ATU 763 The Treasure Finders who Murder One Another
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The tale in brief
Two or three men find a treasure together; one goes to fetch food, and while the others agree to kill him when he returns, he poisons the food, so they kill him, eat, and all die. In two of the Estonian versions the finders hear a stone hum under them and find a cauldron of money beneath it.
Summary written for RunoVerse and checked against the Finnic texts linked on this page.
Estonian treasure legends
Types of Estonian treasure legends that RunoVerse links to this tale type. A canonical reference rests on a catalogue number in the legend type’s name; strong parallels and experimental matches rest on a shared plot or shared motifs.
- P 763: Leidjad tapavad teineteise (ATU 763) · 7 records · canonical reference
Finnic sources cited in the catalogue
The entries of the catalogue’s list of literature and variants that concern Finnic tradition.
Livonian Loorits 1926
Full references:
- Loorits 1926: Loorits, Oskar: Livische Märchen- und Sagenvarianten. FF Communications 66. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1926.
Motifs and related tale types
Motifs: The Treasure-Finders Who Murder One Another K1685
Combines with: ATU 1381D The Wife Multiplies the Secret
Example tales
English example tales of this type in the Trilogy folktale corpus; their texts can be read in the ATU tale-type index.
- Jesus and the Three Blocks of Gold · Arabic · Muhammad Casim Siddi Lebbe, An Account of the Virgin Mary and Jesus As Given by Arabic Writers,' The Orientalist: A Monthly Journal of Oriental Literature, Arts and Sciences, Folklore, etc., etc., etc., vol 1, part 2 (February 1884), p. 47.
- Story of the Three Men and Our Lord Jesus · 1001 Nights · Tales from the Arabic of the Breslau and Calcutta (1814-18) Editions of the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night Not Occurring in the Other Printed Texts of the Work, translated by John Payne, vol. 1 (London: Printed for Subscribers Only, 1901), pp. 282-83.
- The Hermit and the Three Ruffians · Italy · William Alexander Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions: Their Migrations and transformations, vol. 2 (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1887), pp. 383-85.
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 ↗
Treasure-legend links: RunoVerse’s matching of the Estonian treasure-legend types with the tale types.
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.