ATU 970 The Twining Branches

Realistic Tales (Novelle) › Other Realistic Tales (ATU 970–999)

The tale in brief

Two lovers kept apart in life die and are buried on opposite sides of the church, and the trees that grow from their graves twine together above it. In the Karelian songs Ogoi hangs herself in shame, the priest's son who loves her hangs himself beside her, and birches grow from the two graves with their roots and their tops joined.

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).

Ogoi ja papinpoika Ogoi and the Priest's Son · SKVR · 15 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, No. 198

Full references:

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

Motifs and related tale types

Motifs: Twining Branches Grow from Graves of Lovers E631.0.1

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.