A String of Pearls Twined with Golden Flowers
Encyclopedia
A String of Pearls Twined with Golden Flowers or The Golden Twins is a Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

n fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

 collected by Petre Ispirescu
Petre Ispirescu
Petre Ispirescu was a Romanian printer and publicist.-Biography:Born in Bucharest, his parents wanted him to be a priest and he was entrusted to study with a monk at the Metropolitan Church, after he studied with a priest at the Doamna Bălaşa Church....

 in Legende sau basmele românilor
Legende sau basmele românilor
Legende sau basmele românilor is a collection, in several volumes, of Romanian folktales, first published in 1874 by Petre Ispirescu.-Contents:...

.

Synopsis

A young and handsome king, whenever he could leave his duties, liked to wander the world. He passed by the castle of an emperor and heard his three daughters speak. They all wished they could marry him; the oldest said that she would keep his house clean; the second, that she would make his house like two golden apples; the third, that she would bear him golden twins. He married the third, and she became pregnant, but his old favorite, a gypsy slave, envied the queen. When the children were due, the king had to go to war. He was greeted back with two puppies, which he was told the queen had borne. He made the queen a slave, and the gypsy girl his queen.

In reality, the queen had borne two golden babies, but the gypsy girl had killed them and buried them in the vineyard. Two firs grew from their graves. At night, they turned into children again and went to nurse from their mother, which consoled her. The king liked the trees but the gypsy hated them, and she made him cut them down. The king had two beds made from them. In the night, the beds talked to each other; the one carrying the gypsy did not like it, but the one carrying their father liked it better. The gypsy girl heard it and had them burned. Two sparks flew into bran that a ewe ate, and the ewe gave birth to two lambs with golden fleeces. The king saw these lambs and loved them. The gypsy girl had them killed and assigned the queen the task of washing out their entrails.

A crow caught some of the entrails and would not give it back without some cornmeal; the miller would not give her cornmeal without a chicken; a hen would not give her chick without corn; but a kind farmer gave her corn, the hen gave her a chick, the miller gave her cornmeal, and the crow gave her back the piece -- but more had washed away while she did this, and she could not retrieve it.

The entrails caught on a snag, and when the waters retreated, they became a girl and a boy. The boy cut down osiers with his hatchett and the girl spun on her distaff, and people came to look at their beauty. The king was so delighted that he took them home, and the gypsy girl did not dare do anything to them. One day she broke her pearl necklace and it could not be rethreaded; the pearls escaped everyone's fingers. The king asked the children to do it, and they could. While they did it, the boy told the king the story of their lives (with a refrain of "o, a string of pearls twined with golden flowers"). The king had the gypsy girl stoned to death and restored his queen.

Commentary

The opening sequence, of a woman promising to bear fabulous children and their kidnapping, is a common fairy tale motif, but in most such tales -- Ancilotto, King of Provino
Ancilotto, King of Provino
Ancilotto, King of Provino is an Italian literary fairy tale written by Giovanni Francesco Straparola in The Facetious Nights of Straparola....

, The Three Little Birds
The Three Little Birds
The Three Little Birds is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 96. The story is originally written in Low German.It is Aarne-Thompson type 707, the dancing water, the singing apple, and the speaking bird....

, The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird
The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird
The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird is an Italian fairy tale collected by Thomas Frederick Crane in Italian Popular Tales...

, The Wicked Sisters
The Wicked Sisters
The Wicked Sisters is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki.Ruth Manning-Sanders included it, as "The Queen's Children", in A Book of Kings and Queens.-Synopsis:...

-- the children are abandoned
Child abandonment
Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting them. Causes include many social and cultural factors as well as mental illness. An abandoned child is called a foundling .-Causes:Poverty is often a...

, rather than murdered. The villains are overwhelmingly the heroine's jealous sisters, or her mother-in-law, rather than a rival as in this tale.

The transformation chase described here is found in another Romanian tale of this type, The Boys with the Golden Stars
The Boys with the Golden Stars
The Boys with the Golden Stars is a Romanian fairy tale collected in Rumanische Märchen. Andrew Lang included it in The Violet Fairy Book.-Synopsis:...

. Even in this tale, however, the villain of the piece is the mother-in-law. The Chinese The Pretty Little Calf
The Pretty Little Calf
The Pretty Little Calf is a Chinese fairy tale collected by Wolfram Eberhard in Folktales of China.-Synopsis:An official without children left home to take up his post. His first wife said she would offer him gold on his return; the second, silver; the third, a son. He was pleased with the third...

has the child murdered and restored in animal form; only the transformation to and from the title calf occurs, but it is more closely related to this tale in the villains, who are the first and second wife, the heroine being an official's third wife.
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