The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird

The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird is a Sicilian fairy tale collected by Giuseppe Pitrè, and translated by Thomas Frederick Crane for his "Italian Popular Tales". Joseph Jacobs included a reconstruction of the story in his "European Folk and Fairy Tales". The original title is "", for which Crane gives a literal translation of "The Herb-gatherer's Daughters."
The story is the prototypical example of Aarne–Thompson–Uther tale-type 707, to which it gives its name. Alternate names for the tale type are "The Three Golden Sons", "The Three Golden Children", "The Bird of Truth", , , or .
According to folklorist Stith Thompson, the tale is "one of the eight or ten best known plots in the world".
Synopsis.
Note: the following is a summary of the tale as it was collected by Giuseppe Pitrè and translated by Thomas Frederick Crane.
A king walking the streets heard three poor sisters talk. The oldest said that if she married the royal butler, she would give the entire court a drink out of one glass, with water left over. The second said that if she married the keeper of the royal wardrobe, she would dress the entire court in one piece of cloth, and have some left over. The youngest said that if she married the king, she would bear two sons with apples in their hands, and a daughter with a star on her forehead.
The next morning, the king ordered the older two sisters to do as they said, and then married them to the butler and the keeper of the royal wardrobe, and the youngest to himself. The queen became pregnant, and the king had to go to war, leaving behind news that he was to hear of the birth of his children. The queen gave birth to the children she had promised, but her sisters, jealous, put three puppies in their place, sent word to the king, and handed over the children to be abandoned. The king ordered that his wife be put in a treadwheel crane.
Three fairies saw the abandoned children and gave them a deer to nurse them, a purse full of money, and a ring that changed color when misfortune befell one of them. When they were grown, they left for the city and took a house.
Their aunts saw them and were terror-struck. They sent their nurse to visit the daughter and tell her that the house needed the Dancing Water to be perfect and her brothers should get it for her. The oldest son left and found three hermits in turn. The first two could not help him, but the third told him how to retrieve the Dancing Water, and he brought it back to the house. On seeing it, the aunts sent their nurse to tell the girl that the house needed the Singing Apple as well, but the brother got it, as he had the Dancing Water. The third time, they sent him after the Speaking Bird, but as one of the conditions was that he not respond to the bird, and it told him that his aunts were trying to kill him and his mother was in the treadmill, it shocked him into speech, and he was turned to stone. The ring changed colors. His brother came after him, but suffered the same fate. Their sister came after them both, said nothing, and transformed her brother and many other statues back to life.
They returned home, and the king saw them and thought that if he did not know his wife had given birth to three puppies, he would think these his children. They invited him to dinner, and the Speaking Bird told the king all that had happened. The king executed the aunts and their nurse and took his wife and children back to the palace.
Overview.
The following summary was based on Joseph Jacobs's tale reconstruction in his "Europa's Fairy Book", on the general analyses made by Arthur Bernard Cook in his "Zeus, a Study in Ancient Religion", and on the description of the tale-type in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index classification of folk and fairy tales. This type follows an almost fixed structure, with very similar characteristics, regardless of their geographic distribution:
The king passes by a house or other place where three sisters are gossiping or talking, and the youngest says, if the king married her, she would bear him "wondrous children" (their peculiar appearances tend to vary, but they are usually connected with astronomical motifs on some part of their bodies, such as the Sun, the moon or stars). The king overhears their talk and marries the youngest sister, to the envy of the older ones or to the chagrin of the grandmother. As such, the jealous relatives deprive the mother of her newborn children (in some tales, twins or triplets, or three consecutive births, but the boy is usually the firstborn, and the girl is the youngest), either by replacing the children with animals or accusing the mother of having devoured them. Their mother is banished from the kingdom or severely punished (imprisoned in the dungeon or in a cage; walled in; buried up to the torso). Meanwhile, the children are either hidden by a servant of the castle (gardener, cook, butcher) or cast into the water, but they are found and brought up at a distance from the father's home by a childless foster family (fisherman, miller, etc.).
Years later, after they reach a certain age, a magical helper (a fairy, or the Virgin Mary in more religious variants) gives them means to survive in the world. Soon enough, the children move next to the palace where the king lives, and either the aunts, or grandmother realize their nephews/grandchildren are alive and send the midwife (or a maid; a witch; a slave) or disguise themselves to tell the sister that her house needs some marvellous items, and incite the girl to convince her brother(s) to embark on the (perilous) quest. The items also tend to vary, but in many versions there are three treasures: (1) water, or some water source (e.g., spring, fountain, sea, stream) with fantastic properties (e.g., a golden fountain, or a rejuvenating liquid); (2) a magical tree (or branch, or bough, or flower, or a fruit – usually apples) with strange powers (e.g., makes music or sings); and (3) a wondrous bird that can tell the truth, knows many languages and/or turns people to stone.
The brother(s) set(s) off on his (their) journey, but give(s) a token to the sister so she knows the brother(s) is(are) alive. Eventually, the brothers meet a character (a sage, an ogre, etc.) that warns them not to listen to the bird, otherwise he will be petrified (or turned to salt, or to marble pillars). The first brother fails the quest, and so does the next one. The sister, seeing that the tokens changed colour, realizes her siblings are in danger and departs to finish the quest for the wonderful items and rescue her brother(s).
Afterwards, either the siblings invite the king or the king invites the brothers and their sister for a feast in the palace. As per the bird's instructions, the siblings display their etiquette during the meal (in some versions, they make a suggestion to invite the disgraced queen; in others, they give their poisoned meal to some dogs). Then, the bird reveals the whole truth, the children are reunited with their parents, and the jealous relatives are punished.
Variations.
While the formula is almost followed to the letter, some variations occur in the second part of the story (the quest for the magical items), and even in the conclusion of the tale. Folklore scholar Christine Goldberg identifies three main forms of the tale type: a variation found "throughout Europe", with the quest for the items; "an East Slavic form", where mother and son are cast in a barrel and later the sons build a palace; and a third one, where the sons are buried and go through a transformation sequence, from trees to animals to humans again.
The Brother Quests for a Bride.
In some tales, when the sister is lured by the antagonist's agent, she is told to look for the belongings (mirror, flower, handkerchief) of a woman of unearthly beauty or a fairy. Such variants occur in Albania, as in the tales collected by J. G. Von Hahn in his (Leipzig, 1864), in the village of Zagori in Epirus, and by Auguste Dozon in (Paris, 1881). These stories substitute the quest for the items for the search for a fairy named ("Beauty of the Land"), a woman of extraordinary beauty and magical powers. One such tale is present in Robert Elsie's collection of Albanian folktales ("Albania's Folktales and Legends"): "The Youth and the Maiden with Stars on their Foreheads and Crescents on their Breasts".
Another version of the story is "The Tale of Arab-Zandyq", in which the brother is the hero who gathers the wonderful objects (a magical flower and a mirror) and their owner (Arab-Zandyq), whom he later marries. Arab-Zandyq replaces the bird and, as such, tells the whole truth during her wedding banquet.
In a specific Armenian variant, called "The Twins", the last quest for the brother is to find the daughter of an Indian king and bring her to his king's palace. In this version, it is a king who overhears the sisters' nightly conversation in his search for a wife for his son. At the end, the brother marries the foreign princess and his sister reveals the truth to the court.
This conclusion also happens in an Indian variant, called "The Boy with the Moon on his Forehead", from Bengali. In this tale, the seventh queen begets the wonder-children (fraternal twins, a girl and a boy); the antagonists are the other six queens, who, overcome with jealousy, trick the new queen with puppies and expose the children. When they both grow up, the jealous queens set the siblings on a quest for a "kataki" flower, with the brother rescuing Lady Pushpavati from Rakshasas. Lady Pushpavati marries the titular "boy with the moon on his forehead" and reveals to the King her mother-in-law's ordeal and the deceit of the King's co-wives.
In an extended version from a Breton source, called , the youngest triplet, a king's son, listens to the helper (an old woman), who reveals herself to be a princess enchanted by her godmother. In a surprise appearance by said godmother, she prophecises her goddaughter shall marry the hero of the tale (the youngest prince), after a war with another country.
The Sister marries a Prince.
In an Icelandic variant collected by Jón Árnason and translated in his book "Icelandic Legends" (1866), with the name ("The Story of the Farmer's Three Daughters", or its German translation, ), the quest focus on the search for the bird and omits the other two items. The end is very much the same, with the nameless sister rescuing her brothers "Vilhjámr" and "Sigurdr" and a prince from the petrification spell and later marrying him.
Another variant where this happy ending occurs is "Princesse Belle-Étoile et Prince Chéri", by Mme. D'Aulnoy, where the heroine rescues her cousin, Prince Chéri, and marries him. Another French variant, collected by Henry Carnoy (, or "The tree that sings, the bird that speaks and the water of gold"), has the youngest daughter, the princess, marry an enchanted old man she meets in her journey and who gives her advice on how to obtain the items.
In a tale collected in Carinthia (Kärnten), Austria (, or "The black and white stones"), the three siblings climb a mountain or slope, but the brothers listen to the sounds of the mountain and are petrified. Their sister arrives at a field of white and black stones and, after a bird gives her instructions, sprinkles magic water on the stones, restoring her brothers and many others – among them, a young man, whom she later marries.
In the Armenian variant "Théodore, le Danseur", the brother ventures on a quest for the belongings of the eponymous character and, at the conclusion of the tale, this fabled male dancer marries the sister.
In The Three Little Birds, a folktale collected by the Brothers Grimm, in "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" (KHM nr. 96), instructed by an old woman fishing, the sister strikes a black dog and it transforms into a prince, with whom she marries as the truth settles among the family.
A similar conclusion happens in the commedia dell'arte "The Green Bird", where the brother undergoes the quest for the items, and the titular green bird is a cursed prince, who, after being released from its avian form, marries the sister.
The Tale of Tsar Saltan.
Some versions of the tale have the mother being cast out with the babies into the sea in a box, after the king is tricked into thinking his wife did not deliver her promised wonder children. The box eventually washes ashore on the beaches of an island or another country. There, the child (or children) magically grows up in hours or days and builds an enchanted castle or house that attracts the attention of the common folk (or merchants, or travellers). Word reaches the ears of the despondent king, who hears about the mysterious owners of such fantastic abode, who just happen to look like the children he would have had.
French scholar Gédeon Huet considered this format as "the Slavic version" of "Les soeurs jalouses" and suggested that this format "penetrated into Siberia", brought by Russian migrants.
This "Slavic" narrative (mother and child or children cast into a chest) recalls the motif of "The Floating Chest", which appears in narratives of Greek mythology about the legendary birth of heroes and gods. The motif also appears in the Breton legend of saint Budoc and his mother Azénor: Azénor was still pregnant when cast into the sea in a box by her husband, but an angel led her to safety and she gave birth to future Breton saint Budoc.
Russian tale collections attest to the presence of Baba Yaga, the witch of Slavic folklore, as the antagonist in many of the stories.
Russian scholar T. V. Zueva suggests that this format must have developed during the period of the Kievan Rus, a period where a intense fluvial trade network developed, since this "East Slavic format" emphasizes the presence of foreign merchants and traders. She also argues for the presence of the strange island full of marvels as another element.
Rescue of brothers from transformation.
In some variants of this format, the castaway boy sets a trap to rescue his brothers and release them from a transformation curse. For example, in (""), a Hungarian variant, when the hero of the tale sees a flock of eleven swans flying, he recognizes them as their brothers, who have been transformed into birds due to divine intervention by Christ and St. Peter.
In another format, the boy asks his mother to prepare a meal with her "breast milk" and prepares to invade his brothers' residence to confirm if they are indeed his siblings. This plot happens in a Finnish variant, from Ingermanland, collected in (, or "Brother and Sister, and the golden-haired sons of the King"). The mother gives birth to six sons with special traits who are sold to a devil by the old midwife. Some time later, their youngest brother enters the devil's residence and succeeds in rescuing his siblings.
Russian scholar T. V. Zueva argues that the use of "mother's milk" or "breast milk" as the key to the reversal of the transformation can be explained by the ancient belief that it has curse-breaking properties.
The Boys With The Golden Stars.
The motif of a woman's babies, born with wonderful attributes after she claimed she could bear such children, but stolen from her, is a common fairy tale motif. In this plot-type, an evil stepmother (or grandmother, or gypsy, or slave, or maid) kills the babies, but the twins go through a resurrective reincarnation: from trees to animals and finally into humans babies again. This transformation chase where the stepmother is unable to prevent the children's reappearance is unusual, although it appears in "A String of Pearls Twined with Golden Flowers" and in "The Count's Evil Mother", a Croatian tale from the Karlovac area.
Most versions of "The Boys With Golden Stars" begin with the birth of male twins, but very rarely there are fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. When they transform into human babies again, the siblings grow up at an impossibly fast rate and hide their supernatural trait under a hood or a cap. Soon after, they show up in their father's court or house to reveal the truth through a riddle or through a ballad.
This tale's format happens in many variants collected in the Balkan area, specially in Romenia, as it can be seen in "The Boys with the Golden Stars" (Romanian: ) collected in "Rumänische Märchen", which Andrew Lang included in his "The Violet Fairy Book".
The format of the story "The Boys With The Golden Stars" seems to concentrate around Eastern Europe: in Romania; a version in Belarus; in Serbia; in the Bukovina region; in Croatia; Bosnia, Moldavia, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Russian scholar T. V. Zueva names this format "Reincarnation of the Luminous Twins" and considers this group of variants as "an ancient Slavic plot", since these tales have been collected from Slavic-speaking areas. Another argument she raises is that the tree transformation in most variants is the sycamore, a tree with mythical properties in East Slavic folklore. She also argues that this format is the "archaic version" of the tale type, since it shows the motif of the tree and animal transformation, and recalls ancient ideas of twin beings in folklore.
