How the Daughter-in-Law Got the Coins

Sri Lankan fairy tale

How the Daughter-in-Law Got the Coins is a Sri Lankan fairy tale collected by H. Parker in Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon.[1]

It is Aarne–Thompson type 982, "The Pretended Inheritance".[2]

## Synopsis

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A man marries a rich woman who did not help his mother. He gives his mother a bag full of pottery shards. The mother contracts leprosy, but since she shakes the bags where the daughter-in-law can hear and announces that whoever cares for it will have, the daughter-in-law tends her. After the mother dies, the woman realizes it was shards, not coins.

## Variants

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A medieval variant can be found in Disciplina Clericalis by Petrus Alfonsus. It's No.36 in the collection.[3]

A Cossack variant was translated by Robert Nisbet Bain and included in Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales.[4]

## References

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1. ^ Parker, H. (1914). Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon, Vol. 3. London: Luzac and Company. pp. 240–242.
2. ^ Uther, Hans-Jorg (2004). The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia Academia Scientiarum Fennica. pp. 613–614.
3. ^ Uther, Hans-Jorg (2004). The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia Academia Scientiarum Fennica. pp. 613–614.
4. ^ Bain, Robert (1915). Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales. London: George G. Harrap. pp. 219–225. Retrieved 2 April 2023.

## External links

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* Other stories of this type