Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
L124 — The demon's treacherous gift.
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
OverviewA person extracts a vein, spinal cord, or intestine from the demon's body, cuts out a strip of skin, or receives a belt as a gift, but does not gird himself or another, instead placing the belt on a tree. The belt cuts or burns the tree.
Berezkin category: Adventures: Monsters and evil spirits
This is of motif type Adventures and tricks and is part of group 10, Adventures.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| L124A | 99.43% | The belt (wire, intestine, strip of leather, etc.) cuts or burns whatever it is applied to (a tree or a person). |
| M39A6 | 99.31% | During the journey, a person allegorically asks someone else to say something, sing, etc., so that time on the road passes faster. He understands instructions literally by doing ridiculous actions. |
| H7F2 | 98.98% | The character embodying death had a body visible to humans. Then death became invisible. |
| K27ZZ3 | 98.98% | The father or stepmother (werewolf) pushes/locks the sisters (the girl and her servants) into a pit. The heroine manages to escape and triumphs over her antagonists. |
| L108F | 98.98% | A character (girl, boy) finds themselves in water, and the antagonist lures them to shore by imitating the voice of their father, brother or sister. |
| N26 | 98.98% | said that the action took place when cultivated plants (wheat, cotton) grew on ice or salt. |
| N9 | 98.98% | Two characters discuss the rider's approach. A person with a higher social status explains that what seems like crows are actually clods of earth flying from under the horse's hooves, and what seems like snow, cloud or fog is falling from his foam or his breath. |
| I87AC | 98.94% | Something huge gets into a person's eye, which he mistakes for a speck of dust. Usually, a bird carries away an animal or fish and drops a bone into the man's eye. It is difficult to find and remove (to do this, they get into a boat and float it inside the eye, throw a net into the eye, pull it out with oxen, etc.). |
| K58 | 98.69% | To win the hand of his beloved, the character builds a canal or aqueduct or digs a well. Usually, the woman does not end up marrying the person who completed the work, and either she herself or the suitor perishes. |
| I87AB | 98.55% | Strong men or a crowd of people cannot move the body of a dead animal or the leg of a motionless person, but a child or a woman can do it easily. Cf. motif B83. |
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
12 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 12 traditions: Ireland, Germans: North (Low- and Central German dialects): Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, Pommern, Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony, incl East Frisia and Oldenburg), Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz, Thüringen, Saxony-Anhalt, Sachsen, Brandenburg, Rügen, Cherkassians, Adyghe, Kabardin, Abkhaz, Abkhazians, Karachays, Balkar, Ossetians, Mordvins, Udmurt, Siberian Tatars, Southern Altai: Altai proper (Altai-Kiji), Telengit, Altaians, Northern Altai: Chelkan, Kumanda, Tubalar, Altaians, Nivkh
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 © 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.
© 2024–2026 Crecganford / Jonathan Fielder-White. All rights reserved.