Alternate Source for the Truth to the King (Father).
In a Kaba'il version from Northern Algeria (), the bird is replaced by a bat, who helps the abandoned children when their father takes them back and his second wife prepares them a poisoned meal. The bat recommends the siblings to give their meal to animals, in order to prove it's poisoned and to reveal the treachery of the second wife. 
In a specific folktale from Egypt, , the Brother is the hero of the story, but the last item of the quest (the bird) is replaced by "a baby or infant who can speak eloquently", as an impossible MacGuffin. The fairy (or mystical woman) he sought before gives both siblings instructions to summon the being in front of the king, during a banquet.
In many widespread variants, the bird is replaced by a fairy or magical woman the Brother seeks after as part of the impossible tasks set by his aunts, and whom he later marries ("The Brother Quests for a Bride" format).
Very rarely, it is one of the children themselves that reveal the aunts' treachery to their father, as seen in the Armenian variants "The Twins" and "Theodore, le Danseur". In a specific Persian version, from Kamani, the Prince (King's son) investigates the mystery of the twins and questions the midwife who helped in the delivery of his children.
Motifs.
According to Daniel Aranda, the tale type develops the narrative in two eras: the tale of the calumniated wife as the first; and the adventures of the children as the second, wherein the mother becomes the object of their quest. 
The Persecuted Wife and Jealous Sisters.
Ethnologist Verrier Elwin commented that the motif of jealous queens, instead of jealous sisters, is present in a polygamous context: the queens replace the youngest queen's child (children) with animals or objects and accuse the woman of infidelity. The queen is then banished and forced to work in a humiliating job. 
In the same vein, French ethnologue Paul Ottino (), by analysing similar tales from Madagascar, concluded that the jealousy of the older co-wives of the polygamous marriage motivate their attempt on the children, and, after the children are restored, the co-wives are duly punished, paving the way for a monogamous family unit with the expelled queen.
The Wonder Children.
The story of the birth of the wonderful children can be found in Medieval author Johannes de Alta Silva's (), a Latin version of the "Seven Sages of Rome". The tale was adapted into the French "Li romans de Dolopathos" by the poet Herbert. "Dolopathos" also comprises the "Knight of the Swan" cycle of stories. This version of the tale preserves the motif of the wonder-children, which are born "with golden chains around their necks", the substitution for animals and the degradation of the mother, but merges with the fairy tale "The Six Swans", where brothers transformed into birds are rescued by the efforts of their sister, which is Aarne-Thompson 451, "The boys or brothers transformed into birds".
In a brief summary: a lord encounters a mysterious woman (clearly a swan maiden or fairy) in the act of bathing, while clutching a gold necklace, they marry and she gives birth to a septuplet, six boys and a girl, with golden chains about their necks. But her evil mother-in-law swaps the newborn with seven puppies. The servant with orders to kill the children in the forest just abandons them under a tree. The young lord is told by his wicked mother that his bride gave birth to a litter of pups, and he punishes her by burying her up to the neck for seven years. Some time later, the young lord while hunting encounters the children in the forest, and the wicked mother's lie starts to unravel. The servant is sent out to search them, and finds the boys bathing in the form of swans, with their sister guarding their gold chains. The servant steals the boys' chains, preventing them from changing back to human form, and the chains are taken to a goldsmith to be melted down to make a goblet. The swan-boys land in the young lord's pond, and their sister, who can still transform back and forth into human shape by the magic of her chain, goes to the castle to obtain bread to her brothers. Eventually the young lord asks her story so the truth comes out. The goldsmith was actually unable to melt down the chains, and had kept them for himself. These are now restored back to the six boys, and they regain their powers, except one, whose chain the smith had damaged in the attempt. So he alone is stuck in swan form. The work goes on to say obliquely hints that this is the swan in the Swan Knight tale, more precisely, that this was the swan " (that tugged by a gold chain an armed knight in a boat)."
The motif of the heroine persecuted by the queen, on false pretenses, also happens in , a rhyming story of the ATU 706 type ("The Maiden Without Hands").
India-born author Maive Stokes suggested, in her notes to the Indian version she collected, that the motif of the children's "silver chains "(sic)"" of the "Dolopathos" tale was parallel to the astronomical motifs on the children's bodies.
Before the edition of Antti Aarne's first folktale classification, Svend Grundtvig classified the tale as the proto folktype 44."Den forskudte dronning og den talende fugl, det syngende træ, det rindende vand" ("The Disowned Queen and the Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, the Flowing Water"), by comparing the tale present in "Jyske folkeminder", Vol. V, and Grimm's KHM 96 "The Three Little Birds". This system was later translated into English by Astrid Lunding.
Fate of the Wonder Children.
When the jealous sisters or jealous co-wives replace the royal children for animals and objects, they either bury the children in the garden (the twins become trees) in some variants, or put the siblings in a box and cast it into the water (river, stream). French ethnologue Paul Ottino () noted that the motif of casting the children in the water vaguely resembles the Biblical story of Moses, but, in these stories, the children are cast in a box in order to perish in the dangerous waters. 
After the stepmother or queen's sisters abandon the babies in the forest, in several variants the twins or triplets are reared by a wild animal. This episode recalls similar mythological stories about half-human, half-divine sons abandoned in the woods an suckled by a female animal. Such stories have been dramatized in Ancient Greek plays of Euripides and Sophocles. This episode also happens in myths about the childhood of some gods (e.g, Zeus and fairy or she-goat Amalthea, Telephus, Dionysus). Professor Giulia Pedrucci suggests that the unusual breastfeeding by the female animal (i.e., by a cow, a hind, a deer, a she-wolf) sets the hero apart from the "normal" and "civilized" world and puts them on a road to achieve a great destiny, since many of these heroes and gods become founders of dinasties and/or kings.
Astronomical Signs on Bodies.
The motif of the children born with astronomical signs on their bodies appears in Russian fairy tales and healing incantations, with the formula "a red star or sun in the front, a moon on the back of the neck and a body covered with stars". A similar imagery appears in Lithuanian fairy tales, with the queen giving birth to her children with solar/lunar/astral birthmarks. However, Western scholars interpret the motif as a sign of royalty.
India-born author Maive Stokes, as commented by Joseph Jacobs, noted that the motif of children born with stars, moon or a sun in some part of their bodies occurred to heroes and heroines of both Asian and European fairy tales, and are by no means restricted to the ATU 707 tale type.
Lithuanian scholarship (e.g., Norbertas Velius) suggests that the character of the maiden with astronomical motifs on her head (sun, moon and/or star) may be reflective of the Baltic Morning Star character, Ausrine.
In the same vein, Russian professor Khemlet Tat'yana Yur'evna suggests that the presence of the astronomical motifs on the children's bodies possibly refer to their connection to a celestial or heavenly realm. She also argues that similar motifs (golden chains, body parts shining like gold and/or silver, golden hair and silver hair) are a reminiscence or vestige of the solar/lunar/astral motif (which corresponds to the oldest layer). Finally, tales of later tradition that lack either one of these motifs replace them with special attributes or names to the children, like the Brother being a mighty hero and the Sister being a skilled weaver.
The Dancing Water.
Scholars have proposed that the quest for the Dancing Water in these tales are part of a macrocosm of similar tales about the quest for a Water of Life or Fountain of Immortality. Czech scholar Jaromir Jech () remarked that, in this tale type, after the heroine quests for the speaking bird, the singing tree and the water of life, she uses the water as remedy to restore her brothers after they are petrified for failing the quest.
In regards to Lithuanian variants where the object of the quest is the "yellow water" or "golden water", Lithuanian scholarship suggests that the color of the water evokes a sun or dawn motif.
The reincarnation motif in "The Boys with The Golden Stars" format.
Daiva Vaitkevičienė suggested that the transformation sequence in the tale format (from human babies, to trees, to lambs/goats and finally to humans again) may be underlying a theme of reincarnation, metempsychosis or related to a life-death-rebirth cycle. This motif is shared by other tale types, and does not belong exclusively to the ATU 707.
A similar occurrence of the tree reincarnation is attested in the Bengal folktale "The Seven Brothers who were turned into Champa Trees" and in the tale "The Real Mother", collected in Simla.
India-born author Maive Stokes noted the resurrective motif of the murdered children, and found parallels among European tales published during that time. Austrian consul Johann Georg von Hahn also remarked on a similar transformation sequence present in a Greek tale from Asia Minor, "Die Zederzitrone", a variant of "The Love for Three Oranges" (ATU 408).
Distribution.
According to Joseph Jacobs's "Europa's Fairy Book", the tale format is widespread throughout Europe and Asia (Middle East and India). Portuguese writer, playwright and literary critic Teófilo Braga, in his , confirms the wide area of presence of the tale, specially in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and in Russian and Slavic sources.
The tale can also be found across Brazil, Syria, "White Russia, The Caucasus, Egypt, Arabia".
Russian comparative mythologist Yuri Berezkin pointed out that the tale type can be found "from Ireland and Maghreb, to India and Mongolia", in Africa and Siberia.
Possible point of origin.
At first glance, scholarship admits some antiquity to the tale type, due to certain "primitive" elements, such as "the alleged birth of an animal or monster to a woman".
Mythologist Thomas Keightley, in his 1834 book "Tales and Popular Fictions", suggested the transmission of the tale from a genuine Persian source, based on his own comparison between Straparola's literary version and the one from "The Arabian Nights" ("The Sisters envious of their Cadette").
The Brothers Grimm, commenting on the German version they collected, "De drei Vugelkens", suggested that the tale developed independently in Köterberg, due to Germanic localisms present in the text.
Another theory is that the Middle East is the possible point of origin or dispersal, due to the great popularity of the tale in the Arab world.
On the other hand, Joseph Jacobs, in his notes on "Europa's Fairy Book", proposed a European provenance, based on the oldest extant version registered in literature ("Ancilotto, King of Provino").
Waldemar Liungman has suggested that this tale has an even earlier point of origin, with a possible source in Hellenistic times.
It has been suggested by Russian scholars that the first part of the tale (the promises of the three sisters and the substitution of babies for animals/objects) may find parallels in stories of the indigenous populations of the Americas.
Scholar Linda Dégh put forth a theory of a common origin for tale types ATU 403 ("The Black and the White Bride"), ATU 408 ("The Three Oranges"), ATU 425 ("The Search for the Lost Husband"), ATU 706 ("The Maiden Without Hands") and ATU 707 ("The Three Golden Sons"), since "their variants cross each other constantly and because their blendings are more common than their keeping to their separate type outlines" and even influence each other.
An Asian source?
Professor Jack Zipes, in turn, proposed that, although the tale has many ancient literary sources, it "may have originated in the Orient", but no definitive source has been indicated.
W. A. Clouston claimed that the ultimate origin of the tale was a Buddhist tale of Nepal, written in Sanskrit, about King Brahmadatta and peasant Padmavatí (Padumavati) who gives birth to twins. However, the king's other wives cast the twins in the river. Padmavati's birth is also a curious tale: on a hot summer day, seer Mandavya puts away a pot with urine and semen and a doe drinks it, thinking it to be water. The doe, which lives in the armitage, gives birth to a human baby. The girl is found by Mandavya and becomes a beautiful young maiden. One day, king Brahmadatta, from Kampilla, on a hunt, sees the beautiful maiden and decides to make her his wife. This tale is contained in the "Mahāvastu".
French scholar Gédeon Huet supplied the summary of another Asian story: a Mongolian translation by European missionary Isaac Jacob Schmidt of a Tibetan work titled "Norwou-prengva". The "Norwu-preng'wa" was erroneously given as the title of the Mongolian source. However, the work is correctly named "Erdeni-yin Tobci", compiled by Sagand Secen in 1662.
In this tale, titled "Die Verkörperung des Arja Palo (Avalokitas'wara oder Chongschim Bodhissatwa) als Königssöhn Erdeni Charalik", princess Ssamantabhadri, daughter of king Tegous Tsoktou, goes to bathe with her two female slaves in the river. The slaves, envious of her, suggest a test: the slaves will put their copper basins in the water, knowing it will float, and the princess should put her gold basin, unaware it will sink. It so happens and the princess, distraught at the loss of the basin, sends a slave to her father to explain the story. The slave arrives at the court of the king, who explains it will not reprimand his daughter. This slave returns and spins a lie that the king shall banish her to another kingdom with her two slaves. Resigning to her fate, she and the slaves wander to another kingdom, where they meet King Amugholangtu Yabouktchi (Jabuktschi). The monarch inquires about their skills: one slave answers she can weave clothes for one hundred men with a few pieces of fabric; the second, that she can prepare a meal worthy of one hundred men with just a handful of rice; the princess, at last, says she is a simple girl with no skills, but, due to her virtuous and pious devotion, the "Three Jewels" will bless her with a son "with the chest of gold, the kidneys of mother-of-pearl, the legs the color of the ougyou jewel". The "Great and Merciful Arya Palo" descends from "Mount Potaia" and enters the body of the princess. The child is born and the slaves bury him under the steps of the palace. The child gives hints of his survival and the slaves, now queens, try to hide the boy under many places of the palace, including the royal stables, which cause the horses not to approach it. The two slaves now bury the boy in the garden and a "magical plant of three colours" sprouts from the ground. The king wants to see it, but the plant has been eaten by sheep. A wonderful sheep is born some time later and, to the shepherd's surprise, it can talk. The baby sheep then transforms into a beggar youth, goes to the door of the palace and explains the whole story to the king. The youth summons a palace near the royal castle, invites the king, his mother and introduces himself as Erdeni Kharalik, their son. With his powers, he kills the envious slaves. Erdeni's story continues as a Buddhistic tale.
