ATU 170 The Fox Eats his Fellow-lodgers

Animal Tales › Wild Animals and Humans (ATU 150–199)

The tale in brief

A fox lodges in one house after another; each night it secretly does away with what it brought along, or eats a fellow lodger, blames the host's animals and claims one of them in return, trading up step by step to a sheep or a bull.

Summary written for RunoVerse and checked against the Finnic texts linked on this page.

Runosong types

Possibly related: the songs of these types follow the formula of this chain tale (as judged by a language model).

Kunne miul panna tämä kuvane Where shall I place this icon · 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 Rausmaa 1982ff. V, 219

Estonian Kippar 1986

Wotian, Karelian Kecskeméti/Paunonen 1974

Full references:

Rausmaa 1982ff.: Rausmaa, Pirkko-Liisa (ed.): Suomalaiset kansansadut 1–6. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1982–2000.
Kippar 1986: Kippar, Pille: Estnische Tiermärchen. Typen- und Variantenverzeichnis. FF Communications 237. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1986.
Kecskeméti/Paunonen 1974: Kecskeméti, István; Paunonen, Heikki: Die Märchentypen in den Publikationen der Finnisch-ugrischen Gesellschaft. Journal de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 73 (1974), 205–265.

Motifs and related tale types

Motifs: Fox Eats His Fellow-Lodger: Accuses Another and Demands Damages K443.7

Combines with: ATU 1655 The Profitable Exchange

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.

The plot summary, the notes and the arrangement of this page are RunoVerse’s own.