M118A. Forty thieves and jugs of oil, ATU 954.
.12.14.-.17.23.26.-.32.
Thechieftain brings robbers into the courtyard of someone else's house, hiding them in empty jugs, barrels, etc. At night they must attack the owners. A girl or young woman (less often the owner of the house) found out about the danger and killed the robbers (usually by pouring boiling water into each jug or barrel).
Ekoi, Berbers of Morocco, Algeria, Arabs of Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Maltese, Corsicans, Sicilians, Sardinians, Italians (Lombardy, Veneto, Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, Rome, Molise) Portuguese, Spanish, Aragon, Catalans, Basques, Irish, French, Walloons, Germans (Schleswig-Holstein, Switzerland, Grimms, Austria), Frisians, Flemish, Dutch (?) , Thousand and One Nights, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Qatar, Kumaoni, Punjabi, Chinese, Greeks, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Albanians, Slovenes, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Russians (Arkhangelsk, Olonetskaya, Vologda, Moscow, Oryol, Ryazan), Ukrainians (Galicia, Podolia, Pokutye, Kievskaya, Poltava), Belarusians, Ossetians (Karachays), Turks, Bukhara Arabs, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Faroese, Estonians, Livonians, Finns, Lithuanians, Latvians, Mari, Mordovians (?) , Komi (?).
West Africa. Ekoi [god Obassi Osaw has sons Oro and Agbo; after his death, O. inherited everything, A. only hunted; one day he went down to earth and saw white people bringing treasures into the house, and then left; A. collected valuables and returned home; so several times; A.'s wife asked O.'s wife to measure the money; O. begged O. to show him the treasury; when he found out where she went by himself, he began to try on jewelry, white, came, cut it into pieces; A. collected it, brought it to the tailor and asked them to sew it; the servant of the treasure owners found a tailor and found out who was plundering the treasury; marking the pillars of A.'s house with paint, went to tell the owners; but A.'s son painted all the houses in the village; then the servant put 12 soldiers in empty barrels, rolled them to A. and said that it was a gift - barrels of palm wine; at night, A.'s son stabbed them guest, poured boiling water into each barrel; seeing the dead guest, A. took his son to court, but everything was clarified; A. gave his son half of the treasure and made his heir]: Talbot 1912:389-393.
North Africa. Algerian Berbers, Tunisian Arabs: El-Shamy 2004, No. 954:660-661; Berbers of Morocco (Fez) [the evil rich brother has 7 sons of fools; the poor has 7 smart daughters, the youngest is the youngest smart; every day a rich woman sends a black woman to carry a bucket of milk to "this abandoned grave"; she pours milk on the grave; younger girl: if God wants to help, he will help; she is both one and the eldest son a rich brother goes on a journey: who will earn more and get it; the boy took a lot of food, but forgot water; the girl gave him a drink in exchange for his food; then he ran out of food; he gave for a piece of bread her horse; at the fork he walked along the white road; in the city he decided to buy gifts for his relatives - each with a pot at night; the girl came to the mountain, climbed a tree and waited; seven cannibals told grief in the name God opened up, came in; when all seven came out, the girl also told the grief to open; there were many prisoners; she told them to load jewelry on animals, went home; staying away from her caravan, pretended not to bring anything; her parents needed a measure to measure gold; the rich brother's wife smeared the measure with glue; found gold coins stuck; the rich sent the eldest son to the mountain; he did not notice that not 7, but 6 cannibals came out of the mountain; the seventh grabbed him; he said that he did not come to rob, but to tell him who took everything; let the robbers sit in the butter wineskins and he would bring the caravan donkeys to the guilty person's house; but at night the maid decided to take oil, since the drovers had brought him, poked him with an awl; robber: what, it's time? The maid understood everything, began to sing; the girl also understood; they lit a fire in the hole, threw their wineskins there; the rich brother's son came in the morning, but to his disappointment, it was not the girls who died, but the cannibals]: El Fasi, Dermenghem 1928:140-150; kabila [the rich brother has 7 sons, the poor has 7 daughters; the poor man's wife is dead; the rich one agreed to send food to the poor's daughters in the morning and evening; a few days later I met the poor man - he did not receive anything; it turned out that the maid poured everything on the grave in the cemetery, because she understood Tombe-á-Souper (as her mistress allegorically put it) literally; the poor decided leave your daughters and go to earn money; on the way an old man, a man standing next to him and the other lying head down; old man: the first is the fate of your rich brother, the second is your fate; the poor came to the castle; heard noise; 7 cannibal giants came out of the gate, each