| Motif | Name | Description |
| a17 | The Sun’s relax at the midday | After passing half of the its way across the sky (in the day time) or in the underworld (in the night time), the Sun stops to have a rest |
| a18 | The Sun boat | During the day and/or the night (in the underworld, beyond the horizon etc.) the Sun and/or the Moon regularly travel in a boat. |
| a3 | Male sun and female moon | The Moon is female or bisexual, the Sun is male |
| 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 |
| 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) |
| 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 |
| a5 | The Sun and the Moon are males | The Moon is male, the Sun is also male or (much more rare) asexual |
| b22a | Lads and tapir | Boys climb a tree to eat fruits. Tapir asks them to give some fruits to him, they refuse to do so. Tapir tries to kill the boys |
| b36 | Creatures acquire their physical traits | Birds, fish, reptiles, mammals intentionally or by chance are smeared with colorful substances or divide among themselves parts of somebody's body thus acquiring their present characteristics |
| b53 | Creatures or objects from cut off genitals | Supernaturally big genitals are cut off and turn into snakes or other creatures and objects |
| b77 | Primeval sky close to earth | Originally the sky was close to the earth, then it has risen up |
| b99 | Person turned into the nest of insects | Person (his/her head) who was abandoned in a tree or falls on a tree turns into a nest of insects |
| c11 | Divine father avenges his son | Person uses his supernatural powers to destroy a large group of people who have offended or insulted his son |
| c14 | Monsters destroy people | During or before the world catastrophe (deluge, darkness) wild beasts and monsters attack and destroy people |
| c34 | The deluge because of a wounded creature | Killing (injuring, offending) of some cruature (usually related to water) triggers deluge |
| c34a | Buried in sand | A supernatural person comes to people who fish. They bury him on the beach or throw him into river or marsh. Somebody saves him. He or his father sends the flood |
| c4 | The flood: fruits fall from a tree | During the flood or in the beginning of times fruits, seeds or other objects are dropped into water one by one, usually by a person who has climbed a tree. As far as the objects fall, water recedes and the dry land appears |
| c4a | The flood: survival in a tree | During the flood some persons survive in a tree |
| c7 | The flood: breaking the dam | In the beginning of times or after the flood a dam of earth, person or creature does not let water to recede. The dam is broken or opened, waters withdraw |
| 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 |
| d4p | Parrot or parakeet obtains fire | Parrot or parakeet steals fire for people. (Australian data not computed because historically definitely unrelated to the Tropical American data) |
| e15 | Ducks and canoes | People learn from aquatic birds how to make canoes or how to paddle; or the first canoe is a transformed bird or is made of bird bones |
| e16 | Paddles edgewise | Riding in canoe, people first turn paddles edgewise, then learn the correct way to use them |
| e17 | Origin of design | Humans acquire (the idea of) ornamentation of the vessels, baskets, body, etc. or the idea of the system of signs after somebody gets to see the pattern on the body of zoomorphic and/or supernatural creature |
| e18 | Snakes and containers | People learn how to decorate ceramics or baskets (usually learn decorated patterns) thanks to a water creature |
| e1b | Person of unfit materials | Certain person is made of improper material and proves to be short-lived or unfit for fulfilling his functions |
| 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 |
| e6 | Because of a woman worlds become isolated | When a woman of the child-bearing age tries to come from one world to another (e.g. from sky to earth), the communication between the worlds is blocked or broken forever |
| 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 |
| 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) |
| f18b | Long penis after prohibited sex | After contact with a non-human or prohibited partner (close kin, animal, spirit) man's penis becomes so long that he had to carry it in a basket, etc. |
| f29 | Girl sits on the ground | A girl or young woman who is usually occupied with domestic work (is cooking, weaving, etc.) sits on the ground and copulates with a penis-like creature that crawls from below into her vagina |
| f29a | Worm killed with boiling water | To kill snake or worm paramour of a woman or girl, person pours on it boiling water, resin or spills live coals |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| f37 | Gourd vessel put on the surface of water | Person knocks the gourd vessel that floats above the water to call water monster or serpent. Usually a woman calls this way her monstrous paramour |
| 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 |
| f39 | The time of women | The women dominated over the men in the past or in a far away land, were the active part in marriage relations, practiced activities which now are reserved of the men only. Or the women could obtained supremacy but failed to do it for some reason |
