ATU 859 The Penniless Bridegroom Pretends to Wealth

Realistic Tales (Novelle) › The Man Marries the Princess (ATU 850–869)

The tale in brief

A penniless suitor wins a bride by making her believe he is rich, with tricks or with boasts that are true only in a twisted sense; after the wedding she finds he owns nothing. In the Finnish songs he jingles stones in his pocket as if they were coins, and at his home the storehouse is empty and the young wife goes hungry.

Summary written for RunoVerse and checked against the Finnic texts linked on this page.

Runosong types

Possibly related: the songs of these types tell this tale (as judged by a language model).

Pettelikko sulhanen The Deceitful Groom · SKVR · 10 poems

Finnic sources cited in the catalogue

The entries of the catalogue’s list of literature and variants that concern Finnic tradition.

Finnish Rausmaa 1982ff. II, Nos. 118–121

Full references:

Rausmaa 1982ff.: Rausmaa, Pirkko-Liisa (ed.): Suomalaiset kansansadut 1–6. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1982–2000.

Motifs and related tale types

Motifs: Penniless Wooer: Patch of Land K1917.1·Penniless Wooer: Money in Hand K1917.2·Penniless Wooer K1917.4·"All of These Are Mine," Says Wooer as He Strokes His Whiskers K1917.7·K1917

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 ↗

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.

The plot summary, the notes and the arrangement of this page are RunoVerse’s own.