50 motifs match “guests”  ·  back to the chapters

• 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
• 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
• Enigmatic welcome of host. Sounds very inhospitable but properly interpreted makes guests welcome. H595
• 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
• Guests strike man who tries to interfere in their quarrel. It is their host in old clothes. Guests are humiliated but forgiven. J1072.1
• Abbess has twenty-four nuns for twelve monks: twelve nuns therefore for the guests. J1264.9
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• Guests make impossible demands of host: host's representative forces guests to leave by sending them on difficult quest. J1563.2
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• Guests fed before being questioned. P324.2
• Guests' life inviolable. P324.3
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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