The Aarne-Thompson-Uther Tale Type Catalog (ATU) is a bibliographic tool which uses metadata from tale content, called motifs, to define tale types as canonical motif sequences. The motifs themselves are listed in another bibliographic tool, the Aarne-Thompson Motif Index (AaTh). Tale types in ATU are defined in an abstracted fashion and can be processed like a corpus. We analyzed 219 types with 1202 motifs from the “Tales of magic” (types 300-749) segment to exemplify that motif sequences show signs of recombination in the storytelling process. Compared to chromosome mutations in genetics, we offer examples for insertion/deletion, duplication and, possibly, transposition, whereas the sample was not sufficient to find inverted motif strings as well. These initial findings encourage efforts to sequence motif strings like DNA in genetics, attempting to find for instance the longest common motif subsequences in tales. Expressing the network of motif connections by graphs suggests that tale plots as consolidated pathways of content help one memorize culturally engraved messages. We anticipate a connection between such networks and addington’s epigenetic landscape.