| f4 | Child born in jug | In the beginning of times, a particular person or children in general was or were conceived and grown up in pots, heaps of mud, etc. and not in a womb |
| 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) |
| f53 | Ugly husband | An ugly man marries a girl but conceals his face. Marriage is ruined after his face is seen |
| 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) |
| f7 | The underwater-maiden | Man takes or attempts to take a wife who is connected with the underwater world (fish, crab, snake, water animal and the like) |
| f75 | A siren and a tapir | A hunter watches tapir who calls a water woman from the river or lake and copulates with her. Hunter does the same, becomes the woman's lover |
| f76 | Animals teach to make love | People learn to copulate after they see birds, fish or animals doing it |
| 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) |
| f9 | A dangerous woman | For different reasons, sexual contact with a woman is deadly dangerous for a man |
| f9c | Snake in vagina | Snake (Pacific snake-eel in Polynesia) is in vagina; around the woman's thighs; vagina is a mouth of a snake; a woman with toothed vagina is associated with a snake; a snake crawls out of woman's mouth to bite off the man’s penis during the copulation |
| f9d | Scorpions in the genitals | Small creatures in female or male genitals are dangerous for the partner |
| f9e1 | Dangerous animal in vagina | Woman is dangerous because biting or stinging animal or animals is (are) inside her genitals (and not only the head of such an animal) |
| g5 | Food tree | Fruits and shoots of different cultivated plants grow on the branches of one tree (on one vine) or certain plant has a tree form that is alien to it in nature |
| 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) |
| h1e | The first dead opens the road | After the first death the road to the realm of death remains open; certain person makes a road to the realm of death; the first person who had died becomes the ruler of the guard of the realm of death |
| h27 | Mosquitoes let lose | Stinging insects (rare diseases) had been inside a container or some enclosure. They escaped to the world when the container or enclosure was foolishly opened |
| h28 | Plagues from the body of a person or creature | Killed and destroyed (often burned) person or creature (usually ogre, fierce animal, powerful shaman) turns into a multitude of biting insects or into other small molesting creatures |
| h30 | A wrong choice | Seeing two women who have come together or in succession, man has to choose one of them. Usually he takes the one who is less pretty and smart or more dangerous inflicting troubles on himself and humanity |
| h34b | Rivers flow in both directions | Rivers were flowing or according to the original plan had to flow in both directions; somewhere there is a river that flows in both directions |
| i100b | The Pleiades are a group of people | The Pleiades are any people (of any ages and sex, combined data of i99-i100a) |
| i12 | The world axis | A tree or post pierces and unites different layers of the universe |
| i125 | The Hiades are a jaw-bone | The Hyades are a jaw bone or a head of a big animal or anthropomorphic creature |
| 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) |
| 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 |
| i24 | A snake bridge | Snake, lizard or worm is a bridge or a rope over the river |
| 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 |
| i27a | Towns and paths of dogs | Souls of the dead dogs have their own towns in the Beyond or their own paths to travel there |
| 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 |
| i44 | Chthonic serpent | Giant serpent lies on the perimeter of the earth or supports the earth |
| i72 | Stars are people | Stars are people, ghosts, anthropomorphic beings (interpretations of unique star objects like Venus or Polaris as persons not considered) |
| i78 | The square earth | The earth is square, the sky is usually round |
| i82a | Venus is male | Morning and/or Evening Star is a male personage |
| i8e1 | Four supports of the world | The sky or the earth rests upon four or five (cardinal points and the center) supports of any kind (poles, mountains, giants) |
| i99 | The Pleiades are boys or men | The Pleiades are a group of boys or men, or a group of different people but predominantly males |
| j28a | Truth about father | Hero asks how one of his parents died and receives a series of false answers. Usually he successively exposes himself to the same dangers, survives and thus demonstrates that truth is still concealed from him |
| j47 | Pursuer falls from height | Person ascends to the sky (rare: descends from the sky; ascends the cliff) by a rope, a ladder, etc. Another person tries to follow him or her but the rope (the ladder) is broken or severed |
| j56a | Transformed into griddles | Brothers turn into cooking pots or griddles which are put on fire. Only the eldest is strong enough to stand this trial |
| j57 | Son of the Sun | A virgin girl is impregnated by the Sun and gives birth to a son or twin boys. When her son (or the twins) grows up, he (they) comes to his father |
| j58 | The arrow ladder | Persons shoot arrows (darts) which hit each other’s end forming a chain (rope, ladder). Persons climb by this chain to the sky or (rare) across an obstacle |
