98 motifs match “guest”  ·  back to the chapters

• Acquisition of guest-houses. A1435.1
• Origin of "guesting." A1534
• Origin of the potlatch. A feast of the Indians of the Northwest Coast of America in which large amounts of property are given away to the guests. These feasts must be returned. A1535.1
• Tabu: failure to sleep with guest unaccompanied by husband. C119.2
• Tabu: eating after a guest. C236
• Saints have foreknowledge of coming of guests. D1812.0.2
• Foreknowledge of unwished guests. D1812.0.2.1
• Hero has foreknowledge of coming of guests. D1812.0.2.2
• Fakir has foreknowledge of coming of guests. D1812.0.2.3
• Saint carries fire in hand to warm guests. D1841.3.2.3.1
• Saint causes fish to come out of lake to satisfy guests for whom he has no food. (Cf. D1444.1, F986.2.) D2105.5
• Test: threading needle. Guest of convent is given choice of nuns. On the morrow he is given three opportunities to thread a needle. Success means reward, failure confiscation of his belongings. H509.1
• Enigmatic welcome of host. Sounds very inhospitable but properly interpreted makes guests welcome. H595
• "Do not prolong a friendly visit." Guest stays so long that host gives him black bread instead of white. J21.9.1
• To each his appropriate food. Woman gives morsel of various foods to each guest, with explanation. J81.2
• The wine needs no further water. Guests asks small daughter of innkeeper for water to put into his wine. She says, "You will not have to do that for mother poured a whole tubful into the cask today." J125.1
• Wolf as dog's guest sings. He has drunk too much and sings in spite of the dog's warning. He is killed. J581.1
• Guests strike man who tries to interfere in their quarrel. It is their host in old clothes. Guests are humiliated but forgiven. J1072.1
• Execution evaded by using three wishes. King ordains that guest who turns his plate shall be executed, but orders that anyone so condemned shall have three wishes granted. One of the wishes: to have all blinded who saw him turn the plate. He is freed. J1181.1
• Prisoner has drunk water furnished by the king and thus becomes king's guest. Spared. J1183.1
• Abbess has twenty-four nuns for twelve monks: twelve nuns therefore for the guests. J1264.9
• What is wanted, not what is asked. A servant is so trained that when the host asks for wine from a good cask he brings it from a cheap one. When the guest objects, the host says that the servant brought not what was asked for but what was wanted. J1311
• Very small to be so old. Guest criticizes host's small serving of wine which he said was six years old. J1316
• Hired man shows in saying grace how better food has resulted from arrival of unexpected guests. Nebraska text: O Lord of Love who art above|Thy blessings have descended:|Biscuits and tea for supper I see|When mush and milk was intended. J1341.12
• Prayer over the underdone hen. A guest is seen uttering a prayer before an underdone hen at the table. "She must be a goddess turned into a hen, for she has been over the fire and spared." J1342
• Unwelcome guest tells about the hidden food. Having seen his hostess hide it, he tells about it in the form of a tale. J1344
• A three thousand year old debt. Guests in inn discuss reincarnation. "Since we shall come back in three thousand years, the host might trust us till then." Host: "You still owe me what you didn't pay three thousand years ago." J1384
• The wine-spilling host rebuked. A host spills his customer's wine so that he must buy more. He consoles the guest with "It is a sign of the great abundance you shall have this year." With the same remark the guest draws the spigot from the host's wine cask. J1511.5
• Practical retorts: hosts and guests. J1560
• Inhospitable host punished for hospitality. An abbot has his innkeeper treat his guests with the most shameful neglect. A guest retaliates by telling the abbot that he has been very sumptuously entertained. The innkeeper is discharged. J1561.2
• Grace said in name of the host. Neglected guest thus gets his portion of food. J1561.7
• The peasant's share is the chicken. He serves small birds and a roast chicken to his guests. Guests each take a small bird, leaving only the chicken when the plate reaches the host. He takes the whole chicken saying: "Since everyone has a bird, I must have one too." J1562.2
• Treatment of difficult guests. J1563
• The guest who could not keep warm. He keeps calling for more bed clothes. The host finally piles a ladder, a trough, etc., on top of him until he calls for help. J1563.1
• Guests make impossible demands of host: host's representative forces guests to leave by sending them on difficult quest. J1563.2
• Bread baked with onions for an undesirable guest. J1563.3
• Proper food for ox and ass. Guests call each other ox and ass. Host offers green grass for the first and fodder for the second. J1563.4
• Guests frightened away by housewife. J1563.5
• Wife prepares the pestle. Tells guests husband uses it against guests. They flee. Tells husband they left because she refused to give them pestle. Husband pursues to give them the pestle, but they run the faster. (Cf. K2137.) J1563.5.1
• Servants touch cooking pot. Food being considered unclean then, guests depart empty but unwitting of true reason. J1563.5.2
• When hints do not get rid of unwelcome guests, force must be used. Thus man treats his sons-in-law. J1563.6
• A sham fight to frighten away the guests. J1563.7
• Priest frightens away parasitic guests. Tells them he has that morning confessed man with plague. J1563.8
• Revenge by interrupting feast. A rabbi who has been inhospitably treated is afterwards invited to dinner. He keeps the guests so amused by his jokes that they fail to eat and the feast is spoiled. J1564.2
• Guest brings along cakes to eat. Stingy host rebuked. J1575
