ATU 113A Pan Is Dead (previously King of the Cats Is Dead)
Open in the ATU tale-type index →
The tale in brief
A man on the road hears a voice, or sees cats burying one of their own, and is told to carry the news that a certain one has died; when he repeats it at home, his cat, or a spirit living in the house, cries out and is gone. In the Finnish verses only the message itself survives, as in 'tell the old Kuraka that Kivironttu has died'.
Summary written for RunoVerse and checked against the Finnic texts linked on this page.
Runosong types
Possibly related: the songs of these types match a passage of this tale, often words a character says or sings (as judged by a language model).
- Kilikka Kalikan tappoi Kilikka killed Kalikka · SKVR · 2 poems
- Metsänhaltija ja nainen The Forest Spirit and the Woman · SKVR · 1 poem
Finnic sources cited in the catalogue
The entries of the catalogue’s list of literature and variants that concern Finnic tradition.
Finnish Simonsuuri/Rausmaa 1968, No. 367, Jauhiainen 1998, No. G1201
Estonian Aarne 1918, 123 No. 45
Full references:
- Simonsuuri/Rausmaa 1968: Simonsuuri, Lauri; Rausmaa, Pirkko-Liisa (eds.): Finnische Volkserzählungen. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1968 (Fabula, Supplement-Serie A: Texte 7).
- Jauhiainen 1998: Jauhiainen, Marjatta: The Type and Motif Index of Finnish Belief Legends and Memorates. FF Communications 267. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1998.
- Aarne 1918: Aarne, Antti: Estnische Märchen- und Sagenvarianten. Verzeichnis der zu den Hurt'schen Handschriftensammlungen gehörenden Aufzeichnungen. FF Communications 25. Hamina: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1918.
Motifs and related tale types
Motifs: Cat Leaves House When Report Is Made of Death of One of His Companions B342
Example tales
English example tales of this type in the Trilogy folktale corpus; their texts can be read in the ATU tale-type index.
- Dildrum, King of the Cats · England · John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, etc. (Manchester and London: John Heywood, 1882), pp. 12-13.
- Hübel and Habel · Germany · Karl Haupt, Sagenbuch der Lausitz, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1862), p. 36.
- Johnny Reed's Cat · England · [Charles John Tibbits], Folk-Lore and Legends: English (London: W. W. Gibbings, 1890), pp. 150-55.
Sources
Tale-type number, title, classification, related types and the Finnic sources: Hans-Jörg Uther, The Types of International Folktales (FF Communications 284–286, Helsinki 2004). · Uther 2004, part I (FF Communications 284), free online ↗
Possibly related runosong types: a reading of the song types by a language model (Claude Opus 5.5, 2 November 2026); only links it rated high or medium in confidence are shown.
Motifs and combinations with other tale types: the Trilogy dataset, from Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature and the ATU catalogue.
Example tales: the Trilogy folktale corpus; each tale’s own source is named beside it.
The plot summary, the notes and the arrangement of this page are RunoVerse’s own.