ATU 2030 The Old Woman and her Pig
Open in the ATU tale-type index →
The tale in brief
An old woman's pig will not go over the stile, so she asks a dog to bite it, a stick to beat the dog, fire to burn the stick, water to quench the fire, an ox to drink the water and so on; all refuse until the last one agrees, and the whole chain works backwards. In the Finnic songs a goat will not come home, or Tiitta goes fishing and gets no fish while his children starve, and the chain runs through dog, wolf, bear, stick, fire, water and ox.
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).
- Pukin paimentaminen Herding the billy goat · SKVR · 119 poems
- Läskinkantaja The bacon carrier · SKVR · 18 poems
- Tiitta lähti kalaan Tiitta Goes Fishing · SKVR · 6 poems
Motifs and related tale types
Motifs: The Old Woman and Her Pig Z41·Woman Has Meat (Liver) Stolen by Bird Z41.1·Conflict Between Fowl and Thistle Z41.3·The Mouse Regains Its Tail Z41.4·Mouse Bursts Open When Crossing a Stream Z41.4.1·My Dog Picked Up a String, but Did Not Wish to Give It to Me Unless I Gave Her Bread Z41.4.2·The Wormwood Does Not Want to Rock the Sparrow Z41.7·Boy Dirties His Shoe and Asks the Hay Stack to Wipe It Clean Z41.7.1·Pulling the Needle Out of the Seamstress's Hand Z41.8·The Lazy Servant and the Grain Z41.9
Combines with: ATU 2015 The Goat who Would Not Go Home
Example tales
English example tales of this type in the Trilogy folktale corpus; their texts can be read in the ATU tale-type index.
- Moorachug and Meenachug · Scotland · John Francis Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands: Orally Collected, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1860), pp. 157-60.
- Nanny Who Wouldn't Go Home to Supper · Norway · Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, Fairy Tales from the Far North, translated from the Norwegian by H. L. Brækstad (London: David Nutt, 1897), pp. 246-52.
- The Old Woman and Her Pig · England · Joseph Jacobs, English Fairy Tales (London: David Nutt, 1890), no. 4, pp. 20-23. Jacobs' source: 'Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes and Tales, 114.'
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.