| j59 | Following arrow to get to the sky | To climb to the sky, person must first to shoot an arrow that reaches the sky and sticks to it |
| j68 | Ever fresher dung on a path | Persons who during a long time pursue an animal get to see ever fresher dung on a path and ultimately overtake their game (usually the dung every time answers how old it is); or the pursuers see gardens on which the sowing was had place ever more recently |
| k10 | Fight with the monstrous bird | Monstrous bird (giant bat) predates on humans. Heroes fight with it |
| k13a | Person with cut off leg ascends to the sky | Person's leg (rare: both legs) is cut, torn, bitten off, injured. He (rare: she) ascends to the sky: to the Moon; turns into the Moon, Sun, star, constellation; blood from the injured leg makes the sky red |
| k13b | Leg bitten off by caiman | A caiman ferries a man across water body, bites his leg off. The maimed man is transformed into a constellation or into an animal |
| 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 |
| k3 | Tree or rock grows taller | Hero climbs up a tree or rock to get eggs, nestlings, fruits, honey, etc. Another person makes the tree (rock) grow higher or thicker and the hero is unable to descend back |
| k87 | Marriage with an animal creates problems | A woman becomes the wife of an animal (rare: other non-human being). Her husband cares for her but ultimately the animal, the woman, her children or her relations are killed, she turns into an animal herself, animals and humans become enemies, etc. |
| 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) |
| k8e | Getting inside via anus | Person or animal gets into another being through its anus |
| l11 | Turtle-bench | In a non-human world objects of everyday life have appearance of animals and monsters, mainly fish, amphibians and reptiles |
| l22 | The sound sleep | After breaking some taboo, coming across a strange object or person, people fall asleep. They do not feel when at night spirits come and injure or kill them |
| 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) |
| l38 | Demon’s trap | A demon puts a trap to catch people, hero gets into it |
| 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 |
| l43 | Dangerous persons eat filth | Persons who are dangerous for the hero (demons, robbers, merchants) take for something pleasant and edible those objects, creatures or matters (excrements, snakes, insects, etc.) that are disgusting (not edible) |
| l45 | Duped watchman | An ogre or a stronger animal catches a man or a weaker animal or drives him into a small enclosure and goes away for a time leaving a watchman. The hero dupes the watchman, escapes. (Most, though hardly all American cases can have post-Columbian African origin) |
| l46 | Head downward | Person ascends, descends, walks head downward or sees the world upside down |
| l47 | Enemy moves backward and dies | Hero's enemy ascends a tree or rock head downward or walks backward letting the hero better possibility to kill him or to escape |
| l52 | Hero escapes from top of a tree | Hero hides in a tree from an ogre. Before the ogre gets to fell the tree, the hero flies away or a bird helps him to escape |
| l61 | Endocannibal | Person devours his or her own flesh or disembowels himself or herself |
| 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) |
| l68 | Two companions in the night | Person turns into monster at night when he remains alone with his companion in the wilderness |
| l88 | Ogre returns to life | A man kills an ogre. When he later comes and touches the ogre's remains, the latter revives |
| m1a | Caiman ferries the Pleiades-brothers | Caiman ferries a person or a group of brothers who later turn the Pleiades |
| m28 | Icarus (failed attempt to fly on artificial wings) | Acquiring possibility to fly, person ultimately falls to the ground or remains in a faraway place being unable to fly any more |
| m29k | The turtle (tortoise, toad, frog) wins thanks to his smartness | Being smart and persistent, the turtle (toad, frog) overcomes strong adversaries |
| 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 |
| m4 | A wrong step | Crossing a body of water or descending a tree, person steps on an certain part of a body of an animal or on a certain animal that have made a chain (usually despite warning that he should not do it) and falls down or drowns as a result |
| m43 | Doll as a decoy | To kill or catch a monster, human figure of wood or clay or alive woman is exposed as a bait. Usually monster's claws or sharp leg get stuck in the wood |
| m7 | Hero waiting to be picked up | Getting into the lower or upper world, to an island, a country at the horizon, etc. a man is unable to move further and waits for somebody who could bring him to his destination. Some animals, birds or celestial bodies pass by, the last one (often the Sun or the Moon) picks him up and brings to the place he is eager to go |
| m7a1 | Celestial bodies move above the hero | Person gets to a place from which he is unable to come out. Several (more than two) different celestial bodies rise and move near him or above him. He puts attention to them (and asks their help) |
| m89 | Melted wax | Person dies or is humiliated after some object that he or she made of wax, resin, excrements and/or took for something worthy are melted down |