ATU 851
The Princess who Cannot Solve the Riddle
Aarne–Thompson–Uther tale-type index · Religious Tales · The full type description is not served here; the number and name are the classification facts.
Motifs the recorded variants carry
- Queen propounds riddles. 4 variants
- Riddle propounded from chance experience. On way to riddle trial youth sees things that give him a clue for his riddles. 4 variants
- Riddle: tree with twelve branches, each with thirty leaves, black and white. Year, month, days and nights. 4 variants
- Riddle: what is the mother who devours her children when they grow up? (Ocean and rivers.) 4 variants
- Riddle: what is the creature that is of all countries, that is loved by all the world, and that has no equal? (The sun.) 4 variants
- Riddle of the unborn. I am unborn; my horse is unborn; I carry my mother on my hands. (A boy who has been taken from his dead mother's body digs up the body of his mother and makes gloves of her skin. He rides on a colt which has been taken from a dead mare's body.) 4 variants
- Riddle: one killed none and yet killed twelve. (Horse is poisoned; raven eats of him and dies; twelve robbers eat raven and die.) 4 variants
- Clandestine visit of princess to hero betrayed by token. 2 variants
- Identification by cut garment. Garment is cut and fragment taken as token. 2 variants
- Suitor test: outwitting princess. 2 variants
- Princess offered to man who can out-riddle her. 2 variants