ATU 2022 The Death of the Little Hen
Open in the ATU tale-type index →
The tale in brief
When the little hen dies, her mate mourns, and the news passes along a chain of animals and things, each of which mourns in some new and odd way.
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).
- Oli ennen ukko, akka, oli kirjava kananen - muna rikki Once an old man, old woman, and a speckled hen — the egg broke · SKVR · 16 poems
- Mentih pappilan naiset veelle The parsonage women went to the water · SKVR · 7 poems
Motifs and related tale types
Motifs: The Death of the Little Hen Z32.2·The Death of the Little Hen Described with Unusual Words Z32.2.1
Combines with: ATU 85 The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage
Example tales
English example tales of this type in the Trilogy folktale corpus; their texts can be read in the ATU tale-type index.
- Little Louse and Little Flea · Germany · Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Läuschen und Flöhchen, Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales -- Grimms' Fairy Tales), no. 30.
- The Cat and the Mouse · Italy · Thomas Frederick Crane, Italian Popular Tales (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1885), no. 82, pp. 257-259.
- The Cock Who Fell into the Brewing Vat · Norway · Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, Fairy Tales from the Far North, translated by H. L. Brækstad (New York: A. L. Burt Company, 1897), pp. 172-177.
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.
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.