ATU 1645A Dream of Treasure Bought
Open in the ATU tale-type index →
The tale in brief
Two companions rest on a journey; while one sleeps, the other sees a small creature, the sleeper's soul, leave his mouth, go into a hiding place and come back, and when the sleeper wakes and tells of a dream of treasure, the companion buys the dream and digs up the treasure. In the Estonian legends the soul comes out as a fly, a bee or a white mouse, and the watcher finds the treasure where it went.
Summary written for RunoVerse and checked against 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.
- P 161: Selgub hingeloomana rännates (Aa S 99; ~ATU 1645A) · 19 records · canonical reference
Finnic sources cited in the catalogue
The entries of the catalogue’s list of literature and variants that concern Finnic tradition.
Estonian Aarne 1918, 137 No. 99
Full references:
- 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: Soul Journeys from the Body E721·Soul in Animal Form E730·Dream of Treasure Bought N531.3
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.
The plot summary, the notes and the arrangement of this page are RunoVerse’s own.