with the same child on their shoulders; when the cannibals fled, the poor man went to the castle, passing 7 doors; there were 7 plates of couscous, partridges, mugs of water, spoons on the table ; he ate, drank a small piece of everything, a sip; put a handful of seven piles of gold in his bag; went out, went back; to try on gold, he sent one of his daughters to his brother for measure; wife She smeared her brother with glue; when she got it back, she saw a gold coin; sent her husband to find out everything, he went to the castle; on the way he met that old man and his fate and brother nearby; he began to eat greedily in the castle, then put gold in a bag; not pick it up; cannibals came, the man hid in the back room among the corpses; he was found when they touched the soles of all the dead with a hot iron; he told everything; they they ask where to start eating it; man: first his head (brought here), then his legs (came), his stomach (all for him), his arms (could not resist the temptation); he was eaten with one leg left; a brother will come and see he'll pick it up, we'll find our way by drops of blood; brother goes to look for the missing; old man: standing is your destiny, and lying upside down is your brother's fate; in the cannibal castle, a man noticed his brother's hanging leg ; thought that they had left it to eat later; took it away without noticing that blood was dripping; the wagtail covered the drops with earth, but the man drove it away; then it scraped off the ground, exposing the drops; man invited his brother's widow to marry her and marry their sons and daughters; she agreed; cannibals found the brothers' house by drop of blood; their children pretended to be oil merchants, asked to spend the night; man put them in a room with straw, advised them to lock the doors; in the dark, the maid went to buy oil, ran into someone; he: is it time to go eat them? maid: it's not time yet; a man and his household set fire to straw, all cannibals died except one child; the man decided not to kill him; heard him talk out loud how delicious pink should be father's ears; killed him by hitting the wall; everything is fine]: Mammeri 1996, No. 7:116-132; Algerian Arabs (Blida) [two brothers, one of them king; poor brother decided to leave, came to the place where the ghuli climbed on tree; guli came, told the cave to open, brought the corpses of the dead, devoured them; then they went out; the man named the cave, went in, loaded treasures on the donkey, brought his brother king into the country; the king threw him to prison: tell me where you found the treasure; then released; removed from power, impoverished; came to that cave; when you collected the treasure, forgot the name, could not go out; the guli tore him to pieces; his brother found his liver and lungs, brought, buried; guli found their way along the trail of blood; some turned into camels, others into buttered wineskins, another caravan owner; the imaginary caravan asked permission to spend the night in yard; the owner let the camels in, but not the caravan himself; the black maid decided to oil her hair, opened one wineskin; ghoul: what, it's time? the maid rubbed the grain and sang loudly so that the owner could guess; he went down, understood everything, gathered people with outposts and pickaxes, dug a hole, lit a fire in it, threw wineskins there; in the morning he came caravan, he was also thrown into the hole; then the man came back to the guley cave, climbed the tree; guli children came; they smelled a man but did not find him; he collected treasures again; married royal daughter, mobilized people to dig a new hole, the guli died in it]: Desparmet 1910:183-205; the Arabs of Algeria [a rich brother has a son, the poor has 7 daughters; occasionally the rich sends the poor the remnants food, telling the maid to take the food to the "forgotten grave"; she leaves it in the cemetery; the poor went on a journey, saw the castle, climbed a tree, watched; 40 cannibals and cannibals came and said, "Open up, constipation for me to go," the door opened; in the morning they left; after saying the same words, the man got inside, ate some gold, came back; his wife took a measure from the wife of a rich brother; she smeared her with glue, stuck gold coin; the rich brother took the poor man to shave, put a razor to his throat, making him tell everything; came to the castle, collected a few bags of gold, ate so much that it was difficult to get up, hid under a pile dried dead bodies; a blind cannibal found him, poking his hot head; he was eaten, his heart was hung from the lintel; the poor man moved to his brother's house; went in search, saw his heart: it was beating, suffers; took his heart, went home, drops of blood left a mark; cannibals followed the trail, turning into merchants, mules and buttered wineskins; the imaginary caravan spent the night in the house where the former poor brother is now and where lived rich; the maid went down to the hallway, where the wineskins were stacked, and saw them moving; she understood everything; so as not to arouse suspicion of the merchants talking to the owner, she spoke about