Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
K143 — The bird catcher hero.
Source data for narratives and traditions is drawn from Berezkin’s Analytical Catalogue. If you use this data, please acknowledge and link to it: Ю.Е. Березкин, Е.Н. Дувакин. Тематическая классификация и распределение фольклорно-мифологических мотивов по ареалам. Аналитический каталог.
Summary of motif
OverviewThe protagonist of the narrative is a bird catcher or bird hunter, or the son of a bird catcher (hunter).
Berezkin category: Adventures: Acts of heroes
This is of motif type Adventures and tricks and is part of group 10, Adventures.
K14 has 7 other sub-motifs
RelatedK14. A person receives or buys simple advice, the meaning of which is initially unclear (travel with a companion, do not skip breakfast, etc.) and either follows it, achieving success, or violates it, getting into trouble.
K14a. The antagonist orders the killing of the first person to arrive at the agreed place in the morning. The hero is accidentally delayed, and the antagonist himself or his wife or son are killed.
K14b. A man is advised not to do anything until he is expressly asked to do so. He unwisely offers to let someone use his knife and is subsequently accused of a crime.
K14c. Returning after a long absence and seeing signs that there is another man in the house, a man thinks that his wife has a lover, but does not rush to act and convinces himself that it is his own son or his wife's relative.
k14c1. A man who has gone away to work sends his wife a pomegranate, unaware of its value. His wife finds treasures in the pomegranate.
K14d. Testing his wife (household member, acquaintance), a man pretends to have committed a crime or performs incomprehensible actions that could be interpreted as a crime. Usually, his wife (friend) betrays him, and he presents evidence of his innocence.
K14e. The sons do not care for their elderly father (rarely: the daughter-in-law does not care for her mother-in-law). He pretends to be hiding something. The sons believe that these are valuables that their father will leave them, and they begin to care for him.
K14F. After his father's death, the son consistently violates his father's instructions. Having preserved material evidence of what happened, he presents it to those gathered, proving his father's rightness and/or his wife's wrongness.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| N34 | 95.62% | Streams (jets) that consist not of water but of honey (honey and butter, butter and milk, milk and blood) are mentioned as signs of generosity and abundance. Cf. H16 motives - H16B, K33F. |
| J25A1 | 95.26% | A woman dies, but remains incorrupt and gives birth to a child in the grave. He is found and brings his mother back to life. |
| K9A | 95.26% | The punished character is suspended on a chain or metal thread between heaven and earth. |
| M114F | 95.26% | The girl has a minor physical defect. Man: The house is nice, but the pipe is crooked. Girl: But the smoke comes out well. |
| M39A4B | 95.26% | foolish woman thinks that frogs will make yarn or cloth for her, or buy yarn and throw the material into the water. |
| M39A4B1 | 95.26% | Foolish woman throws her yarn ways (into the water, into the bush) and believes that somebody with weave it |
| M90A2 | 95.26% | It should be guessed that the plant grew from a part of the body of a man or a snake or from dirt scraped off from the body |
| M90B | 94.67% | The character was wrong when he claimed that the sun would never rise in the west or go down after midnight. |
| L4A | 93.64% | To test the loyalty of the heroine (hero), the demon demands that she eat food that humans should not eat. Usually, when the heroine reports that the food has been eaten, the demon asks where the food is, and the food answers him. |
| K561 | 93.46% | A poor man brings his master a chicken (goose, etc.) as a present. The master asks him to divide the bird appropriately among the members of his household. The poor man does it considering the symbolic meaning of particular parts (gives the master the head, his daughters the wings, etc.) and receives rich compensation. A neighbor brings the master five chickens but is unable to divide them approppriately. The first man does it again. |
See the 100 most similar distributions →
Map of motif dispersal
DistributionDrag the map to pan, use the scroll wheel to zoom — choose a texture or projection below
Traditions
10 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 10 traditions: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Soqotri, Arabs of Egypt, Greeks (modern), Balkarians, Pashto, Anatolia Turks, Azeris (Azerbaijanis), Bosnians, Saudi Arabia
If you wish to get access to data for projects and research, then please contact us, we do our best to help
How to cite: Fielder-White, J. (2026). The Folklore Database. https://folkloredatabase.com
0009-0006-1672-4451
Where applicable, users should also cite the relevant original sources, catalogues, and classification systems, including Berezkin, ATU, Thompson, and other cited authorities, alongside the page accessed and the last time accessed.
Editorial annotations and database enhancements Š Jonathan Fielder-White licensed under CC BY 4.0. Berezkin-derived narrative and metadata licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Full rights information can be found here.
All rights are reserved in the database structure, selection, arrangement, metadata, classifications, software, interface design, and original editorial content.
Important: The Folklore Database expressly reserves all rights in relation to text and data mining, automated extraction, scraping, machine learning, dataset creation, and the training, development, validation, or improvement of artificial intelligence technologies or systems. No part of this website or database may be scraped, copied, reproduced, harvested, downloaded in bulk, or otherwise used for AI training or commercial data extraction without prior written permission.
Designed and Developed by Jon Fielder-White.
Š 2024â2026 Crecganford / Jonathan Fielder-White. All rights reserved.