How the Killing of the Old Men Was Stopped

How the Killing of the Old Men Was Stopped is a Serbian fairy tale that first appeared in Kazadzic, a journal of Serbian folklore, having been submitted by Mr. I. L. Szeckovic from Paracin. It is Aarne-Thompson type 981, "Wisdom of Hidden Old Man Saves Kingdom."

Synopsis
A man hid his father in a land where everyone was supposed to be put to death at fifty. He won a bet about first seeing the sunrise by following his father's advice and looking west, so he saw it on a mountaintop. People concluded that the old should no longer be put to death.

Motifs
This story type is known the world over, and although the precise problem solved by the old man differs, the lesson is invariably the same: to cherish the old as a source of wisdom.

Antiquity
Justin's Historia Philippicae contains a variant in chapter XVIII,3,1.

Europe
A Maltese variant titled "The Kaukama and the Kaukam" was included by Margaret Murray and L. Galea in Maltese Folk-Tales.

Africa
A variant was collected from the Wala people of Ghana by Mona Fikry-Atallah.

"Impossible Against Impossible" is a Liberian variant.

Asia
In Japan, there is a legend called Ubasute or Ubasute-yama. Uba means old woman. However, in the story, sometimes be an old father type. There are two types of stories: The unreasonable question type and the branch-and-fold type.

Keigo Seki's Folktales of Japan includes a variant, "The Mountain Where Old People Were Abandoned".