it in a song; he I understood; no matter how long he went out, took his family out, set fire to the house; the cannibals burned down, except for one mule; his nephew begged him to leave him; his mother gave her son a spinning wheel: if you stick it in the ground, a tree will grow; one day The mule carried, began to go up to the sky; the young man stuck the spinning wheel, it grew even taller; the mule began to gnaw on the tree; as soon as he went to rest, the recess in the trunk overgrown; past the caravan; the young man asks to tell his uncle that the mule had become a cannibal; the cannibal ate the caravan; the next time the young man turned to the "caravan of heaven"; the cannibal looked up in vain, and the caravans understood; the uncle came with the warriors, the cannibal ran away; the young man they lowered him, replaced him with a scarecrow; the wind threw him to the ground, ate the cannibal; became a beautiful girl, came to the village: I will marry the one who will defeat me in martial arts; that young man did not want to participate, but others convinced him that the girl succumbed to him; every night she goes out into the yard, eats one sheep; the uncle decided to see if the cannibal bit his shoulder; explained that she accidentally scratched him with a comb; the nephew did not believes; everyone else is gone; a boy was born; father: your ears are crispy, it would be nice to eat; a man killed an ogre son, galloped away; the cannibal ate the brain of the son, chased her husband; his horse kicked her; dying, she said that her bone would dazzle him; many years later he passed through this place; the horse stepped on a bone, she ricocheted and knocked out his eye]: Belamri 1990:11-23; the Arabs of Egypt [after death Father's younger brother, married to a Turkish slave, got a shop and an older house; the youngest became a merchant like a father, and the elder squandered everything; decided to go to the desert to be eaten by a hyena; saw people coming to 40 robbers in the cave, climbed a tree; when the robbers left, took gold and brought it to his wife; then brought more; the wife took a measure from her younger brother's wife; she smeared her with honey, gold stuck to the honey; the youngest the brother asked the elder to explain how he got rich; they went to the cave together; then the youngest went again; the robbers just returned, cut him apart and put the pieces in the basket; younger brother He came to the cave, took the basket, told the barber to sew the pieces, buried his brother; the robbers looked for someone who knew about their cave; found a barber, found out from him who had taken the chopped body out of the cave; the chieftain brought good oil to his older brother and agreed to bring more; brought a caravan of camels loaded with large jugs, each with a robber; they stopped in the older brother's yard; chieftain fell asleep; the older brother's wife guessed that the jugs were robbers; she and her husband took a hot iron bar and killed everyone; the bodies were thrown into the Nile; camels brought all the treasures from the cave]: Sayce 1920, No. 14:187-197.
Southern Europe. Maltese [a poor man sees robbers entering a hollow tree after saying a magic word; remembering the word, he penetrates the tree himself, takes away treasures; the rich man gives the poor a golden scale a coin sticks to them; after trying to find out where the poor man got the money, the rich man came to the cave, but forgot the word that opened the way back; killed; or brings robbers into the house of the former poor man, hiding them in a big one chest; thieves killed]: Mifsud-Chircop 1978, No. 676:220-222; Italians (Lombardy, Veneto, Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, Rome, Molise): Cerise, Serafini 1975, No. 954:244; Italians (Lombardy: Mantova) [(the whole story of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves)]: Crane 1885:153; the Sardinians [when leaving home, the robbers locked the door, left the key under the stone; the peasant and his son accidentally spied, became comes to the robbers' house and takes away the gold; when they came for the third time, the son fell into a hole dug outside the threshold, filled with something sticky; the father could not pull his son out and, without him giving him away, cut him off and took his head away; the thieves hung his head on a hill in a tree and left one to watch who would come to mourn; but the peasant and his other son began knocking wood on the other side of the hill like sheep they butted; the hungry robber went to slaughter the ram, at which time their head was taken away; then the robbers began to ask who had become rich in the village, and they easily found out; they ordered a batch of jugs to the potter, the chieftain put the robbers in them and asked the man to allow him to leave the jugs in his cellar until tomorrow; the maid went down for wine, heard the robbers talking, called the police and they were killed; the peasant left the money]: Calvino 1980, No. 193:689-690; Corsicans: Massignon 1984, No. 77 [{like Ortoli}]: 171-173; Ortoli 1883, No. 20 [Francesco is a rich brother, Stevanu is poor; S. I