Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
B101 — Stripes on a birch tree.
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
OverviewAngry at the birch tree, the character beats or cuts it, leaving stripes on the bark that remain to this day.
Berezkin category: The Origins of the Characteristics of the environment
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part of group 7, Etiology of plants and animals and of their peculiar features, particular animals as protagonists of cosmological stories, metamorphoses, weather and calendar.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| J41A | 99.71% | The son returns and finds his mother, who has been humiliated and tortured in his absence. The son turns his mother (and usually himself as well) into a bird of a certain species. |
| K27N3C2 | 98.99% | The hero's father-in-law, the bear, sets him difficult tasks and trials. |
| M190 | 98.99% | The beaver carries the porcupine across a water barrier. Usually, he throws it into the water or leaves it on an island. |
| M53E | 98.99% | A character (always a raven) kills a whale and points others to imaginary signs that whale meat is not suitable for food. People believe and all the meat goes to the deceiver. |
| K32B1 | 98.98% | The man's mother-in-law takes on the appearance of her daughter to take her place. See motif K32. |
| D4C1 | 98.86% | Animal-people come to steal summer from its owners. One of them, in the guise of an elk or caribou, distracts the owners' attention or floats a log or stump down the river, which the owners of summer mistake for an elk and rush after. |
| K54A | 98.81% | A man and a friendly giant live together. The friendly giant fights another giant and asks the man for help. The help consists of the man damaging the enemy's legs. |
| K67 | 98.80% | At night, one person intends to throw another person's shoes or clothes into the fire, but ends up burning his own shoes or clothes. Usually, the father-in-law throws his son-in-law's shoes into the fire at night in order to freeze him out, but the son-in-law has already switched shoes, so the father-in-law burns his own. |
| E9M | 98.66% | A man marries a bear (white or grizzly) that takes the form of a woman, or a woman who takes the form of a bear. |
| K19E | 98.35% | Returning from the sky to earth, a woman or two sisters encounter a male wolverine who tries to capture them. Usually, the women who have descended first find themselves in a tree. Some animals cannot or will not help them descend to the ground. The wolverine descends to take the sisters as wives; they run away from him. See motif K19B. |
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
11 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 11 traditions: Micmac, Western Ojibwa (Chippewa), Eastern Ojibwa (Missisauga, Timagami and other groups in eastern Ontario), Algonquin, unspecified Algonkians of the Midwest (probably Old Algonquin), Northern Ojibwa (=Severn Ojibwa, Sandy Lake Cree), Eastern Cree, Attikamek, Naskapi, Blackfoot, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibwa
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.