ATU 2271 Mock Stories for Children
Open in the ATU tale-type index →
The tale in brief
A pretend story that teases a child who asks for a tale: it begins and ends at once, or strings together nonsense, so the listener gets no story. A Finnish one runs: 'The tale went to the sauna and hung its bag on a nail; the tale left the sauna and took its bag off the nail.'
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).
- Sanon minä saarnaa I Tell a Tale · SKVR · 24 poems
- Satu meni saunaan, pani laukun naulaan Satu went to the sauna, hung her bag on a nail · 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
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.
The plot summary, the notes and the arrangement of this page are RunoVerse’s own.