Concept
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. 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, Os meninos com uma estrelinha na testa, Чудесные дети, or Az aranyhajú ikrek. 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" (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).