ATU 921 The King and the Farmer's Son

ATU 921

The King and the Farmer's Son

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

King: What is your father doing? Youth: He is in the vineyard and is doing good and bad. (He prunes vines and sometimes cuts good and sometimes lets bad ones stay.) 546 variants
King: What is your father doing? Youth: Makes an evil greater. (Closes up a path; this causes another to be opened.) 546 variants
King: What is your father doing? Youth: Makes many out of few. (Sows grain.) 546 variants
King: What is your brother doing? Youth: He hunts; he throws away what he catches and what he does not catch he carries with him. (Hunts for lice on his body.) 546 variants
King: What is your mother doing? Youth: She does for another what the latter cannot do for her. (Lays out a corpse.) 546 variants
King: What is your mother doing? Youth: She is baking the bread we ate last week. (To pay back borrowed bread.) (Cf. H583.2.4.) 546 variants
King: What is your sister doing? Youth: She is mourning last year's laughter. (Nurses child, the fruit of last year's love affair.) 546 variants
King: What do you see? Youth: One and a half men and a horse's head. (Himself, the legs of the king on horseback in the door, and the horse's head.) 26 variants
King: Are you alone at home? Youth: Not now; I see the half of two quadrupeds. (Two legs of the king and the forefeet of his horse.) 26 variants
King: What is your father doing? Youth: Makes better from good. (Hedges his field.) 26 variants
King: What is your father doing? Youth: Cuts wood which was burnt last year. (To pay old debts.) 26 variants
King: What is your father doing? Youth: He fences thorns with thorns. (Eggplant garden fenced with thorns.) 26 variants
King: What is your brother doing? Youth: He runs back and forth. (Plows.) 26 variants
King: What is your brother doing? Youth: He sits between heaven and earth. (In a tree.) 26 variants
King: What is your mother doing? Youth: She shows the light of the world to one who has not yet seen it. (Assists at a birth.) 26 variants
King: What is your mother doing? Youth: She cuts off the heads of the well to cure the sick. (Kills chickens to feed her sick mother.) 26 variants
King: What is your mother doing? Youth: She drives away the hungry and compels the filled to eat. (Drives away the hungry hens and stuffs the geese.) 26 variants
King: What are your mother and father doing? Girl: Mother is separating earth (being a midwife), and father is mixing earth (at a funeral). 26 variants
King: What is your mother doing? Girl: She has gone to turn one into two (to split peas). 26 variants
King: What are you doing? Youth: I boil those which come and go. (Beans which keep rising and falling in water.) 26 variants
Girl to king: Should it (the flood) come I shall not come; should it not come, I shall come. 26 variants
Identification by severed limbs. (Cf. also H105.) 21 variants
Identification by severed hand. 21 variants
Severed head as proof of killing. 21 variants
Paradoxical tasks. 21 variants
Task: coming neither on nor off the road. (Comes in the rut or the ditch at side of the road.) 21 variants
Task: standing neither inside nor outside of gate. (Forefeet of horse inside, hind feet outside.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither on horse nor on foot (riding nor walking). 21 variants
Task: coming neither on horse nor on foot. (Comes on another animal.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither on horse nor on foot. (Comes sitting on animal but with feet reaching ground.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither on horse nor on foot. (Comes with one leg on animal's back, one on ground.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither on horse nor on foot. (Coming drawn by an animal on net, trough, or sledge.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither on horse nor on foot. (Walks on a stick horse.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither on horse nor on foot. (Crawls on all fours.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither naked nor clad. 21 variants
Task: coming neither naked nor clad. (Comes wrapped in net or the like.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither naked nor clad. (Comes clothed in own hair.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither naked nor clad. (Comes with part of body clothed.) 21 variants
Task: coming "neither in softness nor in hardness." (Comes clad in garments of mountain down.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither barefoot nor shod. (Comes with one shoe on, one off; or in soleless shoes.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither with nor without a present (game). (Lets bird fly as the reaches it toward king.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither by day nor by night. (Comes at twilight.) 21 variants
Task: standing between summer and winter. (Stands between wagon and sleigh.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither with nor without a companion. (Comes with an animal.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither washed nor unwashed. (Comes partly washed.) 21 variants
Task: coming neither hungry nor satiated. (Eats a thin soup, a leaf, a single grain, or the like.) 21 variants
Task: coming laughing and crying at once. (Rubs eyes with a twig to simulate crying.) 21 variants

Type numbers and names after Aarne–Thompson–Uther, via Hagedorn, trilogy (2022), CC-BY-NC-SA; motif links weighted by the dataset’s recorded tale variants. Served as classification facts with attribution.