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ATU 1381 The Talkative Wife and the Discovered Treasure

Anecdotes and Jokes › Stories About Married Couples (ATU 1350–1439)

Open in the ATU tale-type index →

The tale in brief

A man finds a treasure and, so that his talkative wife cannot give it away, makes her believe absurd things, a wood grouse in the fishing net and a fish in the snare, a war that sends her hiding under the tub; when she tells, she is taken for mad, and he keeps the treasure.

Summary written for RunoVerse from Antti Aarne’s list of tale types of 1910 and the Finnic texts linked on this page.

Estonian treasure legends

Types of Estonian treasure legends that RunoVerse links to this tale type. A canonical reference rests on a catalogue number in the legend type’s name; strong parallels and experimental matches rest on a shared plot or shared motifs.

Finnic and Finland-Swedish sources cited in the catalogue

The entries of the catalogue’s list of literature and variants that concern Finnic tradition.

Finnish Rausmaa 1982ff. VI, Nos. 48–51

Finnish-Swedish Hackman 1917f. II, Nos. 261, 263

Estonian Aarne 1918

Livonian Loorits 1926

Karelian Kecskeméti/Paunonen 1974

Full references:

Motifs and related tale types

Motifs: Talkative Wife Discredited J1151.1.1

Combines with: ATU 1009 Guarding the Store-room Door·ATU 1211 The Cow Chewing its Cud (previously The Peasant Woman Thinks the Cow Chewing her Cud is Mimicking Her)·ATU 1218 Numskull Sits on Eggs to Finish the Hatching·ATU 1293A* Woman Breaks All her Dishes·ATU 1381B The Sausage Rain·ATU 1381D* Secret Senate·ATU 1381E Old Man Sent to School·ATU 1383 The Woman Does Not Know Herself·ATU 1384 The Husband Hunts Three Persons as Stupid as his Wife·ATU 1386 Meat as Food for Cabbage·ATU 1387 The Woman Goes to get Beer·ATU 1541 For the Long Winter·ATU 1600 The Fool as Murderer·ATU 1642 The Good Bargain·ATU 1643 Money inside the Statue (previously The Broken Image)·ATU 1644 The Early Pupil·ATU 1653 The Robbers under the Tree·ATU 1685 The Foolish Bridegroom

Related types: ATU 1381A Husband Discredited by Absurd Truth

Example tales

English example tales of this type in the Trilogy folktale corpus; their texts can be read in the ATU tale-type index.

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 II (FF Communications 285), free online ↗

Treasure-legend links: RunoVerse’s matching of the Estonian treasure-legend types with the tale types.

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.