Two other Asian versions were recorded by M. Potanine (Grigory Potanin): one from Amdo, in northeast Tibet, from an old "Tangoute" that hailed from Lan-tcheou (in Kan-sou); and a second one that he heard in Ourga (ancient French language name for the city of Ulaanbaatar). The Amdo/Tangut story begins largely the same: two princesses, Ngulyggun ("silver queen") and Kserlyg gun ("golden queen") play the basin game with the king's maid, Yog-tamu-nzo. The princesses lose a silver and a golden basin, the maid returns to the king to inform him, and goes back to the princess with the false story about them being expelled from the kingdom. The maid forces the princesses to exchange places on their way to another realm. They meet a prince; he shoots three arrows to choose his cook and they fall on Kserlyg. On their way to the prince's palace, the maiden Yog-tamu pushes Kserlyg into a lake to drown, forces Ngulyggun into menial service and becomes queen. Ngulyggun, while taking the sheep to graze, receives the visit of her sister's spirit, who gives her bread and food. Yog-tamu discovers this situation and kills Kserlyg's spirit. Ngulyggun gives birth to a half-silver, half-golden child, and Yog-tamu orders the baby to be trampled by sheep, but they scatter. She orders to be trampled by cows and horses, but the baby is spared. Then she orders the baby to be buried in a hole and for it to be filled with manure. A flower sprouts. A sheep eats it and gives birth to a piebald sheep, who talks to its human mother, Ngulyggun. The false queen orders the sheep to be slaughtered and its bones gathered by Ngulyggun. The maiden takes the bones to a cave and, for three times, the bones become a lama. The lama asks his mother to summon the false queen to the cave, where the whole truth is revealed.
Earliest literary sources.
The first attestation of the tale is possibly "Ancilotto, King of Provino", an Italian literary fairy tale written by Giovanni Francesco Straparola in "The Facetious Nights of Straparola" (1550–1555). A fellow Italian scholar, bishop Pompeo Sarnelli (anagrammatised into "nom de plume" Marsillo Reppone), wrote down his own version of the story, in (1684), preserving the Neapolitan accent in the books' pages: , or ("The deceiver deceived").
Spanish scholars suggest that the tale can be found in Iberia's literary tradition of the late 15th and early 16th centuries: Lope de Vega's contains similarities with the structure of the tale, suggesting that the Spanish playwright may have been inspired by the story, since the tale is present in Spanish oral tradition. In the same vein, Menéndez Y Pelayo writes in his literary treatise that an early version exists in , published in Lisbon in 1575, but this version lacks the fantastical motifs.
Two ancient French literary versions exist: , by Mme. D'Aulnoy (of fame), in 1698, and ("The Bird of Truth"), penned by French author Eustache Le Noble, in his collection "La Gage touché" (1700).
Europe.
Italy.
Italy seems to concentrate a great number of variants, from Sicily to the Alps. Henry Charles Coote proposed an Eastern origin for the tale, which later migrated to Italy and was integrated into the Italian oral tradition.
The "Istituto centrale per i beni sonori ed audiovisivi" ("Central Institute of Sound and Audiovisual Heritage") promoted research and registration throughout the Italian territory between the years 1968–1969 and 1972. In 1975 the Institute published a catalog edited by Alberto Maria Cirese and Liliana Serafini including 55 variants of the ATU 707 type.
Italian folklorist of Sicilian origin, Giuseppe Pitrè collected at least five variants in his book "Fiabe Novelle e Racconti Popolari Siciliani", Vol. 1 (1875). Pitrè also comments on the presence of the tale in Italian scholarly literature of his time. His work continued in the supplement publication of "Curiosità popolari tradizionali", which recorded a variant from Ciociaria ("Le tre figli"); and a variant from Sardinia ("Is tres sorris"; English: "The three sisters").
An Italian variant named "El canto e 'l sono della Sara Sybilla" ("The Sing-Song of Sybilla Sara"), replaces the magical items for an indescribable MacGuffin, obtained from a supernatural old woman. The strange object also reveals the whole plot at the end of the tale. Vittorio Imbriani, who collected the previous version, also gathers three more in the same book "La Novellaja Fiorentina": "L'Uccellino, che parla"; "L'Uccel Bel-Verde" and "I figlioli della campagnola". Gherardo Nerucci, a fellow Italian scholar, has recorded "El canto e 'l sono della Sara Sybilla" and "I figlioli della campagnola", in his "Sessanta novelle popolari montalesi: circondario di Pistoia" The story of "Sara Sybilla" has been translated to English as "The Sound and Song of the Lovely Sibyl", with a source in Tuscany, but differing from the original in that it reinserts the bird as the truth-teller to the King.
Vittorio Imbriani also compiles a Milanese version ("La regina in del desert"), which he acknowledges as a sister story to that of Sarnelli's and Straparola's.
Fellow folklorist Laura Gonzenbach, from Switzerland, translated a Sicilian variant into the German language: "Die verstossene Königin und ihre beiden ausgesetzten Kinder" (The banished queen and her two children).
Domenico Comparetti collected a variant named "Le tre sorelle" ("The Three Sisters"), from Monferrato and "L'Uccellino che parla" ("The speaking bird"), a version from Pisa – both in "Novelline popolari italiane".
Gennaro Finamore collected a version from Abruzzo, in Italy, named "Lu fatte de le tré ssurèlle", with references to Gonzenbach, Pitrè, Comparetti and Imbriani.
In a fable from Mantua ("La fanciulla coraggiosa", or "The brave girl"), the story of the siblings's mother and aunts and the climax at the banquet are skipped altogether. The tale is restricted to a quest for the water-tree-bird to embellish their garden.
Angelo de Gubernatis lists two variants from Santo Stefano di Calcinaia: "I cagnolini" and "Il Re di Napoli", and an unpublished, nameless version collected in Tuscany, near the source of the Tiber river.
Carolina Coronedi-Berti collected a variant from Bologna called "La fola del trèi surèl" ("The tale of the three sisters"), with annotations to similar tales in other compilations of that time. Ms. Coronedi-Berti mentioned two Pemontese versions, written down by Antonio Arietti: "I tre fradej alla steila d'ör" and "Storia dël merlo bianc, dla funtana d'argent e dël erbolin che souna". Coronedi-Berti also referenced two Venetian variants collected by Domenico Giuseppe Bernoni: "El pesse can", where the peasant woman promises twins born with special traits, and "Sipro, Candia e Morea", where the three siblings (one male, two female) are exposed by the evil "maestra" of the witch princess.
Christian Schneller collected a variant from Wälschtirol (Trentino), named "Die drei Schönheiten der Welt" (Italian: "La tre belleze del mondo"; English: "The three beauties of the world"), and another variant in his notes to the tale.
Stanislao Prato collected a version from Livorno, titled "Le tre ragazze" (English: "The three girls"), and compared it to other variants from Italy: "L'albero dell'uccello que parla", "L'acqua brillante e l'uccello Belverde", "L'acqua que suona, l'acqua que balla e l'uccello Belverde que canta" and "L'Uccello Belverde" from Spoleto; "Le tre sorelle", from Polino; and "L'albero que canta, l'acqua d'oro e l'uccello que parla", from Norcia.
British lawyer Henry Charles Coote translated a version collected in Basilicata, titled "The Three Sisters", where the magical objects are "the yellow water, the singing bird and the tree that makes sounds like music", and the bird transforms into a fairy who reveals the truth to the king.
A singular tale, attributed to Italian provenance, but showing heavy Eastern inspiration (locations such as the Yellow River or the Ganges), shows the quest for "the dancing water, the singing stone and the talking bird".
France.
In French sources, there have been attested 35 versions of the tale (as of the late 20th century).
There are many oral variants collected and analysed by folklorists, found, for instance, in Brittany and Lorraine: "Les trois filles du boulanger, or L'eau qui danse, le pomme qui chante et l'oiseau de la verité" ("The Three Daughters of the Baker, or water that dances, the fruit that sings and the bird of truth"), and "Les Deux Fréres et la Soeur" ("The Two Brothers and their Sister"), a tale heavily influenced by Christian tradition – both collected by François-Marie Luzel; "La mer qui chante, la pomme qui danse et l'oisillon qui dit tout" ("The Singing Sea, The Dancing Apple and The Little Bird that tells everything"), recorded by Jean-François Bladé, from Gascony; "La branche qui chante, l'oiseau de vérité et l'eau qui rend verdeur de vie" ("The singing branch, the bird of truth and the water of youth"), by Henri Pourrat; "L'oiseau qui dit tout", a tale from Troyes collected by Louis Morin; a tale from the Ariège region, titled "L'Eau qui danse, la pomme qui chante et l'oiseau de toutes les vérités" ("The dancing water, the singing apple and the bird of all truths"); a variant from Poitou, titled "Les trois lingêres", by René-Marie Lacuve; a version from Limousin ("La Belle-Étoile"), by J. Plantadis; and a version from Sospel, near the Franco-Italian border ("L'oiseau qui parle"), by James Bruyn Andrews.
Emmanuel Cosquin collected a variant from Lorraine titled "L'oiseau de vérité" ("The Bird of Truth"), which is the name used by French academia to refer to the tale.
A tale from Haute-Bretagne, collected by Paul Sébillot ("Belle-Étoile"), is curious in that if differs from the usual plot: the children are still living with their mother, when they, on their own, are spurred on their quest for the marvelous items. Sébillot continued to collect variants from across Bretagne: "Les Trois Merveilles" ("The Three Wonders"), from Dinan.
A variant from Provence, in France, collected by Henry Carnoy ("L'Arbre qui chante, l'Oiseau qui parle et l'Eau d'or", or "The tree that sings, the bird that speaks and the water of gold"), has the youngest daughter, the princess, marry an enchanted old man she meets in her journey and who gives her advice on how to obtain the items.
An extended version, almost novella-length, has been collected from a Breton source and translated into French, by Gabriel Milin and Amable-Emmanuel Troude, called "L'Oiseau de Vérité" (Breton: "Labous ar wirionez"). The tale is curious in that, being divided in three parts, the story takes its time to develop the characters of the king's son and the peasant wife, in the first third. In the second part, the wonder-children are male triplets, each with a symbol on his shoulder: a bow, a spearhead and a sword. The character who helps the youngest prince is an enchanted princess, who, according to a prophecy by her godmother, will marry the youngest son (the hero of the tale).
The tale of "La mer qui chante, la pomme qui danse et l'oisillon qui dit tout" ("The Singing Sea, The Dancing Apple and The Little Bird that tells everything") preserves the motif of the wonder-children, born with chains of gold "between the skin and muscle of their arms", from "Dolopathos" and the cycle "The Knight of Swan".
Iberian Peninsula.
There are also variants in Romance languages: a Spanish version called "Los siete infantes", where there are seven children with stars on their foreheads, and a Portuguese one, "As cunhadas do rei" ("The King's sisters-in-law"). Both replace the fantastical elements with Christian imagery: the devil and the Virgin Mary.
A variant in verse format has been collected from the Madeira Archipelago. Another version has been collected in the Azores Islands.
Portugal.
Brazilian folklorist Luís da Câmara Cascudo suggested that the tale type migrated to Portugal brought by the Arabs.
Spain.
American fairy tale and Hispanist Ralph Steele Boggs () published in 1930 a structural analysis of the tale type in Spanish sources. According to him, a cursory glance at the material indicated that the tale type was "very popular in Spanish". 
Modern sources, from the late 20th century and early 21st century, confirm the wide area of distribution of tale across Spain, for instance, in Catalonia, and in Province of Ciudad Real. Scholar Montserrat Amores has published a catalogue of the variants of ATU 707 that can be found in Spanish sources (1997).
Researcher James M. Taggart commented that the tale type was one of "the most popular stories about brothers and sisters" told by tellers in Cáceres, Spain (apart from types AT 327, 450 and 451). Interpreting this data under a sociological lens, he remarked that the heroine's role in rescuing her brother reflects the expected feminine task of "maintaining family unity".
In compilations from the 19th century, collector D. Francisco de S. Maspons y Labros writes four Catalan variants: "Los Fills del Rey" ("The King's Children"), "L'aygua de la vida" ("The Water of Life"), "Lo castell de irás y no hi veurás" and "Lo taronjer"; Sérgio Hernandez de Soto collected a variant from Extremadura, named "El papagayo blanco" ("The white parrot"); Juan Menéndez Pidal a version from the Asturias ("El pájaro que habla, el árbol que canta y el agua amarilla"); Antonio Machado y Alvarez wrote down a tale from Andalusia ("El agua amarilla"); writer Fernán Caballero collected "El pájaro de la verdad" ("The Bird of Truth"); Wentworth Webster translated into English a variant in Basque language ("The singing tree, the bird which tells the truth, and the water that makes young")
Some versions have been collected in Mallorca, by Antoni Maria Alcover: "S'aygo ballant i es canariet parlant" ("The dancing water and the talking canary"); "Sa flor de jerical i s'aucellet d'or"; "La Reina Catalineta" ("Queen Catalineta"); "La bona reina i la mala cunyada" ("The good queen and the evil sister-in-law"); "S'aucellet de ses set llengos"; "S'abre de música, sa font d'or i s'aucell qui parla" ("Tree of Music, the Fountains of Gold and the Bird that Talks").
A variant in the Algherese dialect of the Catalan language, titled "Lo pardal verd" ("The Green Sparrow"), was collected in the 20th century.
