The Pot Bears a Son

The Pot Bears a Son is a Uighur fairy tale collected in Folk Tales from China.^[1] Ashliman and Schwarzbaum both list it as Aarne–Thompson type 1592B, The Pot that Died.^[1][2]

Synopsis

Nasrdin Avanti borrowed a big pot from a rich and stingy man. Then he congratulated him: the pot had had a child. He gave him the small pot as well. Then he borrowed the pot again and returned to mournfully tell him that the big pot had died. When the rich man objected, he said that if it could bear a son, it could no doubt die as well.

Variants

A form of this tale also appeared in The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night.^[1] Scholar Haim Schwarzbaum argues in his Studies in Jewish and World Folklore that the tale bears hallmarks of a motif frequently encountered in various tales.^[2]

References

1. Ashliman, D.L. (22 March 2013). "The Pot That Died: folktales of Aarne-Thompson type 1592B in which a trickster steals a pot by convincing its owner that it has died". Retrieved 7 April 2024.
2. Schwarzbaum, Haim (2015). "3. Comparative notes to Naftoli Gross's Ma'aselech un Mesholim (1955)". Studies in Jewish and World Folklore. De Gruyter. p. 97-368. ISBN 9783110818116. Note 18: "Dos Tepel hot sich gekelbt", pages 104–106