went to look for happiness, climbed a tree in the forest; saw seven robbers say "Serchia, open up", the rock opens, there are treasures in it; when they leave, they say, "Serchia, close"; S. enters the cave, brings a bag of gold and gems; tells his wife to ask F. for a measure; he smears the bottom with glue, sticks to gold; S. has to tell everything; F. brings mules, loads jewelry on them, but forgets how to do it open and close the door; the robbers cut him apart, threw the cave into the corner; S. took the remains, spread a rumor that F. was ill and then died; the robbers went to ask who had recently became rich; the shoemaker said that S.; the robbers came to S. under the guise of olive oil sellers, six sat in wineskins; S. guessed it, ordered the servants to boil oil and fill the faces of the robbers; chief captured and burned in the square]: 137-148; Spaniards, Basques: Uther 2004 (1), No. 954:592-594; Aragon ["Open the rock, close and be disappointed!" ; the lumberjack noticed a cave in which robbers hide treasures and from time to time take valuables from there; his greedy rich brother tried to take a lot at once; robbers found him, killed him; robbers they come to the lumberjack's house hiding in oil jars, but the lumberjack's wife discovers them and kills them]: González Sanz 1996, No. 676:90; Catalans (Mallorca included) [poor brother sees how thieves say the magic word and enter the cave; when they leave, he repeats the same word, brings home treasures; the rich brother tries to repeat everything, but the robbers find him and kill him; chieftain pretends to be a carter, hides his comrades in a large oil jar; they are found and beaten]: Oriol, Pujol 2008, No. 954:192-193; Portuguese [poor man sees robbers say magic word, the rock opens, there is a treasure cave; when the robbers leave, the poor man opens the rock, takes some of the treasure; a rich friend or brother tries to repeat everything, but the robbers find and kill him; robbers find the house in which the treasure thief lives, put a mark on the door; the man puts the same on the doors of neighboring houses; the chieftain brings the vessel in which the robbers hid; clever The maid pours boiling oil into it]: Cardigos 2006, No. 954:247-248.
Western Europe. The Irish [left alone in the house, the girl kills the robbers and flees the revenge of their accomplices]: Jackson 1936, No. 956B: 290; Germans [rich brother does not help the poor; the poor sees how Twelve guys approach, climbed a tree; they go to the rock, say "Earth Mountain, Open", and when they leave, "Earth Mountain, Close" (Semsi); the poor man repeated his spells, took treasures in the cave, came back home; healed well; when his rich brother lent him a measure, he smeared the bottom with resin, a gold coin stuck to it; I had to tell everything; the rich man went to the mountain, but when he went back, he forgot the word and began to speak" Zimelei Mountain" (Simelei); robbers killed him; a former poor man or someone else finds a body; the robber, after finding out everything, finds a person's house and marks it, but the maid puts the same marks on all the neighbors houses]: Grimm, Grimm 2002, No. 142:454-455 (=Grimm, Grimm 1987:361-363); French [records are scarce]: Tenèze, Bru 2000, No. 954:180; Walloons [after the wedding, the wife sent her husband to herd a cow; he saw grass on the wall, pulled the cow in to eat the grass, the cow in the noose suffocated; the husband brought home the skin; his wife did not unlock the door for him; he spent the night in the tree and saw seven The robbers are told to open the rock: Jean-Marie's door, stop! then they go out, close the door behind them and leave; the man came in, put diamonds in his pockets, and put the gold in his skin and brought it home; they had to pour gold into the chimney - the wife did not want to believe; to find out how much gold they had, the wife borrowed a measure from a neighbor, one louidor stuck; the wife explained that her husband sold cowhide in Amiens for royal drums and received a lot of money; the neighbor stabbed his cows, went to sell his skins, he was driven away like crazy; he had to tell the truth; the neighbor filled the bags with diamonds, but forgot the formula that unlocked the door; the robbers came and killed him, and parts of his body hung them on trees to intimidate; the man found the remains and, calling for help from a shoemaker, secretly buried them; the robbers realized that they were known; the chieftain, disguised as a beggar, went to ask if he had died who recently; the shoemaker told everything; the chieftain put six comrades in bags, loaded them on mules, brought them to the village, asked the young couple for the night; the wife overheard the conversation in the room where they put them bags; first stabbed the chieftain; then touched one bag with her foot, the robber stuck his head out, her husband cut it off; so with everyone; the couple put the bodies in bags, loaded them on mules and drove the mules away; all good]: Carnoy 1883:273-283; Germans (Schleswig-Holstein, Switzerland, Austria), Dutch, Flemish, Friesians: Uther 2004 (1), No. 954:592-594.
