ATU 2021 The Rooster and the Hen
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The tale in brief
A chain tale about a rooster and a hen: one of them chokes or falls ill, the other's errands for help come too late, and in many versions more and more animals join the funeral procession until the cart breaks or they all drown. In the Finnish songs the two go to the sauna and there is no water; the well will give water only for a rope or a pail, the maid gives the pail only for shoes, the cobbler the shoes only for bristles, and in many songs one of the birds is dead by the time the water comes.
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).
- Kukon ja kanan saunamatka Rooster and Hen's Sauna Trip · SKVR · 239 poems
Finnic sources cited in the catalogue
The entries of the catalogue’s list of literature and variants that concern Finnic tradition.
Finnish SKS
Motifs and related tale types
Motifs: Animal Funeral B257·The Funeral Procession of the Hen Z32.1·The Death of the Cock Z32.1.1
Combines with: ATU 130 The Animals in Night Quarters·ATU 2032 The Healing of the Injured Animal (previously The Cock's Whiskers)·ATU 210 Rooster, Hen, Duck, Pin, and Needle on a Journey [B296, F1025]
Related types: ATU 285 The Child and the Snake
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.