39 motifs match “stranger”  ·  back to the chapters

• Why one presents stranger with first fish caught. A1528
• Tabu: speaking to strangers. C492
• Tabus of strangers. C576
• Tabu: entertaining strangers. C745
• Tabu: stranger to play with someone without asking permission. C892
• Brass (copper) statue at city gates blows on trumpet at stranger's approach. D1317.9.1
• Magic knowledge of identity of stranger. D1810.0.13
• Raja told in a dream the stranger he seeks to destroy is his own son. D1810.8.2.5
• Stranger dies from joy on being rewarded by ruler. F1041.1.5.2
• Cycnus. Cuts off heads of strangers in order to build temple of heads. G315
• Task performed by mysterious stranger. H976
• Strangers umpire beauty contest. H1596.2
• "A stranger does not close his eyes in sleep lest he close them in death": counsel proved wise by experience. J21.41.2
• King refuses to exile gossipers. They would defame him among strangers. At home they serve to test the king's patience and to reform his life. J215.1.2
• Choices: kind strangers, unkind relatives. J390
• One's own kind preferred to strangers. J416
• Futility of expecting stranger to have one's interest at heart. J1087
• Numskulls quarrel over a greeting. Three men greeted by a stranger. Quarrel as to whom he greeted. "I greeted the biggest fool among you." A contest is held in which tales are told to decide which is the biggest fool. J1712
• Standing up for the friendless. Preacher in backwoods asks congregation members who are friends of Jesus to rise. No one rises. "What, are there no friends of Jesus in this house?" A cowboy rises to his feet: "Stranger, I don't know who this man Jesus is. I never heard of him before, but I'll stand up for any man who hasn't got any more friends than he has." J1738.5
• Numskulls cannot find their own legs. A stranger helps them with a switch. (Usually get them mixed up when they sit down to bathe their feet.) J2021
• Our children know local road; odd that grown stranger does not. J2212.9
• Marrying a stranger. The girl shortly to be married complains: "It was all very well for you, mother, to marry father, but I am to marry a complete stranger." J2463.2
• The tall hog. Man boasts of hog so big that a man could not reach its back if he holds his hand as high as possible. A stranger buys the hog, sight-unseen. The seller takes him to the hog, shows the buyer that the hog's back is much below his hand when he holds it as high as possible. K196.2
• Robber cheated by substitution. Spending the night in company with a suspicious-looking stranger, the man does not go to sleep, but leaves his clothes in bed and waits to see what will happen. When the stranger wakes up in the night, he stabs at his sleeping companion, who shoots him down. (Cf. K525.1.) K437.1
• Greatest liar to get his supper free. Wager. Each lie is corroborated by a confederate, who poses as a newly arrived stranger. K455.7
• Stranger asks woman for fire: abducts her. K762
• Tale of the cradle. Two youths pass the night with a family where all sleep in a common room, with a cradle at the foot of one of the beds. The moving of the cradle in the night confuses those walking about so that the strangers sleep with the wife and the daughter. K1345
• Adulteress refuses to admit husband under pretence that he is a stranger. K1511.1
• Incognito king rewards strangers who treat him as companion. K1812.13
• Stranger accidentally chosen king. Picked up by sacred elephant. N683
• Strangers entertained by family to whose hitching-ring they happen to tie their horses. Thus confusion avoided as to where strangers are to be entertained. P328
• Strangers to be given precedence over man at home. Duke permits visiting duke to go through narrow path first. This sets custom. P631
• Punishment: shaving head and covering with tar and driving forth on back of donkey to sound of drum. Stranger thinks he is being honored. Q473.5.1
• Mysterious stranger blows ashes into face of scoffer and chokes him to death. (Cf. Q225.) Q554.3
• Rescue by stranger. R169.15
• Sacrifice of strangers. S265
• Man looks for strangers so as to bestow hospitality on them. W12.2
• A stranger notices that man's cows need feed, feeds them. They die of the shock of being fed. W152.13.1
• Man will not allow food served to strangers until a man of them wrestles with him. W213