• The forehanded servant. A parson boasts that when he asks his maid if certain work is done she always answers that it has been done long ago. A guest wagers that she can be trapped if she is asked whether she has thrown the parson's suit of clothes into the tub of water. She overhears the wager and has the suit in the water before he asks the question. J1614
• The archbishop's wife and family. Fool asks what he is to talk about when guests arrive. Is told: "Their wives and family." He asks the archbishop about his family. (Cf. J2461.2.) J1747
• Woman runs after guest to tell him he must restore her husband whom he has unintentionally killed. J1955.1
• How the fishes got there. Guests of host who waters his wine put little fishes into the wine jug. "Now I confess that I put water into the wine; otherwise the fishes could not be there." J2281
• The literal host: bread and salt. Guest finds that his host spoke literally when he invited him to share his bread and salt. Later, when the host threatens an importunate beggar, the guest advises the beggar to flee since the host means what he says. J2476
• Trickster demands return of food guest has just eaten: gets damages. K251.2
• Owners frightened away from goods by report of deadly epidemic. Poor parson thus rids himself of unwelcome guests; they leave food they have brought. K335.0.2
• Trickster reports lost money; searchers leave him in possession of premises. Unable to find a place by the inn fire the trickster mentions that he has lost money on the road. One by one the guests slip out to search and leave him the fire. K341.1
• The thieving guests. Rent a room at an inn and empty the mattresses of feathers, take fire wood, etc. Throw goods out of the window where confederate picks it up. K365.2
• Host robs guest. K385
• Supper won by trick: the mutual friend. A parasite makes the host believe him to be a friend of a certain guest and the guest to think him a friend of the host. K455.1
• Supper won by disguising as an invited guest. K455.2
• Tiger-mother hides concealed guests in jar. K649.1.2
• The entrapped suitors. (Lai l'épervier.) The chaste wife has them one at a time undress and hide. The husband and guests come and chase them off. K1218.1
• Seduction by feigned sleep. The guest in the conjugal bed feigns sleep as he effects seduction. K1325.1
• Guest at inn is told that there is but one available bed: that of the mistress. K1396
• Guest to be killed suspects plot and forces host to sleep in his bed. Brothers come home and kill their father. K1611.2
• Troll bluffed away from christening. He is invited but told that guests will include the Virgin Mary, Thor the Thunderer, etc. He stays away but sends the finest present. K1736
• Dog at his master's table is friendly to guest. On the street he barks at him. K2031.1
• The priest's guest and the eaten chickens. The servant who has eaten the chickens tells the guest to flee because the priest is going to cut off his ears, and he tells the priest that the guest has stolen two chickens The priest runs after him. K2137
• Host offers to send his guest a cask of the wine he has praised. Later refuses to send it as it was merely a "verba honoris". M206.1
• Wager: whose hunger is it more difficult to appease – that of man or that of beast? When nuts are strewn before master's well-fed guests, they snatch and eat them. Herdsman wins wager. N73
• King's example makes merchant wealthy. The king buys shoes for a high price and then has all his dinner guests buy them. N415
• Hospitality. Relation of host and guest. P320
• Guest given refuge. Murderer of a man's father takes refuge in his house and is saved by him. P322
• Guest in disguise or under false name. (Cf. K1831.) P322.2
• Hosts refrain from telling guest of death in household. P323
• Host greets guest with gifts. P324
• Host treats guest with food and everything possible. P324.1
• Guests fed before being questioned. P324.2
• Guests' life inviolable. P324.3
• Host surrenders his wife to his guest. The guest unwittingly falls in love with the wife. The host, on being informed, out of pure generosity repudiates the wife and has her marry the guest. (Often joined with P315.) P325
• Guest begets son with his host's daughter. P325.1
• If host does not return, the house shall belong to the guest. So declares the host as he departs on a mission for the guest. P326
• Barmecide feast. Host places imaginary feast before guest, who accepts it in the same spirit. Guest's courtesy is rewarded by real feast. P327
• Selfish guest expels host. Porcupine asks rabbit for hospitality. When rabbit complains of being pricked, porcupine tells him to leave if he does not like it. P332
• Shabby hospitality forces guests to leave. P334
• Guests accused of greediness. P334.1
• Poor person makes great effort to entertain guests. P336
• Poor host and his wife kill themselves because they are unable to entertain expected guests. P336.1
• Poor peasant closes the eyes in order not to see guest eat: later suicide. P336.3
• King demands work, sport or entertainment from winter guests. P337
• Peasant is cutting wood in front of his house as guests arrive. P411.2
• Man kills all guests, hoping some day to kill rival. S110.2
• Vexed woman brings pot down on husband's head in presence of guest. T252.7
• Sex hospitality. Host gives his wife (daughter) to his guest as bed companion. T281
• Woman advises husband to kill guest else, she will make him chase husband and marry her instead. T481.7
• Angel informs saint of coming of guests. V246.3
• Brahmin steals to feed guests (deities). W11.4.1
• Hospitable man impoverished by greedy guests. W151.2.2
• Man had rather be burned alive than to share food with a guest. W152.2
• Stingy man cancels invitations to his guests. "It is better that they speak ill of me on an empty stomach than on a full one." W152.9
• Miserly wife exposed to guests by her husband. W153.3