The tale "El Papagayo Blanco" was translated as "The White Parrot" by writer Elsie Spicer Eells in her book "Tales of Enchantment from Spain": a sister and a brother live together, but the sister, spurred by an old lady, sends her brother to meet her whimsical demands (the fountain, the tree and the bird). At the end of the tale, after saving her brother, the sister regrets sending him on that dangerous quest.
United Kingdom and Ireland.
According to Daniel J. Crowley, British sources point to 92 variants of the tale type. However, he specified that most variants were found in the Irish Folklore Archives, plus some "scattered Scottish and English references".
Ireland.
Scholarship points to the existence of many variants in Irish folklore. In fact, the tale type shows "wide distribution" in Ireland. However, according to researcher Maxim Fomin, this diffusion is perhaps attributed to a printed edition of "The Arabian Nights".
One version was published in journal "Béaloideas" with the title "An Triúr Páiste Agus A Dtrí Réalta": a king wants to marry a girl who can jump the highest; the youngest of three sisters fulfills the task and becomes queen. When she gives birth to three royal children, their aunts replace them with animals (a young pig, a cat and a crow). The queen is cast into a river, but survives, and the king marries one of her sisters. The children are found and reared by a sow. When the foster mother is threatened to be killed on orders of the second queen, she gives the royal children three stars, a towel that grants unlimited food and a magical book that reveals the truth of their origin.
Another variant has been recorded by Irish folklorist Sean O'Suilleabhain in "Folktales of Ireland", under the name "The Speckled Bull". In this variant, a prince marries the youngest of two sisters. Her elder sisters replaces the prince's children (two boys), lies that the princess gave birth to animals and casts the boys in a box into the sea, one year after the other. The second child is saved by a fisherman and grows strong. The queen's sister learns of the boy's survival and tries to convince his foster father's wife that the child is a changeling. She kills the boy and buries his body in the garden, from where a tree sprouts. Some time later, the prince's cattle grazed near the tree and a cow eats its fruit. The cow gives birth to a speckled calf that becomes a mighty bull. The queen's sister suspects the bull is the boy and feigns illness to have it killed. The bull escpaes by flying to a distant kingdom in the east. The princess of this realm, under a "geasa" to always wear a veil outdoors lest she marries the first man she sets eyes on, sees the bull and notices it is a king's son. They marry, and the speckled bull, under a "geas", chooses to be a bull by day and man by night. The bull regains human form and rescues his mother. 
In "Types of the Irish Folktale" (1963), by the same author, he listed a variant titled "Uisce an Óir, Crann an Cheoil agus Éan na Scéalaíochta".
Scotland.
As a parallel to the Irish tale "An Triúr Páiste Agus A Dtrí Réalta", published in "Béaloideas", J. G McKay commented that the motif of the replacement of the newborns for animals occurs "in innumerable Scottish tales.".
Greece and Mediterranean Area.
Greek scholar Marianthi Kaplanoglou states that the tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", is an "example" of "widely known stories (...) in the repertoires of Greek refugees from Asia Minor". Professor Michael Meraklis commented that some Greek and Turkish variants have the quest for an exotic woman named "Dunja Giuzel", "Dünya Güzeli" or "Pentamorphé".
In a tale from male storyteller Katinko, a Greek refugee in Asia Minor born in 1894, the king marries three sisters, the youngest promising to give birth to a boy named Sun and a girl named Moon. After they are cast in the water, they are saved and grow up near the palace. Soon enough, a magician spurs Moon, the sister, to send her brother, the Sun, on a quest for "the magic apples, the birds which sing all day and Dünya-Güzeli, the Fair One of the World". The character of Dünya-Güzeli serves as the Speaking Bird and reveals the whole truth.
Greece.
Fairy tale scholars point that at least 265 Greek versions have been collected and analysed by Angéloupoulou and Brouskou. Professor Michael Meraklis, on the other hand, mentioned a higher count: 276 Greek variants.
According to researcher Marianthi Kaplanoglou, a local Greek oikotype of "Cinderella" ("found in diverse geographical areas but mainly in southern Greece") continues as tale type ATU 707 (or as type ATU 403, "The Black and White Bride"). In the same vein, professor Michael Meraklis argued that the contamination of the "Cinderella" tale type with "The Three Golden Children" is due to the motif of the jealousy of the heroine's sisters.
Scholar and writer Teófilo Braga points that a Greek literary version ("Τ' αθάνατο νερό"; English: "The immortal water") has been written by Greek expatriate Georgios Eulampios (K. Ewlampios), in his book "Ὁ Ἀμάραντος" (German: "Amarant, oder die Rosen des wiedergebornen Hellas"; English: "Amaranth, or the roses of a reborn Greece") (1843).
Some versions have been analysed by Arthur Bernard Cook in his "Zeus, a Study in Ancient Religion" (five variants), and by W. A. Clouston in his "Variants and analogues of the tales in Vol. III of Sir R. F. Burton's Supplemental Arabian Nights" (1887) (two variants), as an appendix to Sir Richard Burton's translation of "The One Thousand and One Nights".
Two Greek variants alternate between twin children (boy and girl) and triplets (two boys and one girl). Nonetheless, the tale's formula is followed to the letter: the wish for the wonder-children, the jealous relatives, the substitution for animals, exposing the children, the quest for the magical items and liberation of the mother.
In keeping with the variations in the tale type, a tale from Athens shows an abridged form of the story: it keeps the promises of the three sisters, the birth of the children with special traits (golden hair, golden ankle and a star on forehead), and the grandmother's pettiness, but it skips the quest for the items altogether and jumps directly from a casual encounter with the king during a hunt to the unveiling of truth during the king's banquet. A similar tale, "The Three Heavenly Children", attests the consecutive births of three brothers (sun, moon and firmament) and the king overhearing his own sons narrating each other the story in their foster father's hut.
Albania.
Albanian variants can be found in the works of many folklorists of the 19th and 20th centuries: a variant collected in the village of Zagori in Epirus, by J. G. Von Hahn in his "Griechische und Albanische Märchen" (Leipzig, 1864), and analysed by Arthur Bernard Cook in his "Zeus, a Study in Ancient Religion"; Auguste Dozons's "Contes Albanais" (Paris, 1881) (Tale II: "Les Soeurs Jaleuses", or "The Envious Sisters"); André Mazon's study on Balkan folklore, with "Les Trois Soeurs"; linguist August Leskien in his book of Balkan folktales ("Die neidischen Schwestern") and Robert Elsie, German scholar of Albanian studies, in his book "Albanian Folktales and Legends" ("The youth and the maiden with stars on their foreheads and crescents on their breasts").
Malta.
A Maltese variant has been collected by Hans Stumme, under the name "Sonne und Mond", in "Maltesische Märchen" (1904). This tale begins with the ATU 707 (twins born with astronomical motifs/aspects), but the story continues under the ATU 706 tale-type ("The Maiden without hands"): mother has her hands chopped off and abandoned with her children in the forest. A second Maltese variant was collected by researcher Bertha Ilg-Kössler, titled "Sonne und Mond, das tanzende Wasser und der singende Vogel".
Cyprus.
At least one variant from Cyprus has been published, from the "Folklore Archive of the Cyprus Research Centre".
Germany, Western and Central Europe.
Portuguese folklorist Teófilo Braga, in his annotations, comments that the tale can be found in many Germanic sources, mostly in the works of contemporary folklorists and tale collectors: The Three Little Birds ("De drei Vügelkens"), by the Brothers Grimm in their "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" (number 96); "Springendes Wasser, sprechender Vogel, singender Baum" ("Leaping Water, Speaking Bird and Singing Tree"), written down by Heinrich Pröhle in "Kinder- und Völksmärchen", "Die Drei Königskinder", by Johann Wilhelm Wolf (1845); "Der Prinz mit den 7 Sternen" ("The Prince with 7 stars"), collected in Waldeck by Louis Curtze, "Drei Königskinder" ("Three King's Children"), a variant from Hanover collected by Wilhelm Busch; and "Der wahrredende Vogel" ("The truth-speaking bird"), an even earlier written source, by Justus Heinrich Saal, in 1767. A peculiar tale from Germany, "Die grüne Junfer" ("The Green Virgin"), by August Ey, mixes the ATU 710 tale type ("Mary's Child"), with the motif of the wonder children: three sons, one born with golden hair, other with a golden star on his chest and the third born with a golden stag on his chest.
A variant where it is the middle child the hero who obtains the magical objects is "The Talking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Sparkling Stream" ("Der redende Vogel, der singende Baum und die goldgelbe Quelle"), published in the newly discovered collection of Bavarian folk and fairy tales of Franz Xaver von Schönwerth. In a second variant of the same collection ("The Mark of the Dog, Pig and Cat"), each children is born with a mark in the shape of the animal that was put in their place, at the moment of their birth.
A version collected from Graubünden ("Vom Vöglein, das die Wahrheit erzählt", or "The little bird that told the truth"), the tale begins "in media res", with the box with the children being found by the miller and his wife. When the siblings grow up, they seek the bird of truth to learn their origins, and discover their uncle had tried to get rid of them. Another variant from Oberwallis (canton of Valais) ("Die Sternkinder") has been collected by Johannes Jegerlehner, in his "Walliser sagen".
In a variant collected in Austria, by Ignaz and Joseph Zingerle ("Der Vogel Phönix, das Wasser des Lebens und die Wunderblume", or "The Phoenix Bird, the Water of Life and the Most beautiful Flower"), the tale acquires complex features, mixing with motifs of ATU "the Fox as helper" and "The Grateful Dead": The twins take refuge in their (unbeknownst to them) father's house, it's their aunt herself who asks for the items, and the fox who helps the hero is his mother. The fox animal is present in stories of the "Puss in Boots" type, or in the quest for "The Golden Bird/Firebird" (ATU 550 – Bird, Horse and Princess) or "The Water of Life" (ATU 551 – The Water of Life), where the fox replaces a wolf who helps the hero/prince.
A variant from Buchelsdorf, when it was still part of Austrian Silesia, ("Der klingende Baum") has the twins raised as the gardener's sons and the quest for the water-tree-bird happens to improve the king's garden.
Professor Maurits de Meyere listed three variants under the banner "L'oiseau qui parle, l'arbre qui chante et l'eau merveilleuse", attested in Flanders fairy tale collections, in Belgium, all with contamination from other tale types, specially ATU 303, "The Twins or Blood Brothers".
Hungary.
Hungarian scholarship classify the ATU 707 tale under the banner of "The Golden-Haired Twins" (Hungarian: "Az aranyhajú ikrek"). In the 19th century, Elisabet Róna-Sklárek also published comparative commentaries on Hungarian folktales in regards to similar versions in international compilations of the time. Professor Ágnes Kovács commented that the tale type is frequent and widespread in Hungarian-language areas. In the same vein, professor Linda Dégh stated that the national Hungarian Catalogue of Folktales (MNK) listed 28 variants of the tale type and 7 deviations.
Fieldwork conducted in 1999 by researcher Zoltán Vasvári amongst the Palóc population found 3 variants of the tale type.
According to scholarship, the oldest variant of the tale type in Hungary was registered in 1822. This tale was published by Gyorgy von Gaal in his book "Mährchen der Magyaren" with the title "Die Drillinge mit den Goldhaar" ("The Triplets with Golden Hair"): the baker's three daughters, Gretchen, Martchen and Suschen each profess their innermost desire: the youngest wants to marry the king, for she will bear him two princes and one princess, all with golden hair and a golden star shining on the forehead.
A variant translated by the Jeremiah Curtin (Hungarian: "A sündisznó"; English: "The Hedgehog, the Merchant, the King and the Poor Man") begins with a merchant promising a hedgehog one of his daughters, after the animal helped him escape a dense forest. Only the eldest agrees to be the hedgehog's wife, which prompts him to reveal his true form as a golden-haired, golden-mouthed and golden-toothed prince. They marry and she gives birth to twins, Yanoshka and Marishka. Her middle sister, seething with envy, dumps the royal babies in the forest, but they are reared by a Forest Maiden. When they reach adulthood, their aunt sets them on a quest for "the world-sounding tree", "the world-sweetly speaking bird" and "the silver lake [with] the golden fish". Elek Benedek collected the second part of the story as an independent tale named "Az Aranytollú Madár" ("The Golden-Feathered Bird"), where the children are reared by a white deer, a golden-feathered bird guides the twins to their house, and they seek "the world-sounding tree", "the world-sweetly speaking bird" and "the silver lake [with] the golden fish".
In a third variant, "A Szárdiniai király fia" ("The Son of the King of Sardinia"), the youngest sister promises golden-haired twins: a boy with the sun on his forehead, and a girl with a star on the front.
In the tale "A mostoha királyfiakat gyilkoltat", the step-parent asks for the organs of the twin children to eat. They are killed, their bodies are buried in the garden and from their grave two apple trees sprout.
In another Hungarian tale, "A tizenkét aranyhajú gyermek" ("The Twelve Golden-Haired Children"), the youngest of three sisters promises the king to give birth to twelve golden-haired boys. This variant is unique in that another woman also gives birth to twelve golden-haired children, all girls, who later marry the twelve princes.
In the tale "A tengeri kisasszony" ("The Maiden of the Sea"), the youngest sister promises to give birth to an only child with golden hair, a star on his forehead and a moon on his chest. The promised child is born, but cast into the water by the cook. The miller finds the boy and raises him. Years later, the king, on a walk, takes notice of the boy and adopts him, which was consented by the miller. When the prince comes to court, the cook convinces the boy to search for "the bird that drinks from the golden and silver water, and whose singing can be heard from miles", the mirror that can see the whole world and the Maiden of the Sea.