Western Asia. "One Thousand and One Nights" [two brothers K. and A.; K. is married to a rich woman; A. to a poor woman; A. buys an ax with his last money, Ali's brother becomes a lumberjack, sees in the mountains how the robbers come to the door in the rock, open it, saying, "Sesame (=sesame), open the door", bring treasures there; after the robbers leave, A. tells the doors to open, finds a lot of food in the cave, brings home gold; wife A. asks wife K. for a measure for grain; measures gold; wife K. watches her; tells her husband; K. asks A. about wealth; A. shows K. the way to the treasury says, "Sesame , open the door"; K. opens the door; cannot remember the words to go out; robbers kill K.; cut into four pieces; hang at the door; A. finds his brother's corpse; marries his brother's widow; entrusts the corpse cunning slave; slave buys medicines as if for the owner; blindfolds the shoemaker and confuses his way; demands that K.'s body parts be sewn; stitches; requires the shoemaker to remain silent; K. is buried; A. transfers a brother's shop to his son; robbers find him missing; one dresses up in a merchant's clothes; a shoemaker brags about his work to a robber; a robber blindfolds him; a shoemaker restores the way home K.; the thief puts a sign on K.'s gate to find later; a cunning slave puts similar to neighboring houses; robbers cannot find a house; kill an infiltrator; summons another; repeats manipulations with with a shoemaker; marks the house; the slave marks the neighbors; the second infiltrator is beheaded; the leader goes to town; remembers the house; thieves climb into the wineskins for butter; two wineskins are filled with oil; the leader of the thieves dresses as a merchant; asks to spend the night in A.'s house; according to his sign, thieves must jump out of their wineskins; the slave runs out of oil; she goes to the wineskins; hears the thieves talking; answers in the voice of the leader; pours boiling oil into each wineskin; thieves die; the leader finds the thieves dead and runs away; the slave talks about everything A, he gives her freedom; the deceiver opens the shop in front of son A.'s shop; son A. invites a thief into the house; a slave recognizes a thief; pierces her with a dagger while dancing; A. marries her son to a former slave]: Salya 2010:1168-1204; Syrian Arabs [one of two the brothers go on a journey; finds treasures in the cave; in the city he buys a slave who is actually the daughter of the Sultan; as a result, he becomes a sultan himself; he makes his brother a vizier; he decides to go to the same cave; the robbers have long been looking for who robbed them, kill the person who came; the chieftain guesses that the robber has become a sultan, sends his people to the Sultan, hiding them in chests; The Sultan's wife found out about this, told her husband; the chests were nailed and thrown into the sea]: Nowak 1969, No. 142:153-154; Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Qatar: El-Shamy 2004, No. 954:660- 661.
South Asia. Kumaoni [poor Khima went to get firewood, saw 40 thieves, climbed a tree; when they left, he climbed into their treasury, brought everything home; his rich brother Sankar decided to do the same; thieves noticed him, killed him, his wife was raped; when she died, she said that wealth was in her brother-in-law's house; K.'s wife noticed the thieves, boiled oil; when they climbed one by one, she threw everyone in oil; all K.'s wealth remained]: Minaev 1966, No. 27:73-74; the Punjabi [the neighboring king defeated the kingdom, the princes began to get food by harvesting firewood in the forest; seeing the robbers, the elder prince climbed a tree; they said the magic word, entered the house, brought treasures; the prince remembered the word; he brought his mother's treasures on a camel; the younger prince tried to repeat everything, but forgot or confused his words and could not leave; the robbers tore him to pieces; the elder prince found his remains, took him away with another batch of treasures; the robbers decided to find out if there was someone in the city who suddenly became rich; when he learned this, the spy marked the house; the elder prince noticed the sign and marked the neighboring houses with it; the robbers still found a house, the chieftain became friends with the prince; the mother understood everything, began to dance with with a sword, she cut off the thief's head; the other thieves separated, and the prince married and became a banker]: Knowles 1888:267-271.
