Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
L125A — The werewolf wife suffers from thirst.
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 woman with whom the man has come together is a creature of a non-human nature. This becomes clear after she suffers from thirst at night and, finding no water in the house, takes on her true form, turning into a snake, separating her limbs from her torso, etc.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| M198A2 | 99.95% | A person determines, based on characteristics invisible to others, that a valuable item (a gemstone, an expensive sword) has a flaw and is of little value. |
| K99A2 | 99.55% | One person has a dream, and another buys it and obtains what was predicted in the dream. |
| K129A | 99.41% | A young woman (lying in a tomb) comes back to life, then appears dead again, but is ultimately freed from the spell. |
| M90C | 99.41% | man agreed with another that he could take the first thing he touched from his house. The visitor is going to take his wife, but when he takes up the stepladder to go up to the woman, he is told to pick up the stepladder and leave. |
| N20 | 99.36% | fairy tale text ends with a formula that says that the characters have achieved their desires, goals and/or happiness, or that God has fulfilled their wishes. |
| M199A | 99.34% | A man buried something soft and liquid in the ground, and when he stamped on it (shot an arrow into it) and the buried object splashed onto the surface, he said that he had squeezed the brain (innards) out of the earth. |
| I87A1 | 99.03% | Two people engage in a dialogue, contradicting each other in their descriptions of the sizes of creatures and objects. |
| K35B | 99.01% | The hero gives his rivals the food that the king sent them all to get, but what the rivals got turns out to be poisonous, useless, or tasteless, while what the hero brought, regardless of how it looks, gets praised. |
| K56A4B | 99.00% | A girl is told to clean the yarn, or to spin and weave. The wind blows the yarn (cloth, spindle) away, the girl goes in search of it, and comes across a character who rewards her. |
| L65A1 | 98.84% | A demonic character successively devours parts of the horse on which the hero arrived, each time returning to the hero and then leaving to devour another part. (Often asks whether the hero arrived on a three-legged, two-legged or one-legged horse). |
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
8 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 8 traditions: Kashmiri, Persians, Tats, Armenians, Azeris (Azerbaijanis), Kazakh, Kirghiz, Kazan (Middle Volga) Tatars
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How to cite: Fielder-White, J. (2026). The Folklore Database. https://folkloredatabase.com
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