Another version, "Az aranyhajú gyermekek" ("The Golden-Haired Children"), skips the introduction about the three sisters: the queen gives birth to a boy with a golden star on the forehead and a girl with a small flower on her arm. They end up adopted by a neighbouring king and an old woman threatens the girl with a cruel punishment if the twins do not retrieve the bird from a cursed castle.
In the tale "A boldogtalan királyné" ("The Unhappy Queen"), the youngest daughter of a carpenter becomes a queen and bears three golden-haired children, each with a star on their foreheads. They are adopted by a fisherman; the boys become fine hunters and venture into the woods to find a willow tree, a talking bird on a branch and to collect water from a well that lies near the tree.
In "Tündér Ilona és az aranyhajú fiú"; or "Fee Ilona und der goldhaarige Jüngling" ("Fairy Ilona and the golden-haired Youth"), of the "Brother quests for a Bride" format, the Sister is told by an old lady about the wonderful belongings of the fabled Fairy Ilona (Ilona Tünder) and passes this information to her brother as if she saw them in a dream.
In the tale "Jankalovics", the youngest sister, a herb-gatherer, promises the king twin children with golden hair. When the twins are cast out in the water, they are rescued by a miller. In their youth, they find out they are adopted and leave the miller's home to seek out their origins. During their travels, they give alms to three beggars and they reward the twins by summoning a creature named Jankalovics to act as the twins' helper.
In the tale "Az aranyhajú hármasok" ("The Triplets with Golden-Hair"), the baker's youngest daughter gives birth to triplets with golden hair and a star on the forehead. The usual story follows, but the older male twins meet the king during a hunt, who invites the youths three times for a feast. In the third time, the truth is revealed in front of the whole court.
In the tale "A mosolygó alma" ("The Smiling Apple"), a king sends his page to pluck some fragant scented apples in a distant garden. When the page arrives at the garden, a dishevelled old man appears and takes him into his house, where the old man's three young daughters live. The daughters comment among themselves their marriage wishes: the third wishes to marry the king and give him two golden-haired children, one with a "comet star" on the forehead and another with a sun. The rest of the story follows "The Boys with the Golden Star" format.
Bishop János Kriza () collected another version, "Aranyhajú Kálmán" ("Golden-Haired Kálman"), wherein the youngest sister promises the king an only son with golden hair. Years later, the boy, Kalman, quests for a magical tree branch, a mirror that can see the whole world and Világlátó, the world-famed beauty.
In the tale "Az aranyhajú királyfiak" ("The King's Sons with Golden Hair"), collected by Elek Benedek, the youngest sister promises the king two golden-haired boys. They are born and a witch from the king's court casts them in the water. They are saved and grow up as fine youths. The king sees them one day and invites them for a dinner at the castle. The witch, then, sends "both" of the brothers in a series of quests: to bathe in the water of the Sun, to dry themselves with the cloth/towel of the Sun and to see themselves in the Sun's mirror. The brothers are helped by incarnations of Friday, Holy Saturday and the Holy Sunday.
In a tale collected by Gyula Ortutay from storyteller Mihály Fedics and published in 1940, the sister wants her brother to search for "three lilac leaves that produce music".
Other Magyar variants are "Die zwei goldhaarigen Kinder" (Hungarian: "A két aranyhajú gyermek"; English: "The Two Children with Golden Hair"), of "The Boys With Golden Stars" format; and "Nád Péter" ("Schilf-Peter"), a variant of "The Tale of Tsar Saltán" format.
Scandinavia.
One version collected in Iceland can be found in Ján Árnuson's "Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri", published in 1864 ("Bóndadæturnar"), translated as "The Story of The Farmer's Three Daughters", in "Icelandic Legends" (1866); in "Isländische Märchen" (1884), with the title "Die Bauerntöchter", or in "Die neuisländischen Volksmärchen" (1902), by Adeline Rittershaus ("Die neidischen Schwestern"). The Icelandic variant was given a literary treatment and titled "The Three Peasant Maidens" in "Icelandic Fairy Tales", by Angus W. Hall.
Other versions have been recorded from Danish and Swedish sources: a Swedish version, named "Historie om Talande fogeln, spelande trädet och rinnande wattukällan" (or "vatukällan"); another Scandinavian variant, "Om i éin kung in England"; Danish variant "Det springende Vand og det spillende Trae og den talende Fugl" ("The leaping water and the playing tree and the talking bird"), collected by Evald Tang Kristensen.
Finland.
A Finnish variant, called "Tynnyrissä kaswanut Poika" (The boy who grew in a barrel), follows the "Tale of Tsar Saltan" format: peasant woman promises the King three sets of triplets in each pregnancy, but her envious older sisters substitute the boys for animals. She manages to save her youngest child but both are cast into the sea in a barrel. A second variant veers close to the "Tale of Tsar Saltán" format ("Naisen yhdeksän poikaa", or "The woman's nine children"), but the reunion with the kingly father does not end the tale; the two youngest brothers journey to rescue their siblings from an avian transformation curse.
Other Finnish variants can be found in Eero Salmelainen's "Suomen kansan satuja ja tarinoita". A version was translated into English with the name "Mielikki and her nine sons".
Another Finnish variant, from Ingermanland, has been collected in "Finnische und Estnische Volksmärchen" ("Bruder und Schwester und die goldlockigen Königssöhne", or "Brother and Sister, and the golden-haired sons of the King").
Baltic Region.
Jonas Basanavicius collected a few variants in Lithuanian compilations, including the formats "The Boys with the Golden Stars" and "Tale of Tsar Saltan". Its name in Lithuanian folktale compilations is "Nepaprasti vaikai" or "Trys auksiniai sûnûs". In addition, according to Professor Bronislava Kerbelytė, the tale type is reported to register 244 (two hundred and forty-four) Lithuanian variants, under the banner "Three Extraordinary Babies", with and without contamination from other tale types.
The work of Latvian folklorist Peteris Šmidts, beginning with "Latviešu pasakas un teikas" ("Latvian folktales and fables") (1925–1937), records 33 variants of the tale type. Its name in Latvian sources is "Trīs brīnuma dēli" or "Brīnuma dēli".
A thorough study on Estonian folktales (among them, the ATU 707 tale type) was conducted by researchers at Tartu University and published in two volumes (in 2009 and in 2014). Folklorist William Forsell Kirby translated an Estonian version first collected by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, with the name "The Prince who rescued his brothers": a king with silver-coated legs and golden-coated arms marries a general's daughter with the same attributes. When she gives birth to her sons, her elder sister sells eleven of her nephews to "Old Boy" (a devil-like character) while the queen is banished with her twelfth son and cast adrift into the sea in a barrel. At the end of the tale, the youngest prince releases his brothers from Old Boy and they transform into doves to reach their mother.
Russia and Eastern Europe.
Slavicist Karel Horálek published an article with an overall analysis of the ATU 707 type in Slavic sources. Further scholarship established subtypes of the AT 707 tale type in the Slavic-speaking world: AT 707A*, AT 707B* and AT 707C*.
Russia.
Scholar Jack Haney stated that the tale type registers seventy-eight Russian variants.
The earliest version in Russian was recorded in "Старая погудка на новый лад" (1794–1795), with the name "Сказка о Катерине Сатериме" ("Skazka o Katyerinye Satyerimye"; "The Tale of Katarina Saterima"). The same work collected a second variant: "Сказка о Труде-королевне" ("The Tale of Princess Trude"), where the king and queen consult with a seer and learn of the prophecy that their daughter will give birth to the wonder-children, which catches the interest of a neighboring king.
Another compilation in the Russian language that precedes both The Tale of Tsar Saltan and Afanasyev's tale collection was "Сказки моего дедушки" (1820), which recorded a variant titled "Сказка о говорящей птице, поющем дереве и золо[то]-желтой воде" ("Skazka o govoryashchyey ptitse, poyushchyem dyeryevye i zolo[to]-zhyeltoy vodye").
The fairy tale in verse The Tale of Tsar Saltan, written by renowned Russian author Alexander Pushkin and published in 1831, is another variant of the tale, and the default form by which the ATU 707 is known in Russian and Eastern European academia. It tells the tale of three sisters, the youngest of which is chosen by the eponymous Tsar Saltan as his wife, to the blind jealousy of her two elder sisters. While the royal husband is away at war, she gives birth to Prince Gvidon Saltanovitch, but her sisters conspire to cast mother and child to the sea in a barrel. Both she and the baby wash ashore in the island of Buyan, where Prince Gvidon grows up to an adult male. After a series of adventures – and with the help of a magical princess in the form of a swan (Princess Swan), Prince Gvidon and his mother reunite with Tsar Saltan, as Princess Swan and Prince Gvidon marry.
Russian folklorist Alexander Afanasyev collected seven variants, divided in two types: "The Children with Calves of Gold and Forearms of Silver" (in a more direct translation: "Up to the Knee in Gold, Up to the Elbow in Silver"), and "The Singing Tree and The Speaking Bird". Two of his tales have been translated into English: "The Singing-Tree and the Speaking-Bird" and "The Wicked Sisters". In the later, the children are male triplets with astral motifs on their bodies, but there is no quest for the wondrous items.
Another Russian variant follows the format of "The Brother Quest for a Bride". In this story, collected by Russian folklorist Ivan Khudyakov () with the name "Иванъ Царевичъ и Марья Жолтый Цвѣтъ" or "Ivan Tsarevich and Maria the Yellow Flower", the tsaritsa is expelled from the imperial palace, after being accused of giving birth to puppies. In reality, her twin children (a boy and a girl) were cast in the sea in a barrel and found by a hermit. When they reach adulthood, their aunts send the brother on a quest for the lady Maria, the Yellow Flower, who acts as the speaking bird and reveals the truth during a banquet with the tsar.
One variant of the tale type has been collected in "Priangarya" (Irkutsk Oblast), in East Siberia.
Eastern Europe.
In an Eastern European variant, "The Golden Fish, The Wonder-working Tree and the Golden Bird", the siblings are twins and their grandmother, the old queen, is the villain. Their father, Prince Yarboi, met their mother and her sisters when they were cutting grass on a hot summer day. The sisters commented that their fates were foretold, and the youngest revealed she was destined to marry the prince and bear the wonder twins. This variant was first collected by Josef Košín z Radostova, in "Národní Pohádky", Volume III, in 1856, with the title "O princovi se zlatým sluncem a o princezně se zlatým měsícem na prsou" ("The prince with the golden sun and the princess with the golden moon on her breast"). However, the tale was translated by Jeremiah Curtin and published in "Fairy Tales of Eastern Europe", as a Hungarian story.
In another Eastern European variant, "Princ se zlatým křížem na čele" ("The Prince with a golden cross on the forehead"), the youngest sister promises to give birth to children with a golden cross on the forehead. The usual story of abandonment occurs, but the truth is revealed by one of the brothers, who plays a riddle with nuts in front of the king.
In the South Slavic tale "Die böse Schwiegermutter", also collected by Friedrich Salomon Krauss, the mother gives birth to triplets: male twins with golden hands and a girl with a golden star on her forehead. Years later, they search for the green water, the speaking bird and the singing tree.
Slovakia.
In a Slovak variant, "Zlatovlasé dvojčatá" ("The Golden-Haired Twins"), the prince marries the youngest sister, who promises to give birth to twins with golden hair and a star on their breast. When the time comes, a woman named Striga steals the newly-born infants and casts them out in the water. The boy and girl are soon found and given the name Janík and Ludmilka. Years later, the Striga sets the boy on the quest for the golden pear and the woman named Drndrlienka as a companion for his sister.
Scholar Jiří Polívka mentioned the existence of a Slovak variant titled "Stromčok, Voďička, Ptáčik" ("Tree, Water, Bird"), reported to be part of a Slovak collection named "Codexy Revúcke" ("Codices of Revúca").
Poland.
A version from Poland has been collected by Antoni Józef Glinski, titled "O królewiczu z księżycem na czole, z gwiazdami po głowie" and translated into German with the name "Vom Prinzen mit dem Mond auf der Stirn und Sternen auf dem Kopf" (English: "The Princes with the Moon on the Forehead and Stars on the Head").
Polish ethnographer Stanisław Ciszewski () collected two variants, one from Maszków, titled "O grającem drzewie, złotej wodzie i gadającym ptaku" ("The Music-Playing Tree, the Golden Water and the Speaking Bird"), and another from Skała, named "O śpiewającem drzewie, złotej wodzie i gadającym ptaku" ("The Singing Tree, the Golden Water and the Speaking Bird").
Another Polish tale was collected around Zamość and Krasnystaw and published in scholar publication "Wisła". In this tale, titled "Synek ze złotą główką" ("A Son with a Golden Head"), three sisters comment among themselves what they would do if each one married the king, and the youngest says she will give birth to a son with a golden head. She marries the king and her envious sisters kill the boy and bury him in the garden. An apple tree with golden leaves appears, the sisters notice it is they boy and order it to be burnt down. An ewe passes by the pyre, licks the ashes and becomes pregnant with a golden-fleeced sheep. The sisters order the sheep to be killed for the feast at the ball and its innards to be eaten by the forsaken queen, in her house. The innards tell the mother they are her son and she should wait until they regain his former human shape. It happens so and the boy, now six-year-old, goes to court to tell his story while counting nuts.
Czech Republic.
A Czech variant was collected by author Božena Němcová, under the name "O mluvícím ptáku, živé vodě a třech zlatých jabloních" ("The speaking bird, the water of life and the three golden apples"): three poor sisters, Marketka, Terezka and Johanka discuss among themselves their future husbands. The king overhears their conversation and summons them to his presence, and fulfills Johanka's wishes. Each time a child is born (three in total), the envious sisters cast the babies in the water, but they are carried by the stream to another kingdom. The second king adopts the babies and names them Jaromír, Jaroslav and Růženka.
