| Motif | Name | Description |
| a27 | Crowns of the Sun and Moon | Light and/or heat of the Sun and/or Moon originate from their crowns, necklaces or clothes (of feathers, of animal teeth) |
| a28 | The smart Sun and the unwise Moon | The Sun and the Moon are men. The unwise Moon tries to repeat dangerous tricks of the Sun but fails to do it successfully |
| a5 | The Sun and the Moon are males | The Moon is male, the Sun is also male or (much more rare) asexual |
| b114 | Old person turns into anteater | Old man or old woman turns into anteater (origin of anteaters) |
| b1f | Two brothers: a winner and a failure | Two brothers (companions) live In the epoch of the creation. One of them is smart and selfconfident, another is weak and makes mistakes. They are not enemies and demonstrate their qualities in two or more episodes |
| b26 | Man joins wild animals | Person who follows the wild animals turns into one of them or into their master |
| 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 |
| c14 | Monsters destroy people | During or before the world catastrophe (deluge, darkness) wild beasts and monsters attack and destroy people |
| c2a | Conflagration of the woodpecker | Two persons meet a woodpecker and as a consequence, the earth burns. The strong and smart person survives, the weak and stupid is burned |
| c2b | The burned Moon | The Sun and Moon get into conflagration. The Sun survives, the Moon is burned |
| c34 | The deluge because of a wounded creature | Killing (injuring, offending) of some cruature (usually related to water) triggers deluge |
| 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 |
| d8 | Fire and a predator animal | Fire or summer is stolen from a big predator: a lion (in Africa), a tiger (in Asia), a bear (in Siberia and North America) or a jaguar (in South America) |
| e13a | Sacred knowledge from under the water | Sacred knowledge, objects and rituals are initially obtained from the denizens of the underwater world |
| 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 |
| f12 | Man kills his wife with her lover’s penis | Man kills his wive inserting into her body the cut off penis of her lover |
| 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 |
| f32 | Tree fruits for a woman | Baby child or children who come out of mother's womb and turn themselves into adult men or a snake who lives in her womb climb up a tree and help the woman to gather fruits, bark, edible fungi, etc. Usually the child who is a snake returns to his mother's womb and adult man turns back into a baby; or the girl's love affair with a snake is discovered when her father climbs a tree to gather fruits for her |
| f34 | Land animal paramour | Certain woman or a group of women takes for a paramour a big land animal. Husbands, brothers or (adoptive) children kill or maim paramour and (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 |
| 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 |
| f46 | One for all | In the beginning of time two or more men (animal people) have only one woman |
| f46a | Woman in a tree | Men (animal people) discover a woman in a tree and copulate with her there |
| f47 | Pieces of flesh turn to people | A living creature or a lump of alive flesh is cut into pieces which are diepersed around. After some time every piece turns into human being |
| f47a | Men use pieces of woman’s flesh | Every man uses for copulation certain part of an only woman or takes a part of her body after it was cut into pieces |
| f47b | New people on the old place | To create the new people (new women) instead of those who were destructed, person puts down in every empty hut (hearth, hammock) something (feathers, pieces of flesh) from which new people (new women) emerge |
| f50 | The often-born children | Child or children come out of mother's womb and return back |
| 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) |
| g12b | Star-person gives plants | Star-person is a giver of cultivated plants |
| g13 | People ate rotten wood | Before acquisition of cultivated plants people ate rotten or soft (Ceiba L., Ochroma Sw.) wood; some people eat rotten wood |
| g13c | Bad food of the pre-agricultural epoch | Before the cultivated plants or edible wild plants become known, people ate (decomposed) wood, bark, mud, stones, fungi |
| g24 | Food from the sky | First seeds (sprouts, tubors) of cultivated plants or of important edible wild plants are brought from the sky (received from the sky-dwellers) |
| 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 |
| h29 | Origin of foreigners | A woman is impregnated by an animal, usually by a snake. People of hostile nation originate or receive their culture from her progeny or from her paramour's relatives |