China - Korea. Chinese (Anhui, Gansu, 2 entries) [robbers in barrels]: Ting 1978, No. 954 {page number in pdf is not visible}.
The Balkans. Greeks: Legrand 1881 [the old logger has three daughters; he bought the eldest handkerchief, she sat on the balcony, saw her by a well-dressed gentleman, married without a dowry; in the palace she gives the keys to a hundred rooms, and the prickly hides it from the 101st; she found it, unlocked the room, there is a window; she sees her husband devouring a fresh corpse, and he turns into a monster: three eyes, a huge head, long arms and nails on them; the husband noticed traces in the locked room, came to his wife in the form of her mother, calls her husband a monster, asks her daughter to give her something and her husband's treasures; she does not tell or give anything; the same with other relatives; but when the husband comes in the form of a wet nurse, the wife tells her everything; the husband says he is Trimmatus (cannibal category) and promises to eat his wife; asks if she wants to be fried or swallowed; she asks for a two-hour delay; takes that forbidden key, unlocks the room and goes outside through the window; the lumberjack is afraid to hide it, the camel driver hides it in a bale of cotton; T. pierces all the bales with a hot skewer, but only wounds his wife in the leg; the driver hides this bale, the king was told; she embroiders a portrait of the king on the throne; the king passed her off as his son; T. came under looking like a pistachio and dried apricot salesman; the jester guessed; as the blacks got out of the bags, everyone was killed; the imaginary merchant came at night in his true form, sprinkled the ashes of his husband's dead so that he fell asleep; tells his wife that the spit was waiting for her; but she pushed him down the stairs, and a hole was dug under the stairs in advance, in which the lion and the tiger were; they ate T.; in the morning, the parents brought their son and daughter-in-law to their senses]: 115-131; Rouse 1896, No. 3 (Lesbos) [the poor man has three daughters; he sees 40 thieves open a rock, saying Ach Karakiz, closing, saying Kapka Karakiz; after the robbers leave, he enters the rock, takes jewelry from each pile; next time he takes one pile in full; robbers leave one watchman, kill a person; one pretends to be a merchant, others sit in bags; an imaginary merchant comes trade, that man's daughter pays with a diamond; after finding out where the thief lived, the imaginary merchant stays in the house for the night; the girl burns bags of robbers and an intoxicated imaginary merchant in the oven ; the sisters took all the treasures; the evil neighbor borrowed a sieve, smeared it with honey, and a gold coin stuck to it; the neighbor's husband went to the cave, the rock crushed him; the neighbor took a new one, the same with him; she lured the sisters' husbands, they took the treasures and went to her; the devil met her older sister, left her in the cave, told them to eat the leg of an animal on which the meat had deteriorated; she hid the meat in ash, the meat answered the devil, he turned the girl into a broom; the same with her second sister, she turned into a jug; the third takes a cat with her, the meat replies that it is in the stomach (without saying whose); the devil is torn to pieces , the younger sister revived the elders; the sisters free suspended sinners, find three young men, take them as husbands; the youngest's husband agreed only to be engaged, took the girl to her parents, despite the warning went ahead, spoke to his mother, forgot the bride; she built a mansion, forgot to go there, she ordered the lion to tear him to pieces; the ruler acquitted her]: 155-159; Bulgarians [the chieftain found out where a man lives who broke into the treasury of robbers and took gold; under the guise of a merchant, brings donkeys allegedly loaded with goods; the owner's maid (daughter, wife) goes down to the basement for wine and notices that there are people in the bags; she kills them with boiling water; waits for the chieftain and kills him too]: Daskalova-Perkovska et al. 1994, No. 954:359-360; Hungarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes: Aarne, Thompson 1961, No. 676:238; Macedonians, Albanians, Bosnians, Serbs, Croats: Uther 2004 (1), No. 954:593-594 {because the Poles have a motive, Greeks and Bulgarians, it is highly likely that it is recorded in most Balkano-Carpathian traditions, although it does not contain data on the distribution of individual episodes in the ATU 954 Uther 2004 story;" The Serbo-Croatian" variant was also noted in Aarne, Thompson 1961, No. 676:238}.