Bulgaria.
A version from Bulgaria was recorded by Václav Florec in 1970, with the name "Tři sestry" ("Three sisters"). An older Bulgarian variant was also given in abridged form in "Archive für Slavische Philologie".
Slovenia.
A recent publication (2007) of Slovenian folk tales, collected by Anton Pegan in the 19th century, has a Slovenian variant of the ATU 707, under the name "Vod trejh predic".
In another Slovenian variant, "Zlatolasi trojčki" () ("The Triplets with Golden-Hair"), the three wonder children with golden hair seek the golden apple, the speaking bird and the dancing water.
Serbia.
Variants from Serbia have been collected by Serbian philologist Vuk Karadžić, like the tale Зла свекрва ("The evil mother-in-law"), also translated into German language and published in "Archiv für Slavische Philologie" with the title "Die böse Schwiegermutter" ("The evil mother-in-law"). In this variant, the youngest sister promises to give birth to two boys with golden hands and a girl with a golden star on the forehead. They quest for the green water, the singing tree and the speaking bird. In another tale from Vuk Karadzic's collection, "Опет зла свекрва" or "Abermals die böse Schwiegermutter" ("Once again, about the evil mother-in-law"), the twins, a girl and a boy, are born with golden stars and helped by an angel.
Other tales from Serbian sources were also published in the collection: "Bruder und Schwester, beide goldhaarig und silberzähnig" ("Brother and Sister, golden-haired and silver-toothed"), where the Brother brings the maiden Djuzelgina as a friend for his Sister; and "Zwei goldene Kinder", of the "Boys With the Golden Stars" format, given in abridged form.
Croatia.
A Croatian tale, collected by Plohl-Herdvigov and translated as "Die Königin und ihre drei Töchter" ("The Queen and her three daughters") was given in abridged form in "Archiv Für Slavische Philologie".
In another Croatian tale, by Fran Milkulic, "Žena kraljeva rodila tri sini zlatnemi vlasi" ("The Queen who gave birth to three golden-haired sons"), a woman marries the king, after promising him three golden-haired sons. When each of the babies are born, the queen mother throws her grandchildren in the water. They are saved by a peasant couple, who raises the boys. Years later, the king sets a challenge: anyone should count how many nuts there are in a recipient. One of his golden-haired sons begins counting and interweaving the story of their family. This tale was sourced as South Slavic and translated as "Die Frau eines Königs gebar drei goldhaarige Söhne" ("A King's wife gave birth to three golden-haired sons"), given in abridged form in "Archiv für Slavische Philologie".
Belarus.
Scholar Jack Haney stated that the tale type registers thirty Byelorusian tales.
In a Belarussian tale, "ЧУДЕСНЫЕ МАЛЬЧИКИ" ("Chudetsnye Malchiki"; English: "Wonderful/Miraculous Boys"), first collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Grodno, in 1857, the youngest sister states she will give birth to "two boys, each with a moon on his head and a star on the nape of his neck". When they are buried, on their grave two maples sprout (or, in another translation, "two plane-trees"), a golden stem and a silver one (or "one with golden, the other with silver branches"). The tale was also published by A. H. Wratislaw with the name "The Wonderful Boys", or "The Wondrous Lads", and by Czech folklorist Karel Jaromír Erben with the name "Podivní chlapci" ("The Wonderful Boys").
In another Belarussian tale, "Блізняткі" ("The Twins"), an evil witch kills two boys - the sons of the prince. On their grave two sycamores grow. The witch realizes it is the boys and orders the gardener to fell them down. A sheep licks the ashes and soon enough gives birth to two sheep - the very same princes. Later, they regain their human form and tell the king the whole story.
Ukraine.
Professor Andrejev noted that the tale type 707, "The Marvelous Children", varied between 11 and 15 variants in Ukraine. A later analysis by scholar Jack Haney stated that the tale type registers twenty-three Ukrainian versions.
In a Ukrainian tale, "Песинський, жабинський, сухинський і золотокудрії сини цариці" ("Pesinsky, Zhabinsky, Sukhinsky and the golden-haired sons of the queen"), three sisters are washing clothes in the river, when they see in the distance a man rowing a boat. The oldest says it might be God, and if it is, may He take her, because she can feed many with a piece of bread. The second says it might be a prince, so she says she wants him to take her, because she will be able to weave clothes for a whole army with just a yarn. The third recognizes him as the tsar, and promises that, after they marry, she will give birth to twelve sons with golden curls. When the girl, now queen, gives birth, the old midwife takes the children, tosses them in a well and replaces them with animals. After the third birth, the tsar consults his ministers and they advise him to cast the queen and her animal chidlren in the sea in a barrel. The barrel washes ashore an island and the three animals build a castle and a glass bridge to mainland. When some sailors visit the island, they visit the tsar to report on the strange sights on the island. The old midwife, however, interrupts their narration by revelaing somewhere else there is something even more fantastical. Pesinsky, Zhabinsky and Sukhinsky spy on their audience and run away to fetch these things and bring them to their island. At last, the midwife reveals that there is a well with three golden-curled sons inside, and Pesinsky, Zhabinsky and Sukhinsky rescue them. The same sailors visit the strange island (this time the true sons of the tsar are there) and report their findings to the tsar, who discovers the truth and orders the midwife to be punished.
Moldavia.
In a variant from Moldavia that follows "The Boys with the Golden Stars" format, the youngest maiden promises to give birth to twin children with golden hair. A witch takes the newborn royals and tries to kill them by putting them under the hooves of animals to be trampled. She fails, so she resorts to burying both under the threshold. The boys become walnut trees, then lambs, then ducks, then regain human form.
Bosnia.
In a Bosnian version, "Die Goldkindern" ("The Gold-Children"), the youngest sister promises to give birth to a daughter with golden hair, golden hands and teeth of pearl, and a son with one golden hand, prophecizing her son will become the greatest hero that ever was. Years later, the emperor's first wife tries to get rid of the brother by telling him to kill some Moors that were threatening the realm; by sending him to tame a wild horse, Avgar, which lives in the mountains; to fetch an enchanted flowery wreath from the Jordan River; and to find an all-knowing young maiden whom "hundreds of princes have courted".
Bashkir people.
In a Bashkir tale, Санай-батыр ("Sanai Batyr"), Ulmes-Bey Batyr, an old hunter, falls ill during a hunt. His son, Kusun-batyr, journey through the whole "white world" for a cure for his father. He comes near a tree where a nest of vipers is attacking a wolf den. For three nights, Kusun Batyr kills the serpents with his sword and the wolf, as a token of gratitude, leads the youth to three birch trees, where three maidens are weaving with birch leaves and with a bird claw. From these claws three remedies will spring: "kumis", spider silk and honey. The wolf explains that a mixture of these three substances will heal his ailing father. The youth also learns that the three maidens wish to marry Kusun Batyr: the first, daughter of Toygonbeya-batyr, promises to make him the most delicious kumis; the second, daughter of Targynbea-batyr, promises to weave very light outfits of a white colour, and the third, daughter of a wise aksaqal (a village elder), promises to give birth to a son stronger that his father (Sanai Batyr). Kusun Batyr gets the remedies, saves his father and marries all three, designing tasks for them: the first wife shall cook, the second shall weave and the third shall bear him the fabled son. The first two wives, jealous of the third, conspire with a wtich midwife to replace the boy with a dog and abandon him in the woods. The boy, Sanai Batyr, is rescued by the wolf who helped his father and grandfather and grows to be a fine youth. He goes to the mountains, sees a duck become a maiden and captures her, making her his wife. Despondent, Sanai Batyr wishes to travel and see the whole world, and the wolf gives him the ability to become a wasp. In wasp form, he travels to his father's lands to listen to a caravan of travellers narrate the wondrous sights they have seen. Inspired by the fantastical stories, Sanai Batyr decides to have them in his own yurt.
In another Bashkir tale, "Черный щенок" ("The Little Black Dog"), a man named Bai has four wives. He tells them he will go on a long journey and asks them what they will give him when he returns. The first says she will hunt 40 partridges to feed his 100 servants; the second - she will weave boots made of sand; the third will sew gloves made of louse skin, and the fourth says she will give birth to two sons with golden heads, teeth of pearls and silver hair. All four wives fulfill their promises, but the first three wives at first try to kill the children by placing them under cow and horse hooves to be trampled, but they are left unscathed. They decide to cast them into the water and replace them with a little black dog. When Bai returns, he banishes the fourth wife with the little dog to a windowless hut in the woods. In exile, the little dog acquires human speech and helps his "mother", by fetching the wonderful things a traveller tells Bai. At the end of the tale, the little black dog rescues the human children by using four cookies baked with their mother's milk.
Gagauz people.
In a variant collected from the Gagauz people, "Три сестры: дѣвушка обѣщавшая царевичу, если онъ возметъ ее замужъ принести сына съ солнцемъ во лбу, а дочь съ мѣсяцемь" ("Three Sisters: the youngest said that, if she were to marry the prince, she would give birth to a son with the sun on the forehead, and a girl with a moon"), the youngest sister gives birth to her promised wonder children, but an evil old witch casts them in the river. The son of the king orders her to be interred to the chest and for everyone who passes by to spit on her. The children, raised by a miller, pass by their mother, who recognizes them.
Caucasus Mountains.
A variant in Avar language is attested in "Awarische Texte", by Anton Schiefner.
Two Georgian variants exist in international folktale publications: "Die Kinder mit dem Goldschopf" ("The children with golden heads") and "The Three Sisters and their Stepmother".
Armenia.
At least two Armenian versions exist in folktale compilations: "The Twins" and "Cheveux d'argent et Boucles d'or" ("Silver Hair and Golden Curls").
A variant collected from tellers of Armenian descent in the Delray section of Detroit shows: the king listens to his daughters – the youngest promising the wonder children when she marries; the twins are the king's grandsons; the Brother quests for the bird "Hazaran Bulbul" and a female interpreter for the bird. When the interpreter is delivered to the Sister, the former requests the Brother to go back to the bird's owner, Tanzara Kanum, and bring the second woman who lives there, so that they may keep company and protect the Sister.
A fourth Armenian variant ("Théodore le Danseur") places a giant named Barogh Assadour ("Dancing Theodore") in the role of the mystical woman the brother seeks, and this fabled character ends up marrying the sister.
In a rather lengthy variant, "The Tale of the Lad with Golden Locks", a widowed king sees three sisters fetching water in jugs by the fountain and commenting with themselves about the king, the youngest telling them she would bear sons and daughters with golden hair if she were to marry the king. The king marries her and she gives birth to a boy with golden hair. The new queen's sisters bribe the king's Arab (or Black) stablemaster to drown the child and replace him with a puppy. He does as intended, but spares the boy's life and his him in a cave in a distant region. The king is furious with his wife and orders his stablemaster to drown the queen, but he brings her to her son and reveals the truth. Ten years pass and king decides to go on a deer hunt. His golden-haired son shoots the deer and the king decided to follow him. He meets the queen and the stablemaster and learns the truth. He takes them all back to the palace and the Golden-Haired brings with him his own bird of truth. When they arrive, the bird senses the treacherous sisters and escapes, which prompts a new quest for him (tale type ATU 550, "Bird, Horse and Princess"). The tale continues with further adventures of the Golden-Haired Son and his half-brothers Poghos and Petros.
Asia.
Turkey.
Folklorists and tale collectors Wolfram Eberhard and Pertev Naili Boratav, who wrote a thorough study on Turkish tales, listed 41 variants in a preliminary analysis of Turkish sources, grouped under the banner "Die Schöne" or "The Beautiful". As such, the tale was one of "the most frequent folktales" in Turkish sources. A further study lists at least 55 versions of the story. Part of the Turkish variants show two heroes and follow the "Brother Quests for a Bride" format: the aunts' helper (witch, maid, midwife, slave) suggests her brother brings home a woman of renowned beauty, who becomes his wife at the end of the story and, due to her supernatural powers, acquits her mother-in-law of any perceived wrongdoing in the king's eyes. In some variants, the maiden (named "Gülükan" or "Dilaremcengi") accompanies the Brother; in others, a male character joins the twins and reveals the whole truth.
A Turkish variant, translated into German, has twins with golden hair: the male with the symbol of a half-moon, and the female with a bright star, and follow the "Brother quests for a Bride" format, with the prince/hero seeking "Die Feekönigin" (The Fairy Queen). This character knows the secrets of the family and instructs the siblings on how to convince the King. Another variant has been collected from the city of Mardin, in the 19th century.
Israel.
According to an early analysis by Israeli folklorist Dov Noy (), the Israel Folktale Archive (IFA) contained at first two variants of the tale type, one from a Yemeni source, and another from a Turkish source. A later study by scholar Heda Jason showed 7 variants in the Jewish Oriental tale corpus.
Middle East.
The tale appears in fairy tale collections of Middle Eastern and Arab folklore. Scholar Hasan El-Shamy lists 72 variants of the tale type across Middle Eastern and North African sources.
One version appears in the collection of "The Arabian Nights", by Antoine Galland, named "Histoire des deux sœurs jalouses de leur cadette" (English: "The Story of the older sisters envious of their Cadette" or "The Story of the Three Sisters"). The tale contains a mythical bird called "Bülbül-Hazar", thus giving the tale an alternate name: "Perizade & L'Oiseau Bülbül-Hazar". The heroine, Perizade ou Farizade, also names the tale "Farizade au sourire de rose" ("Farizade of the rose's smile"). English translations of the tale either focus on the name of the princess, such as "Story of the Princess Periezade and the Speaking Bird, the Singing Tree, and the Golden Water", "Perizade and the Speaking Bird" or on the speaking bird itself. 19th century theologue Johann Andreas Christian Löhr wrote a German translation of the "Arabian Nights" tale with the name "Geschwisterliebe, oder die drei Königskinder". In one version of the story, the heroine and her brothers are named Bahman, Parviz and Parizade; in another, their names are given as Farid, Farouz and Farizadeh.
