The Boys with the Golden Stars facts for kids

Quick facts for kids The Boys with the Golden Stars
The boys with the golden stars, by Ford, H. J., in Andrew Lang's The Violet Fairy Book (1901).
Folk tale
Name	The Boys with the Golden Stars
Also known as	Doi feți cu stea în frunte The Twins with the Golden Star
Data
Aarne–Thompson grouping	ATU 707 (The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird; The Bird of Truth, or The Three Golden Children, or The Three Golden Sons)
Region	Romania, Eastern Europe
Related	The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird; Ancilotto, King of Provino; Princess Belle-Étoile and Prince Chéri; The Tale of Tsar Saltan; A String of Pearls Twined with Golden Flowers

The Boys with the Golden Stars (Romanian: Doi feți cu stea în frunte) is a Romanian fairy tale collected in Rumänische Märchen. Andrew Lang included it in The Violet Fairy Book. An alternate title to the tale is The Twins with the Golden Star.

Synopsis

A herdsman had three daughters. The youngest was the most beautiful. One day, the emperor was passing with attendants. The oldest daughter said that if he married her, she would bake him a loaf of bread that would make him young and brave forever; the second one said, if one married her, she would make him a shirt that would protect him in any fight, even with a dragon, and against heat and water; the youngest one said that she would bear him twin sons with stars on their foreheads. The emperor married the youngest, and two of his friends married the other two.

The emperor's stepmother had wanted him to marry her daughter and so hated his new wife. She got her brother to declare war on him, to get him away from her, and when the empress gave birth in his absence, killed and buried the twins in the corner of the garden and put puppies in their place. The emperor punished his wife to show what happened to those who deceived the emperor.

Two aspens grew from the grave, putting on years' growth in hours. The stepmother wanted to chop them down, but the emperor forbade it. Finally, she convinced him, on the condition that she had beds made from the wood, one for him and one for her. In the night, the beds began to talk to each other. The stepmother had two new beds made, and burned the originals. While they were burning, the two brightest sparks flew off and fell into the river. They became two golden fish. When fishermen caught them, they wanted to take them alive to the emperor. The fish told them to let them swim in dew instead, and then dry them out in the sun. When they did this, the fish turned back into babies, maturing in days.

Wearing lambskin caps that covered their hair and stars, they went to their father's castle and forced their way in. Despite their refusal to take off their caps, the emperor listened to their story, only then removing their caps. The emperor executed his stepmother and took back his wife.

Variants

The format of the story The Boys With The Golden Stars seems to concentrate around Eastern Europe: in Romenia; a version in Belarus; in Serbia; in the Bukovina region; in Croatia; Bosnia, Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic and Slovakia.

A version of the tale, collected in the Wallachia region, from a Mihaila Poppowitsch, has an evil maid who murders the children, but at the end of the tale their father exiles the murderess instead of executing her. The source of this variant was later identified as the Banat region.

Another Romanian variant, Sirte-Margarita, can be found in Doĭne: Or, the National Songs and Legends of Roumania, by Eustace Clare Grenville Murray, and published in 1854.

In another Romanian variant, A két aranyhajú gyermek ("The Two Childen With Golden Hair"), the youngest sister promises the king to give birth to a boy and a girl of unparalleled beauty. Her sisters, seething with envy, conspire with the king's gypsy servant, take the children and bury them in the garden. When the twins are reborn as trees, they twist their branches to make shade for the king whe he passes, and to hit their aunts when they pass. After they go through the rebirth cycle, the Sun, stunned at their beauty, clothes them and gives the boy a flute.

Hungary

Hungarian scholarship classify the ATU 707 tale under the banner of "The Golden-Haired Twins" (Hungarian: Az aranyhajú ikrek).

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.

Other Magyar variant is Die zwei goldhaarigen Kinder (Hungarian: "A két aranyhajú gyermek"; English: "The Two Children with Golden Hair").

Adaptations

A Hungarian variant of the tale was adapted into an episode of the Hungarian television series Magyar népmesék ("Hungarian Folk Tales") (hu), with the title A két aranyhajú fiú ("The Two Sons With Golden Hair").