ATU 2014 Chains Involving Contradictions or Extremes
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The tale in brief
A chain of good and bad news, in which each piece of news that sounds good turns out bad and each bad one turns out good. In the Finnish songs a man's cabbages grew but the pig ate them; he killed the pig, but singeing it he burned his house; he built a new one with high benches, and his wife fell off and died.
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).
- Hyviä ja huonoja kuulumisia Good and bad tidings · SKVR · 2 poems
- Pannaanko piippuun? - Pannaan vaan Shall we put it in the pipe? Let's just put it in · SKVR · 1 poem
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 SKS
Finnish-Swedish Kvideland/Sehmsdorf 1988, No. 82
Estonian Aarne 1918, No. 2014*, Löwis of Menar 1922, No. 65, Tampere 1968, No. 10
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.
- Löwis of Menar 1922: Löwis of Menar, August von (ed.): Finnische und estnische Volksmärchen. Jena: Diederichs, 1922 (Die Märchen der Weltliteratur). Read online ↗ (Utrecht University Library)
Motifs and related tale types
Motifs: Chains Involving Contradictions or Extremes Z51·The House Is Burned Down Z51.1
Combines with: ATU 1931 The Woman who Asked for News from Home·ATU 852 Lying Contest (previously The Hero Forces the Princess to Say, 'That is a Lie')
Related types: ATU 2335 Tales Filled with Contradictions·ATU 2040 The Climax of Horrors
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 ↗
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.