A second variant connected to the "Arabian Nights" compilation is "Abú Niyyan and Abú Niyyatayn", part of the frame story "The Tale of the Sultan of Yemen and his three sons" ("The Tale of the King of al-Yaman and his three sons"). The tale is divided into two parts: the tale of the father's generation falls under the ATU 613 tale type ("Truth and Falsehood"), and the sons' generation follows the ATU 707. A third version present in "The Arabian Nights" is "The Tale of the Sultan and his sons and the Enchanting Bird", a fragmentary version that focuses on the quest for the bird with petrifying powers.
Other versions in Arab-speaking countries that preserve the quest for the bird mention a magical nightingale.
Iraq.
An Iraqi folktale, collected by E. S. Drower, "The King and the Three Maidens, or the Doll of Patience", focuses on the mother's plight: the youngest sister promises children born with hair of gold on one side and silver on the other, but, as soon as they are born, the children are cast into the water by the envious older sisters. She is told she must never reveal the truth to her husband, the king, so she buys a doll to confide in (akin to "The Young Slave" and ATU 894, "The Stone of Pity").
Kurdish people.
In a Kurdish tale, Мирза-Мамуд и Хезаран-Больболь ("Mirza-Mamud and Khezaran-Bolbol"), the padishah marries three sisters, the yougest promising to give birth to golden-haired twins, a boy and a girl. Her envious sisters replace the children for animals and cast them in the sea in a box. The box is rescued by a miller, who saves the twins and names them Mirza-Mamud (the boy) and Golizar (the girl). Years later, they move to a new house and the boy meets his father, the Padishah, in a deer hunt. The queen's sisters despair and send an old woman to convince Golizar and Mirza-Mamud to go on a dangerous quest for a maiden named Зардухубар (Zardukhubar). Mirza-Mamud rescues Zardukhubar and they escape from an ogress (tale type ATU 313H*, connected to "The Magical Flight" or "The Devil's Daughter"). Zardukhubar becomes Golizar's companions. Later, the old woman tells the siblings about a magical bird named Khezaran-Bolbol. Mirza-Mamud fails the quest and is petrified. Noticing his long absence, Golizar and Zardukhubar seek him out. They meet an old hermit on the way who tells them how to safely capture the bird. Both women rescue the youth and a whole garden of petrified people. On their way back, the hermit asks them for a prayer, which the trio do and disenchant him into a handsome young man. The quartet is invited to a feast with the king, but the bird warns them their food is poisoned. As instructed by the bird, the siblings invite their father, the padishah, to their house, where the whole truth is revealed.
Iran.
Professor Ulrich Marzolph, in his catalogue of Persian folktales, listed 10 variants of the tale type across Persian sources, which he classified as "Die gerechtfertigte verleumdete Frau" ("The Calumniated Wife, Vindicated"). These stories vary between the quest for the usual treasures and the Fairy Maiden.
India.
According to Stith Thompson' and Jonas Balys's index of Indian tales, the tale type shows 44 variants across Indian sources.
An Indian tale, collected by Joseph Jacobs in his "Indian Fairy Tales" (1892), "The Boy who had a Moon on his Forehead and a Star on his Chin", omits the quest for the items and changes the jealous aunts into jealous co-wives of the king, but keeps the wonder-child character (this time, an only child) and the release of his mother. Jacobs's source was Maive Stokes's "Indian Fairy Tales" (1880), with her homonymous tale.
The character of the "Boy with the Moon on his forehead" reappears in an eponymous tale collected from Bengal ("The Boy with the Moon on his Forehead") by Lal Behari Dey in his "Folk-Tales of Bengal": the seventh queen begets a boy and a girl, and the jealous co-wives of the king try to eliminate both siblings. Francis Hindes Groome already saw a parallel between this tale with the Romani tale he collected, and Grimm's "The Three Little Birds".
A third variant can be found in "The Enchanted Bird, Music and Stream", recorded by Alice Elizabeth Dracott, in "Simla Village Tales, or Folk Tales from the Himalayas". In this variant, the young queen gives birth to three siblings (two boys and a girl) and the sisters' agent only mentions the quest items without any significant description. 
In true family saga fashion, an Indian tale of certain complexity and extension ("Truth's Triumph", or "Der Sieg der Wahrheit") tells a story of a Ranee of humble origins, the jealousy of the twelve co-wives, the miraculous birth of her 101 children and their abandonment in the wilderness. In the second part of the tale, the youngest child, a girl, witnesses her brothers' transformation into crows, but she is eventually found and marries a Rajah of a neighboring region. Her child, the prince, learns of his family history and ventures on a quest to reverse his uncles's transformation. At the climax of the story, the boy invites his grandfather and his co-wives and reveals the whole plot, as the family reunites.
James Hinton Knowles collected three variants from Kashmir, in which the number of siblings vary between 4 (three boys, one girl; third son as the hero), 2 (two sons; no quest for the water-tree-bird) and 1 (only male child; quest for tree and its covering; no water, nor bird).
Ethnologist Verrier Elwin collected a Baiga story from the Mandla district, titled "The Brave Children": the fourth queen gives birth to a boy and a girl, but the three jealous co-wives of the king cast them in the water. They are found by a Sadhu, who gives them two sticks with a magical command. Years later, the jealous queens send the boy on a quest for a lotus flower and Pathari Kaniya (The Stone Maiden) as his wife.
In a variant from Salsette Island, "Bapkhadî, the Salsette Cinderella", in the second part of the tale, after Bapkhadî marries the prince, she announces that a miraculous event shall happen when she gives birth: if to a boy, "a shower of gold" [golden water] shall appear; if to a girl, "a shower of silver" [silver water]. Everytime she gives birth (to two boys and a girl), the events happen and the king, on a trip, returns home to see his newborn children, but the queen's sisters have taken the children and replace them with animals. The siblings are rescued by "the hand of the Almighty God" and grow up. They survive by begging and chanting their story, introducing themselves as Brothers Saya from under the saya tree, Brother Ansa from under the ansa tree and Sister Denku from the Church. 
Variants of the tale type have also been found in Himalayan tradition.
Indian scholar A. K. Ramanujan demonstrated the existence of two markedly different modes of storytelling regarding a South Indian variant ot eht tale type. One way of narration (which he called "domestic") skips the preamble and is more basic and to the point; the second mode ("bardic") is accompanied by instruments and offers a more elaborate tale: the story about king Chadurangaraja who, despite being married to five queens, never had a son, so he goes on a journey in search of a new queen, and finds a maiden named Kadasiddamma in a temple.
French ethnologue Paul Ottino provided the summary of a North Indian variant about the legend of Goriya: a king meets a woman in the forest (possibly the goddess Kali herself). They marry and the king's previous seven wives replace the boy for a wooden object. The boy is found by fishermen and given the name Goriya. When he is young, he has a chance encounter with his father, the king, when the boy puts his wooden horse to drink water. The king notices the absurdity of the situation and discovers the truth. Similar tales are found in Karnataka, Gujarat, and in Mysore.
Buryat people.
At least two tales collected from Buryat sources attest the birth of the wonder child. In the first tale, the maiden is helped by a talking horse and competes in a male-only tournament (a ploy by the khan to unmask his prophecised daughter-in-law) - a tale type not yet classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index. As the tale continues, the virago maiden gives birth to a boy with golden breast and silver backside. In the second tale, a khan with two wives decides to marry a third time. One day, before going to war, he asks what his wives will present him upon his return; the third promises to give birth to a boy with golden breast and silver backside. Both tales show the banishment of the heroine; the second ends with the golden-silver son returning to his father's court and telling his mother's story.
Central Asia.
Following professor Marat Nurmukhamedov's () study on Pushkin's verse fairy tale, professor Karl Reichl argues that the "dastan" (a type of Central Asian oral epic poetry) titled "Šaryar", from the Turkic Karakalpaks, is "closely related" to the tale type of the Calumniated Wife, and more specifically to "The Tale of Tsar Saltan".
Similarities have also been noted between the tale type and the Uzbek tale of Хасан и Зухра ("Hasan and Zuhra"). In this tale, despite being married to 40 wives, the shah still hasn't fathered a son. In his wanderings, he finds three sisters, daughters of a shepherd, talking among themselves: Nasiba, Gulbahor and Sulfiya. The youngest, Sulfiya, promises to give birth to twins, a boy named Hasan and a girl named Zuhra. The midwife replaces them with two goats, puts the twins in a bag and abandons it on the road. Thankfully, they are saved by a coming caravan.
East Asia.
Japan.
Folklorist D. L. Ashliman, in his 1987 study of folktales, lists "The Golden Eggplant" (黄金の茄子 «"Kin no nasu"») as a Japanese variant of the tale.
China.
Scholarship points that in a compilation of Buddhist teachings, titled "Shijia rulai shidi xiuxing ji", there exists a story about a king whose third wive gives birth to a boy, and his jealous co-wives replace the baby with a skinned cat and even try to kill him, to no avail. Finally, they give the baby to a cow that eats it, and lie to their husband the third wive gave birth to a monster. The cow gives birth to a calf (a golden calf in many versions), to which the king takes a liking to, to the horror of the two co-wives. They feign some illness and persuade the king to kill it as cure for them, but the royal butcher spares its life, killing another animal in its place. The calf escapes to another kingdom (Korea), grows up and marries a princess. The calf regains human shape and rescues his mother.
 This tale can also be known as "The Golden Calf", "The Calf with the Golden Horns and Silver Hooves" or "The Marriage of the Calf". Another Chinese variant, "The Pretty Little Calf", collected and published by Wolfram Eberhard, follows this narrative very closely.
Korea.
According to scholarship, the Buddhist tale of the birth of the Golden Calf "became wide-spread in Korea". The tale is also known as "Kŭmu t’aejajŏn" (金牛太子傳; "The Life of Prince Golden Calf"); "Kŭmsongajijŏn" (금송아지전; "Story of the Golden Calf").
Indonesia.
French scholar Gédeon Huet noted the tale "entered into Indonesia". One example is the story "Die Schwester der neun und neuzig Brüder" ("The Sister of the Ninety-Nine Brothers"), from the Celebes Islands. In this tale, the youngest daughter promises to give birth to 99 boys and a girl, which draws the attention of the prince. When the children are born, the sisters replace the children for inanimate and "worthless" objects. The 100 siblings are rescued by "benevolent spirits", who also give the girl a wooden horse.
Africa.
A preliminary study by researcher May Augusta Klipple, in 1938, indicated the existence of 10 variants from Africa, without specifying their region.
North Africa.
Some versions of the tale have been collected from local storytellers in many regions: two versions have been found in Morocco, one on the Northern area; some have been collected in Algeria, and one of them in the Tell Atlas area, and some in Egypt.
Two versions have been recorded by German ethnographer Leo Frobenius in his "Atlantis" book collection: "Die ausgesetzten Geschwister" and "Die goldhaarigen Kinder".
In a specific folktale from Egypt ("The Promises of the Three Sisters"), the male twin is named "Clever Muhammed", while the female twin is called "Mistress of Beauty", and both quest for the "dancing bamboo, singing water and talking lark". In the "El-Schater Mouhammed" tale, a variant from Egypt, the Brother is the hero of the story, but the last item of the quest (the bird) is replaced by "a baby or infant who can speak eloquently", as an impossible MacGuffin.
In a Tunisian version ("En busca del pájaro esmeralda", or "The quest for the emerald bird"), the older brother is the hero of the story and the singing branch is conflated with the titular emerald bird, which reveals the story at a feast with the Sultan. Another Tunisian version has been collected from oral sources under the name "M'hammed, le fils du sultan" ("M'hammed, the son of the Sultan").
In a tale from Kabylie, "La fille du forgeron" ("The Blacksmith's Daughter"), a sultan has two barren co-wives. One day, he visits a village. There, three girls are talking among themselves: the first, the daughter of the woodsman, says she can make a whole plate of couscous with only a grain of wheat; the second, the daughter of the carpenter, says she can make a beautiful burnous with only a tuft of wool; the third, the titular daughter of the blacksmith, says if she marries the sultan, she will give birth to a son with a temple of gold and the other of silver; another son with teeth of pearls and diamonds and a girl more beautiful than the sun. This tale was collected by writer Rabam Belamri from his aunt in Bougaa, near Kabylie.
Central Africa.
A version of the tale was found amongst Batanga sources, with the name "The Toucan and the Three Golden-Girdled Children", collected by Robert Hamill Nassau and published in the Journal of American Folklore, in 1915.
West Africa.
Anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons collected five variants from Cape Verde Islands, grouped under the banner of "The Envious Sisters".
In a West African tale, local chief Nyambe marries other four women, who later move to his house. There, they need to follow the rules of the head-wife, who asks the women what each would give to their husband. The youngest one answers she would bear him a "child of gold", but eventually gives birth to a twin of silver and a twin of gold.
A variant of "The child born with a moon on his breast" is mentioned by Édouard Jacouttet as hailing from "Gold Coast", an old name for a region on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa: a king named Miga has many wives, who had not born any children. A witch doctor gives a remedy for the wives: all of them give birth to animals, except one, who mothers a son "with a peculiar sign on his forehead", just like his father. This tale was first recorded in 1902 by G. Härtter, from the Ewe people in Togo.
