[1] Italo Calvino included a variant from Istria in his Italian Folktales.
He notes that the grateful dead man was a common medieval motif.
Once he spent it all paying off a dead man's debts, so he could be buried, and another time, he bought a slave woman, the Sultan's kidnapped daughter, and married her.
The old man was made a gardener, and the young man to carry bouquets to the Sultan's daughter, whom the Sultan had imprisoned in a tower as punishment.
The young man was reconciled with his father, who died not long after, leaving him all his wealth.