| h7g1 | Death is more fair and rich than God | Person (who is usually in search of the godgather for the newborn child) rejects God (saints) and devil but accepts Death who is more fair (or rich) |
| 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) |
| i22f | Clashing trees | Person must go beyond relatively small objects (trees, logs, blades) which are incessantly clashing and parting, rising and falling |
| 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 |
| i29 | Animal’s hole leads to the underworld | Person follows an animala through its hole or digs a hole himself and gets into the lower world where the animals who dig holes live |
| i34 | The dangerous tree | It is necessary to approach a tree which is surrounded with fire, ejects fire, shoots sharp splints, etc. |
| i72 | Stars are people | Stars are people, ghosts, anthropomorphic beings (interpretations of unique star objects like Venus or Polaris as persons not considered) |
| i83 | The sky of birds | Birds, first of all vultures and eagles, live in the sky, usually at one or more layers of the upper world |
| i8f | One support of the world | Only one pole or mountain supports the earth or the sky |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| k10 | Fight with the monstrous bird | Monstrous bird (giant bat) predates on humans. Heroes fight with it |
| k10a | Battle with a bird: a shelter | Heroes kill a dangerous bird. During or before confrontation they hide inside a shelter (hut, cage, vessel, bag, hollow log) or cover themselves with a protective object |
| k11a | Feathers turn into birds or men | Feathers of (giant) bird turn into different present day birds (in their plumage) or into the men |
| k11a1 | Birds emerge from the monstrous bird | Pierces of flesh or feathers of monstrous/unusual bird turn into common birds (or into their plumage) |
| k19a | Star-wife | A man maries a star-woman |
| k19c | Non-human lover in man’s bed or bag | A man brings home a small being with whom he makes love at night. His mother, sister or wife discovers his non-human lover in his bed or bag |
| 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) |
| k20 | Wish for star-husband or wife realized | A human person admires a star or (rare) the Moon in the sky, expresses desire to marry it or (rare) to get a star-object. Star descends to him or to her or takes him or her to the sky |
| k25 | Magic wife | A man consciously marries a woman related to the non-human world |
| k4 | The bird nester | Person climbs up a tree or rock or descends to a cave to get eggs or nestlings from the bird's nest. Another person remains on the ground. They get into conflict and/or the first person is unable to get back to the ground |
| l40 | Reflection and shadow | Person discovers (rare:still fails to discover) another getting to see his or her shadow or reflection in water |
| l68 | Two companions in the night | Person turns into monster at night when he remains alone with his companion in the wilderness |
| l82 | The burned off foot | Intentionally or not, a man burns his foot or his whole body in a fire, then turns into demon |
| l9 | Sharp body members | Body members of a person has the form of cutting or piercing weapon |
| l9a | Sharp leg | Person's leg is injured intentionally or by chance. The loss of one leg does not bother him. He uses the sharpened bone as a thrust weapon |
| m10 | A girl and a honey | A girl or a woman who was stuck in a tree-hollow when she tried to extract honey or who was greedily sucking honey otherwise, dies or turns into the honey or into the bee |
| 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 |
| m18 | Stolen arrows and hooks | Person transforms himself into an object of hunting or fishing, provokes hunters of fishermen to catch or shoot him and carries way the tools that they use (arrows, darts, harpoons, hooks, baits). Or he fishes by turning himself into a hook. Or he is caught but escapes turning back into a person |
| m18a | Getting arrows | Person turns into a fish or game and exposes himself as a target. A lot of arrows, darts or harpoons stick in his body making him no harm, he carries them away |
| m1a | Caiman ferries the Pleiades-brothers | Caiman ferries a person or a group of brothers who later turn the Pleiades |
| m21 | A protector hides fugitives | The protagonist pursued by an enemy comes across a person, an animal or an object to help him and receives help |
| m21a | Under false cause of illness | Person is pursued by an enemy. A bird or animal hides him or her in its mouth (under a wing) and pretends not to be able to open the mouth (to raise a wing) – because of a tooth ache, some injury and the like |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| m9 | Stuck in a tree hollow | Person who puts her or his head or hand into a tree hollow or (rare) other hole is stuck fast in it or falls into the hollow and dies or undergoes a metamorphosis |