East Africa.
Scholars have attested the presence of the tale type in African sources, such as the East African version collected by Carl Meinhof.
Southern Africa.
Scholar Sigrid Schmidt asserted that the tale type was particularly widespread in Southeast Africa. In fact, according to her studies, the tale type 707, as well as types 706, "Maiden Without Hands", and 510, "Cinderella", "found a home in Southern Africa for many generations".
A tale of the Sotho people (Basotho) with the motif of the wonderful child with a moon on his breast was recorded by Édouard Jacouttet in his book "The treasury of Ba-suto lore" (1908). The name of the tale, "Khoédi-Séfoubeng", or "Ngoana ea Khoeli-Sefubeng" translates to "The child with a moon on his breast". In this tale, local chief Boulané is known for his peculiar birthmark: a full moon on his chest.
A tale from the Venda people, "The Chief with the Half-Moon on his Chest" was compared to the Sotho tale and noted to be similar to the male character of Lal Behari Day's Bengali tale of "The Boy with a moon on his forehead".
The tale is sometimes known as "The Moon-Child" in compilations of South African foktales.
Another African variant was collected from a Xhosa storyteller named Nongenile Masithathu Zenani, recorded from a performance on September 13, 1967, in her home located in Nkanga, Gatyana District, Transkei. In this variant, titled "The Child with the Star on His Forehead", a man marries his wife's sister as another spouse to father a son. The sister gives birth to a boy "with a star on his forehead [and] the crescent of a moon on his chest, just like his father", but is replaced by a cat. The boy is saved and reared by a crab, which takes the boy back to his father's homestead to reveal the truth. Scholar Sigrid Schmidt, who studies cultures and traditions of the African continent, recognized its classification as tale type AaTh 707.
Madagascar.
According to Hering's "Malagasy Tale Index", the tale type is one of 78 international types found in both Madagascar and elsewhere. Eight variants have been collected, and its collectors noted that the tale type adapted and integrated into traditions of the country, becoming "a clan legend, an explanation for uxorilocal marriage, and a cautionary tale against polygamy".
In a Merina tale described in the book "Tantara ny Andriana eto Madagasikara" ("History of the Nobles in Madagascar"), "Andriambavirano came down from heaven", goddess Andriambavirano ("Princess of the Water") descends to earth in leaf form near a lake in the Angavo mountain. Andriamanjavona, "royal prince of double affiliation" and son of sovereign Andriandravindravina, is destined to take it, which he does by singing a magical charm. He captures the leaf and takes it home. The leaf becomes a woman named Andriambavirano and they marry. The "vadibe", the first wife, casts away Andriambavirano's three children (two boys and a girl), but they are saved by a foster father. Further sources state the three children (the elder boy named Rabingoanony, the younger boy Andrianjatovorovola and the girl Ratandratandravola) are saved by a creature called Konantitra and later become heroes and heroines. Professor Lee Haring noted the connection to the international tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children".
In another variant, "Андриамбахуака Равухимена и волшебные зерна" ("Andrianbahuaca Ravuhimena and the Magic Grains"), collected in Belu (West Coast of Madagascar), local nobleman Ravuhimena listens to three sisters; the youngest promising to give birth to five sons by him after she eats five grains. Ravuhimena marries all three sisters. When the youngest, Refaran, gives birth to five children, her sisters cast them in the forest, but they are saved by "The Man of the Forest".
French ethnologue Paul Ottino () also analysed two similar Malagasy variants with the substitution of the children for objects and the jealous queens casting the children in the water, one of them titled "Ifaranomby", published in 1955 by researcher Jeanne de Longchamps.
Réunion.
In the island of Réunion, a variant was collected from local female storyteller Germain Elizabeth, born in 1895, with the title "Kat fler d-roz" ("Four Rose Blossoms"). In this variant, for instance, the son's foster mother, a fairy, guides the hero to obtain the treasures.
Americas.
North America.
United States.
Professor and folktale collector Genevieve Massignon collected the tale titled "Les Trois Sœurs abandonnées", part of a collection of 77 stories obtained from fieldwork from Madawaska, Maine.
A few versions have been collected from Mexican-American populations living in U.S. states, such as California and New Mexico, and in the Southwest.
In a variant collected around Los Angeles area, there are two sons, one golden-haired and the other silver-haired, and a girl with a star on her forehead, while a second variant mixes type ATU 425A ("Search for The Lost Husband") with type ATU 707.
A variant was collected from a Spanish-descent fifteen-year-old named Philomene Gonzalez, from Delacroix Island, Louisiana, in 1941. In this variant, titled "Golden Star", a maiden wishes to marry the prince and to have a boy with white and golden hair and with a star on the forehead. She gives birth to this boy and a girl with the same traits the following year. An old woman replaces the children for puppies and throws them in the river, but God rescues them. This version lacks the quest for the items, and concludes when God sends them to a feast with the king. 
New Mexico.
A variant from Northern New Mexico has been collected by José Manuel Espinosa in the 1930s and published by Joe Hayes in 1998: "El pájaro que contaba verdades" ("The Bird that spoke the Truth").
A second version from New Mexico was collected by Professor R. D. Jameson, titled "The Talking Bird, The Singing Tree, and the Water of Life", first heard by the raconteur in his childhood. In a second version by R. D. Jameson, the princess promises to give birth to twin boys: one golden-haired and one silver-haired.
In another variant, first collected in 1930 by Arthur L. Campa in his thesis ("El Pájaro Verde"; English: "The Green Bird"), the quest is prompted by the siblings's foster mother, in order to ensure a life-long happiness for them.
In another variant, titled "The Three Treasures", the youngest sister promises to give birth to golden-haired children. She gets her wish and gives birth first to a girl, then to two boys in the following years. Her sisters cast the sibling in the water, but they are saved by the gardener.
Canada.
Scholarship points that the French oral repertoire of fairy tales was "well implanted" in North America and Canada, with many regions producing several variants.
A version from French Canada (Québec) was collected by professor Marius Barbeau and published in the "Journal of American Folklore", with the title "Les Soeurs Jalouses" ("The envious sisters").
Professor Vivian Labrie collected and published two other French-Canadian variants: "La Barriere verte" ("The Green Barrier") and "Les trois enfants perdus" ("The Three Lost Children"). In the first tale, three brothers marry three sisters, and the third couple is already expecting a child, to the envy of the other two. The children are cast into the other and, when adults, must seek "L'eau qui bouille, l'arbre qui chante et l'oiseau qui dit tout" ("the water that boils, the tree that sings and the bird that teils everything"). In the second tale, the youngest sister promises to give birth to triplets: a boy with the moon on the forehead, another with a star, and a girl from whose hair falls money. They are cast into the water, are rescued by a peasant couple and seek "the rose tree with all kinds of roses", from "the Garden of the End of the World", "water that boils in all colors and a blackbird that tells all truth".
Mexico.
A variant was collected from Tepecano people in the state of Jalisco (Mexico) by J. Alden Mason (Spanish: "Los niños coronados"; English: "The crowned children") and also published in the Journal of American Folklore. A version from Mitla, Oaxaca, in Mexico ("The Envious Sisters"), was collected by Elsie Clews Parsons and published in the Journal of American Folklore: the siblings quest for "the crystalline water, the tree that sings, and the bird that talks".
Central America.
Four variants have been collected by Manuel José Andrade, obtained from sources in the Dominican Republic. The tales contain male children as the heroes who perform the quest to learn the truth of their birth.
Other versions are also present in the folklore of Puerto Rico, and of Panama.
Anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons recorded a tale from Martinica ("L'arbre qui chante, l'oiseau qui parle, l'eau qui dort"; English: "The singing tree, the talking bird, the sleeping water"), Guadalupe ("De l'eau qui dort, l'oiseau dite la vérité"; English: "About the water that sleeps, the bird that tells the truth") and Haiti ("Poupée caca la: Trois sé" [soeurs] "la"). The version from Guadalupe begins like Snow White (ATU 709), a mother's envy of her daughter's beauty, and continues as ATU 707.
A version from Jamaica was collected by Pamela Colman Smith, titled "De Golden Water, De Singin' Tree and De Talkin' Bird".
South America.
Brazil.
Brazilian folklorist Luís da Câmara Cascudo stated that the tale type was brought to Brazil by Portuguese colonization. He also collected a variant from a woman named Benvenuta de Araújo, from Rio Grande do Norte. In this variant, titled "A Rainha e as Irmãs" ("The Queen and her Sisters"), the youngest marries the king and gives birth to two boys and a girl, all with a golden star. Her sisters replace them with frogs and a servant abandons them under a tree in the forest, but they are saved by a hunter. The siblings quest for the "Água-da-Vida" ("The Water of Life"). During a supper with the hunter, they invite a poor woman to join them, and she reveals she is the servant. The siblings forgive her and later reconcile with their father.
A Brazilian version has been collected by Brazilian literary critic, lawyer and philosopher Silvio Romero, from his native state of Sergipe and published as "Os três coroados" ("The three crowned ones") in his "Contos Populares do Brazil" (1894). In this version, the siblings are born each with a little crown on their heads, and their adoptive mother is the heroine.
Author Elsie Spicer Eells recorded a very similar Brazilian variant titled "The Stone Twins": the queen gives birth to twins, but the queen jealous sisters cast them in the river. They are saved by a poor fishing couple. Years later, the sisters meet the boys again and give them flowers and fruits that petrify them. The boys' foster mother is advised to seek the abode of the Sun, because he knows many things. The story continues as tale type ATU 461, "Three Hairs from the Devil's Beard", wherein the hero or heroine gets asked three questions and the Devil (or the Sun, or Father Know-All in Slavic variants) is wise enough to know the answers.
Argentina.
Folklorist and researcher Berta Elena Vidal de Battini collected eight variants all over Argentina, throughout the years, and published them as part of an extensive compilation of Argentinian folk-tales. An etiological folk tale, collected by Bertha Koessler-Ilg among the Mapuche of Argentina ("Dónde y cómo tuvieron origen los colibries", English: "How and why the colibris were created"), holds several similarities with the tale-type. Another variant ("La Luna y el Sol") has been collected by Susana Chertudi.
Chile.
Versions collected in Chile have been grouped under the banner "Las dos hermanas envidiosas de la menor" ("The two sisters envious of their youngest"): "La Luna i el Sol" ("Moon and Sun") and "La niña con la estrella de oro en la frente" ("The girl with the golden star on her forehead"). This last tale is unique in that the queen gives birth to female twins: the eponymous girl and her golden-haired sister, and its second part has similarities with "Biancabella and the Snake".
Chilean folklorist Ramón Laval () collected another variant from a twenty-year-old youth from Rancagua, titled "El Loro Adivino" ("The Divining Parrot"). In this story, three sisters, Flor Rosa, Flor Hortensia y Flor María, comment among themselves their potential marriages. The youngest, Flor María, says if she were to marry the king, she would give birth to three children with "el Sol, el Lucero y la Luna" on the front. She marries the king, her envious sisters replace the babies for animals, put them in a box and cast them in a stream. The box is found by a "hortelano" (herb-gatherer) and his wife, who raise the children. When they are twelve, the fosters parents die and Sol, the oldest, decides to seek their real parents. He meets an old lady on the road who tells him to seek "el Arbol que canta, el Agua de la vida y el Loro adivino" (the singing tree, the water of life and divining bird). As usual, only the youngest sister is successful in the quest and rescues her brothers, as well as restores a prince to his human shape and heals a blind king.
Colombia.
In a Colombian version, "The Three Sisters", after the children are cast in the water and reared by the royal gardener, the queen, their mother, comments with the gardener that the royal gardens need "a bird that speaks, an orange tree that dances, and water that jumps and leaps". The sister's brothers, Bamán and Párvis, offer to obtain the treasures, but it is their sister who finishes the quest and rescues her brothers.
Adaptations.
The tale seems to have inspired Carlo Gozzi's commedia dell'arte work "L'Augellino Belverde" ("The Green Bird"). In it, the eponymous green bird keeps company to the imprisoned queen, and tells her he can talk, and he is actually a cursed prince. The fantastic children's grandmother sets them on their quest for the fabulous items: the singing apple and the dancing waters.
The tale has also inspired Canadian composer Gilles Tremblay to compose his "Opéra Féerie L'eau qui danse, la pomme qui chante et l'oiseau qui dit la vérité" (2009).
Lithuanian professor Asta Gustaitienė () acknowledges that French-Lithuanian poet Oscar Milosz adapted a traditional Lithuanian variant titled "Auksaplaukis ir Auksažvaigždė" ("Golden-Hair and Golden Star"), by delving more into the relationships between the characters.
Some German variants were condensed and adapted into the "Märchenfilm" "Die drei Königskinder" () as an episode of film series "Sechs auf eine Streich".
Croatian folklorist Maja Bošković-Stulli argued for the presence of motifs of the tale type in the South Slavic epic ballad of "Lov lovio Teftedar Alaga": Alaga's brother is tasked with killing Alaga's barren wife, but all of a sudden she gives birth to a boy with golden hands and legs and silver hair.
Other interpretations.
It has been suggested that the tale type ATU 707 shows some approximation to the Breton legend of the Seven Saints ("Septs Saints"), in a variation from Ploubezre.
French scholar and medievalist Philippe Walter (), in his work "Gauvain, le chevalier solaire", about Arthurian character Sir Gawain, compared tales of Gawain's childhood with tale type ATU 707. He claimed that the resemblance between the description ("schéma") of tale type and Gauvain's childhood is "nette" ("clear, evident").
See also.
For a selection of tales that mix the wonder-children motif with the transformation chase of the twins, please refer to: