The Three Golden Children refers to a series of folktales related to the motif of the calumniated wife, numbered K2110.1 in the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. The name refers to a cycle of tales wherein a woman gives birth to children of wondrous aspect, but her children are taken from her by jealous relatives or by her mother-in-law, and her husband punishes her in some harsh way. Only years later, the family is reunited and the jealous relatives are punished.El-Shamy, Hasan (2004). Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Oriented Tale-Type Index. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 385. According to folklorist Stith Thompson, the tale is "one of the eight or ten best known plots in the world".
Alternate names for the tale type are The Three Golden Sons, The Bird of Truth, , , or .
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.
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"Kerbelytė, Bronislava. "The Development of the Tales of Magic and the Problem of Their Origin". In: Fabula 52, 1: 88, doi:https://doi.org/10.1515/fabl.2011.007 (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).Goldberg, Christine. "Söhne: Die drei goldenen Söhne (AaTh/ATU 707)" In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Online: Band 12: Schinden, Schinder – Sublimierung (Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales). Edited by Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Heidrun Alzheimer, Hermann Bausinger, Wolfgang Brückner, Daniel Drascek, Helge Gerndt, Ines Köhler-Zülch, Klaus Roth and Hans-Jörg Uther. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 832. https://www.degruyter.com/database/EMO/entry/emo.12.183/html 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),El-Shamy, Hasan. "Individuation. Motif J1030.1§". In: Jane Garry and Hasan El-Shamy (eds.). Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature. A Handbook. Armonk / London: M.E. Sharpe, 2005. p. 265. 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.).Latry-Vergniaud, Marie-Claire. "Le Pardon des Sept-Saints à Vieux-Marché en Plouaret (Côtes d'Armor)". In: Entre Orient et Occident - La Légende des Sept Dormants. Garona - Cahiers du CECAES n° 18. Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, déc. 2007. pp. 134–135. .
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:Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 242. (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.
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.Aranda, Daniel. "Anthropologie et narratologie croisées: à propos des héros de conte folklorique". In: Pratiques, 151–152 | 2011, 89–100. Online since 16 June 2014, connection on 11 April 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/pratiques/1795; doi:https://doi.org/10.4000/pratiques.1795 In the same vein, French folklorist Marie-Louise Thénèze noted that the narrative occurs across two generations: the first one, represented by the calumniated wife/mother (the "passive hero"), and the second one, with her children as the "true protagonists" or "active heroes".Teneze, Marie-Louise(1970). "Du Conte Merveilleux Comme Genre". In: Arts et traditions populaires 18 (1-3): 15 (footnote nr. 7). doi:10.2307/41001552
The Persecuted Wife and Jealous Sisters
noted that the mother of the wonder children may be persecuted by her own elder sisters, by a step-relative (step-sister or step-mother), or by her mother-in-law.Coxwell, C. F. Siberian And Other Folk Tales. London: The C. W. Daniel Company, 1925. p. 433. French comparativist Emmanuel Cosquin suggested that, in a hypothetical original form of the tale, the three sisters all wished to marry the king.Cosquin, Emmanuel. Contes populaires de Lorraine comparés avec les contes des autres provinces de France et des pays étrangers, et précedés d'un essai sur l'origine et la propagation des contes populaires européens. Tome I. Paris: Vieweg. 1887. p. 190. German-Chilean philologist Rodolfo Lenz, complementing Cosquin's study, remarked that the elder sisters promise practical things, like cooking a grand meal, weaving such a garment for the king, sewing a special piece of clothing, etc. Similarly, French ethnologist , in regards to a Kabylian variant, noted that the sisters' jealousy originated from their perceived infertility, and that their promises of grand feats of domestic chores were a matter of "capital importance" to them.Lacoste-Dujardin, Camille. Le conte kabyle: étude ethnologique. Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2003 . p. 36. . Renato Aprile also remarked that in the "almost majority" of the variants, the three sisters are seamstresses.
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.Elwin, Verrier. Folk-tales of Mahakoshal. [London]: Pub. for Man in India by H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1944. pp. 189–193. In other variants, the calumniated woman is buried up to the torso or immured as punishment for her false crime.
In the same vein, French ethnologue , 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.Ottino, Paul. "Le thème indo-malgache des enfants abandonnés aux eaux". In: Paul Ottino (ed.). Études sur l'Océan Indien: Les cahiers de l'Université de la Réunion. Saint Denis de la Réunion. 1984. pp. 187–189.
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. (Elioxe ed. Mickel Jr., Béatrix ed. Nelson) 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.Stokes, Maive. Indian fairy tales, collected and tr. by M. Stokes; with notes by Mary Stokes. London: Ellis and White. 1880. p. 276.
The mother's prediction