures is opened (before time). Its content goes out of control or disappear |
| 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 |
| h4 | The shed skin | Those who change their skin become young again |
| i123 | Altair is the Sun’s messenger | Altair or Vega with a weak nearby star are believed to appear on the sky immediately after winter solstice though really it is not so |
| i22 | Objects in permanent movement | There are objects which remaining on the same place are moving permanently or periodically (meet and part. rise and fall down, shut and open, rotate) |
| i22c | A plank from the stern of Argo | Person succeeds in getting through the opening which is going to bang shut but the stern of his boat, the tail of an animal or a bird, the body of his horse, or his own heel is flatterned, torn off, etc. |
| i22g | Clapping rocks | There are mountains or rocks which permanently collide and separate again from each other or a crack (jaws) in a vertical cliff which is opening and closing |
| 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 |
| i35 | Dragging a hide produces thunder | Thunder is produced by dragging behind a dry animal skin or (rare) a person (rare) or by shaking clothes |
| i38 | The dog-heads | Some beings are half-men and half-dogs (usually anthropomorphic with heads of dogs) |
| i38a | The dog-husbands | Dogs or dog-headed men are husbands of human women |
| i50b | Predator animal with more than four legs | A predator animal or a zoomorphic non-reptilian monster with six or more legs is described or represented in art |
| i60a | Milky Way is a stripe on belly | Milky Way is a longitudinal streak, associated with a white line, stripe along the middle of a belly of an animal |
| i69 | Star dung | Shining sky objects or atmospheric phenomena are excrements of sky dwellers |
| i72 | Stars are people | Stars are people, ghosts, anthropomorphic beings (interpretations of unique star objects like Venus or Polaris as persons not considered) |
| i82a | Venus is male | Morning and/or Evening Star is a male personage |
| i8f | One support of the world | Only one pole or mountain supports the earth or the sky |
| j30 | Parents’ remains | Before the hero destroys the antagonists or escapes from them, he finds or receives the remains or possessions that belonged to the antagonists' victim |
| k10 | Fight with the monstrous bird | Monstrous bird (giant bat) predates on humans. Heroes fight with it |
| k10h | A bird feeds but does not release its prisoner | A giant bird carries a woman or a boy to its nest. It supplies them with food but does not release. The prisoner escapes |
| 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 |
| k25a3 | The picked up feathers | Magic bird-wife flies away after she had picked up many feathers and made of them her new bird-clothes |
| 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 |
| k30 | Flying enemy abducts woman | Flying person or creature abducts a woman but is ultimately killed or the woman escapes from him |
| k45 | Sedna (fingers cut off) | A man rides away from a woman or girl in a boat (on raft, sledge). When she tries to snatch a border of the boat (raft, sledge), he cuts her fingers off |
| k45b | Woman turns into water animal | A man and a woman of different generations (the father and the daughter, the son and the mother) get into conflict which results in the woman's transformation into the sea mammal. the sovereign of the sea mammals or into the frog (toad) |
| k47a | A woman and a dog | After having sexual contact with a dog, a woman gives birth to his children. The puppies turn into humans and usually become ancestors of particular groups of people |
| 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 |
| 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) |
| l10 | Sharp tail | A monster kills victims with his or her sharp or stinging tail or protrusion on his or her back |
| l101 | Pieces of clothes thrown to pursuer | Pursued by demonic creature (usually a whale or walrus), people throw behind piece by piece children’s or woman’s clothes. These attract the pursuer’s attention, he loses time, the runaways escape |
| l102 | Escape from animal husband | Seriously of for fun, a girl or a woman names an animal or remains of an animal as her husband or steps on the animal’s bones. The animal (revives and) carries her away. Her human husband or brother comes after her and they run away. The animal husband pursues them but abandons the chase or dies |
| l103 | Obstacle flight (Atalanta type) | Treasure, or the like, is thrown back to tempt pursuer to delay |
| l135 | The Traveller | Male person leaves his home and gets to unfamiliar places. On his way, he comes across different strange creatures. After all, he returns home or leaves the earth for the other world. (Rather often a long string of episodes breaks off or the story lacks the beginning and does not explain why the hero is travelling) |
| 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 |
| l59 | Avaricious woman: metamorphosis | Man's wife, sister or mother eats all the nest food alone, she is transformed in punishment |
| l59a | Stuck to a whale | People who treated badly the hero or his son are pulled into the sea and turn into sea animal or into parts of its body or into parasites on its hide |
| l5f | Helpful skull | A bodiless head, face, or skull is a woman's husband, suitor or son. He is not dangerous but a good provider, saves people from hunger, etc. |
| l65 | Demonic baby | A baby or small child proves to be a demon, devours or injures people |
| l85 | One-sided people | One-sided people have one leg and/or also one arm, one half of a head, etc. The second leg is not cut or burned off, preserved as a stump but is absent completely |
| l9 | Sharp body members | Body members of a person has the form of cutting or piercing weapon |
| m123 | Raven marries goose | A bird of prey or a carrion-eater (raven, owl, hawk; coyote) marries or tries to marry goose-person or other water bird. This marriage is not realized or is a short one |
| m16 | Ugly or sick one becomes healthy and handsome | A kinfolk (often his mother) or wife (bride) of a sick (ugly, old) man or boy do not care for him. He becomes healthy (and handsome), punishes and/or abandons those who were evil with him |
| m17 | Woman lies that man missed | A blind man or lad kills an animal. His wife or (grand)mother lies that he has missed, cooks and eats all the meat alone |
| m17a | (Grand-)mother deceives her blind (grand-)son | (Grand-)mother of a blind man or boy secretly eats meat or fish (usually acquired by her son or grandson) but tells him that there is no food in their house |
| m29a | Trickster-raven | In episodes related to deception, absurd, obscene or anti-social behavior the protagonist is raven |
| m53a | Raven and seals | Raven tricks seals or other water mammals to gather around him and kills them by deception |
| m84 | Revived from bones | Person, animal, fish or (rare) a fruit is eaten up and then revived, usually after all bones (all seeds) being put together |
| m87 | Invisible ghosts | Person enters a seemingly empty house and attempts to take certain things. Invisible beings prevent him from doing it or objects themselves hurt him |