Central Europe. Czechs (Moravia) []: Lifshitz-Artemyeva 2017:391-392; Slovaks {there are probably many texts, the motive is probably present}: Gašparíková in Uther 2004 (1), No. 954:592-594; Russians ( Arkhangelsk, Olonetskaya, Vologda, Moscow, Oryol, Ryazan), Ukrainians (Galicia, Podolia, Kievskaya, Poltava), Belarusians [Two brothers and forty robbers (Ali Baba): the poor man sees robbers enter the mountain, saying "open up"; does the same and finds a treasure in the mountain; a rich brother imitates him, but is killed; robbers enter the poor man's courtyard in barrels on carts, his wife exposes and kills robbers]: SUS 1979, No. 676:174; Ukrainians (Pokutye) []: Zinchuk 2005b, No. 87:435-440.
Caucasus - Asia Minor. Ossetians (recorded in 1970) [the poor man sees the robbers enter the mountain; says, like them: "open up" (etc.), takes gold from the mountain; the rich brother wants to do the same, is killed by robbers; the robbers are trying to find the robber their poor man finally enters his house in barrels (as if they were filled with butter), but a maid girl kills robbers]: Sokayeva 2004, No. 676:96; (cf. Karachays [a story about Ali Baba, his brother Kasim and forty robbers, told in Karachai (using Russisms like "open" and "shut down") and read by an informant in Russian school book]: Pröhle 1909a, No. 9:298-302); Turks [robbers hidden in chests have been brought to the house; the girl scalds them with boiling water {it is difficult to restore the full text on the set of motives}]: Eberhard, Boratav 1953, No. 369:402-404
Iran - Central Asia. Bukhara Arabs [the emir's daughter asks her father to gather her daughters of senior dignitaries; there are 40 girls; they come to an old man who serves 40 robbers; they hang him on a hook for the first time, then they lock them in a chest; then they tell the robbers that anyone can take one of them; let them only bring them water to wash; they lock the door, pour water on the wall, the clay is wet, they have punched a hole, run away; the robbers ordered the old man to buy 80 donkeys and 80 wineskins; they poured molasses at 40, sat down themselves at 40; the emir's daughter ordered her father to buy all the molasses; each of the 40 wineskins in which the robbers were staying was approached one of the girls killed the one inside with a knife; one night the girls disappeared and went to the ground; since then there has been a mazar "Forty Maidens"]: Vinnikov 1969, No. 14:94-96.
Baltoscandia. The Veps [the man sees the robbers enter the mountain saying, "Open up!" He does the same and finds treasures; a neighbor reports this to the robbers who try to kill the man, but thanks to the maid who scalds the robbers hidden in the jars, the man remains alive]: Onegin, Zaitseva 1996, No. 163:213-214; Estonians, Livons, Finns, Swedes, Danes, Lithuanians [the robbers are brought in barrels, only one of them really has oil; girl kills robbers]: Aarne, Thompson 1961, No. 954:337-338; Norwegians [man sees robbers hiding treasures and how to get inside the mountain ("Blue Mountain, open up!") ; a neighbor finds out where he gets gold and tries to climb into the treasury himself; robbers kill him; a man is saved by his maid, deceiving robbers]: Hodne 1984, No. 676:151; Faroese (Nyman 1984, No. 676, 954): Uther 2004, No. 954:592-594; Latvians [the robber comes to the estate with barrels supposedly filled with oil, in fact, there are other robbers there; the maid scalds through holes them]: Arys, Medne 1977, No. 954:335.
Volga - Perm. Marie [a poor man sees robbers go inside an oak tree, does the same, and finds gold under the oak tree; a rich neighbor imitates him but is killed; robbers try to find who robbed them poor man, enter his house in barrels on carts (as if filled with butter), his maid girl kills robbers]: Sabitov 1989, No. 676:40; Mordovians, Komi: Kecskeméti, Paunonen 1974, No. 676: 234 {given the Mari variant, there is probably a motive}.