ATU 283B* The House of the Fly
Open in the ATU tale-type index →
The tale in brief
A fly makes its home in a dropped mitten, a jug or a horse's skull, and one animal after another, each bigger than the last, asks to move in, until the house is crushed or its tenants are scared away. In the one Finnic song, from Ingria, a mouse, a hare, a fox, a wolf, a bear and a rooster come in turn and ask who lives in the mitten, and each tenant answers with a nickname.
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:
- Rukkanen eläinten asuntona The mitten as animals' home · SKVR · 1 poem
Finnic sources cited in the catalogue
The entries of the catalogue’s list of literature and variants that concern Finnic tradition.
Finnish Rausmaa 1982ff. V, 228
Estonian Kippar 1986
Full references:
- Rausmaa 1982ff.: Rausmaa, Pirkko-Liisa (ed.): Suomalaiset kansansadut 1–6. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1982–2000.
- Kippar 1986: Kippar, Pille: Estnische Tiermärchen. Typen- und Variantenverzeichnis. FF Communications 237. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1986.
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 I (FF Communications 284), free online ↗
Runosong types cited in the type indexes: the song-type indexes of SKVR and ERAB.
The plot summary, the notes and the arrangement of this page are RunoVerse’s own.