ATU 2043 'Where is the Warehouse' (previously A game, song, or rhyme composed of questions and answers that lead to the next question)
Open in the ATU tale-type index →
The tale in brief
A chain of questions in which each answer leads to the next question: where is the storehouse? the fire burned it; where is the fire? the water put it out; where is the water? the ox drank it; and so on. In the Finnish song 'Who ate the summer butter?' the mouse ate it and is under the storehouse, and in the Estonian 'Liiri-lõõri' a swallow or a lark is asked where its golden nest is.
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:
- Ken söi kesävoin? Who ate the summer butter? · SKVR · 383 poems · old number AT 2018
The index writes the old Aarne-Thompson number AT 2018, which Uther's catalogue of 2004 merged into this tale type.
Possibly related: the songs of these types follow the formula of this chain tale (as judged by a language model).
- Liiri-lõõri! Liiri-lõõri! · ERAB · 862 poems
- Kenen tämä pelto-gornitsa Whose Is This Field or Chamber · SKVR · 25 poems
- Isä kylvää nisuja Father sows the grain · SKVR · 2 poems
Finnic sources cited in the catalogue
The entries of the catalogue’s list of literature and variants that concern Finnic tradition.
Finnish Aarne 1911, No. 2014**, SKS
Estonian Aarne 1918, No. 2014*
Wotian, Syrjanian Kecskeméti/Paunonen 1974
Karelian Čistov 1958, 22ff.
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.
- 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: Where Is the Warehouse? --The Fire Burned It Down Z49.5
Example tales
English example tales of this type in the Trilogy folktale corpus; their texts can be read in the ATU tale-type index.
- Club Fist · USA · William Wells Newell, Games and Songs of American Children (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1884), no. 75, pp. 134-35.
- What Have You Got There? · England · Charlotte Sophia Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings, edited by Charlotte Sophia Burne from the collections of Georgina F. Jackson (London: Trübner and Compnay, 1883), p. 529.
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.
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.