ATU 122 Animal Loses his Prey because his Victim Can Escape by False Plea (previously The Wolf loses his Prey)
Open in the ATU tale-type index →
The tale in brief
A wolf (or fox) threatens to eat one animal after another, but each talks him into waiting, until it has shown its passport or had its young christened, and gets away, so the wolf goes without his breakfast.
Summary written for RunoVerse from Antti Aarne’s list of tale types of 1910 and the Finnic texts linked on this page.
Runosong types
The SKVR or ERAB type index cites this tale type in its description of these song types:
- Varpusen olut Sparrow's Beer · SKVR · 23 poems · cited for comparison
Motifs and related tale types
Motifs: K550
Related types: ATU 6 Animal Captor Persuaded to Talk·ATU 61 The Fox Persuades the Rooster to Crow with Closed Eyes·ATU 115 The Hungry Fox Waits in Vain for the scrotum of the ram to fall off [J2066.1]·ATU 227 Geese Ask for Respite for Prayer·ATU 227* The Crow and the Crayfish (previously The Crayfish Entices the Crow into Talking)
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 ↗
Runosong types cited in the type indexes: the song-type indexes of SKVR and ERAB.
Motifs and combinations with other tale types: the Trilogy dataset, from Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature and the ATU catalogue.
The plot summary, the notes and the arrangement of this page are RunoVerse’s own.