ATU 2022B The Broken Egg (previously The Hen Lays an Egg, the Mouse Breaks it)
Open in the ATU tale-type index →
The tale in brief
A hen lays an egg and a mouse breaks it; the old man and the old woman weep, and the grief spreads in a chain through the house and the village. In the Karelian songs the speckled hen's egg rolls into the embers, and the weeping passes from the old couple to the gates, the crow and the magpie, until at the priest's house the maids break their buckets and the priest tears his trousers.
Summary written for RunoVerse and checked against the Finnic texts linked on this page.
Runosong types
The SKVR or ERAB type index cites this tale type in its description of these song types:
- 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 · cited for comparison
Finnic sources cited in the catalogue
The entries of the catalogue’s list of literature and variants that concern Finnic tradition.
Wepsian, Wotian, Karelian, Syrjanian Kecskeméti/Paunonen 1974
Full references:
- 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: The Hen Lays an Egg, the Mouse Breaks It Z39.5
Combines with: ATU 1384 The Husband Hunts Three Persons as Stupid as his Wife
Related types: ATU 1450 Clever Elsie
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 ↗
Runosong types cited in the type indexes: the song-type indexes of SKVR and ERAB.
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.