[9][10] The quest for the e Bukura e Dheut is a very popular and frequent motif in Albanian folktales:[11][12] the princely hero must search for or rescue the Earthly Beauty, even going into her mystical underworld palace.
She may be a good spirit or (more often) evil, with magical powers the derive from her dress,[15][16] and lives in the underworld, where her palace is guarded by a three-headed dog,[1] a kuçedra and all sorts of other weird and wonderful creatures.
[22] The quest for the e Bukura e Dheut is a very popular and frequent motif in Albanian folktales:[11][12] the princely hero must search for or rescue the Earthly Beauty, even going into her mystical underworld palace.
[31] French comparativist Emmanuel Cosquin, in his folklore analysis, cited her as La Belle de la Terre (the French translation of her name), in a tale collected by Holger Pedersen:[32] a youth, son of a hunter, touches four pieces of flesh hanging from a tree; they reform into the Beauty of Earth, who explains she has been a captive of a "dark elf" for 10 years.
[42] Folklorist Anton Berisha published another Albanian language tale with the character, titled "Djali i vogël i padishajt dhe e bukura e dheut që bahesh skile".
[44] A character named "Beauty of the Land" appears in a fairy tale variant of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index 707, The Three Golden Children (The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird), collected in the village of Zagori, 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.
[45] In the tale The Twin Brothers (tale type ATU 303, "The Twins or Blood Brothers"), published (as unsourced) by Andrew Lang in his The Grey Fairy Book and compiled by scholar Georgios A. Megas in his book Folktales of Greece, an old woman reveals that the infertility of a fisherman's wife can be cured by ingesting the flesh of a gold-fish, and after some should be given to her she-dogs and mares.
[48] In another tale collected by Georgios A. Megas, The Navel of the Earth, a dying king makes his sons promise to wed his three sisters to whoever passes by their castle after his death.