ATU 2044 Pulling Up the Turnip
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The tale in brief
An old man cannot pull up a huge turnip; his wife takes hold of him, and more and more helpers, often down to a mouse, each take hold of the one before, until together they pull it out. In the two Karelian songs an old woman (in one, a boy stealing turnips) takes hold of the turnip top, the turnip holds on to its root and the root to mother earth, and the old man and the children join the chain until it all comes loose.
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:
- Akka meni nagrahe The old woman went to the turnips · 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 SKS
Lydian, Karelian 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: Pulling Up the Turnip Z49.9
Related types: ATU 1960D The Great Vegetable
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.