ATU 2022 The Death of the Little Hen


At this site:
Jacobs. Titty Mouse And Tatty Mouse
Steel. Poor Hen-Sparrow
Asbjørnsen. The Cock Who Fell into the Brewing Vat
Grimm. Louse and Flea

Compare also ATU 2023. Little Ant Marries which has both courtship and mourning.

ATU 2022: The Death of the Little Hen. Chain tale, game, song, or rhyme in which a small animal (chicken, flea, louse, other insect, small child,etc.) dies (fall into a cooking pot and is scalded, is burned, is drowned). Various people (girl, woman, father, etc.), animals, and objects (door, window, wagon, broom, tree, water, well, etc.) lament the death, which they announce in their characteristic manners. For example, the flea weeps, the tree loses its leaves, the door squeaks, the broom sweeps, the table "entables," etc.).

Z32.1.1 The death of the cock. (Der Tod des Huhnchens). The cock chokes and the hen seeks aid of objects and persons (stream, tree, pig, miller, baker, etc.).
Z32.2 The death of the little hen. She is characteristically mourned by objects and animals; e.g. flea, door, broom cart, ashes, tree, girl.
Z32.2.1 The death of the little hen described with unusual words. Each act of mourning describing by a neologism: the table untables itself.

additional information:

Wikipedia: The Louse and the Flea
Ashliman: Mourning the Death of a Spouse 2022

Missouri French: Carriere [online]

Parsons JAFL XXXIII 37 (1920) 37-39 no. 2 [online]

Tegethoff Franzosische Marchen (1923) II 78 No. 18 [German online]

Rolland Rimes et jeux d'enfance (1883) 119ff. [French online at Hathi]

Little Sausage and Little Mouse: Ranke, Folktales of Germany

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