The tale was collected by Imre Veres in Orosháza, in dialect, and published in 1875 in Hungarian magazine Magyar Nyelvőr [hu], Vol.

[2][3][4] A prince wanted to marry, but his father told him to wait, saying that he had not been allowed until he had won the golden sword he carried.

The third time, the queen made the same agreement for the flax, but two of the king's servants warned him, he refused everything, and when Ilonka appealed to him, he heard her.

[5] The tale is related to type ATU 408, "The Love for Three Oranges" or Die Drei Citronenjungfrauen ("The Three Maidens in the Citron Fruits").

[6][7] In some tales of the same type, the fruit maiden regains her human form and must bribe the false bride for three nights with her beloved.

[8] In an article in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, scholar Christine Shojaei Kawan separated the tale type into six sections, and stated that parts 3 to 5 represented the "core" of the story:[9] The motif of the heroine or maiden buying or bribing her way to her husband's chamber for three nights from the false bride harks back to variants of general tale type ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband", and ATU 425A, "The Animal as Bridegroom".

[25] Another Hungarian tale was collected by László Merényi [hu] with the title A nádszál kisasszony[26] and translated by Jeremiah Curtin as The Reed Maiden.

The prince asks his sister-in-law who this person could be, and she answers it is her elder sister, hidden with her two ladies-in-waiting in three reeds in a distant land.

[28] Hungarian linguist Antal Hoger [hu] collected the tale A háromágú tölgyfa tündére ("The Fairy from Three-Branched Oak Tree").

[29] He also cited two other variants: A tündérkisasszony és a czigányleány ("The Fairy Princess and the Gypsy Girl"), by Laszló Arányi, and A három pomarancs ("The Three Bitter Oranges"), by Jánós Érdelyi.

The prince decides to spare her the toil of walking on foot, and bids her climb a tree near a well, as he goes back home to fetch her a carriage.

Soon the prince comes with a carriage and notices the gypsy girl, mistaking her for the fairy maiden, but she lies that she was staying under the Sun too much and by going to the palace her skin will whiten again.

They place the chip inside a box and leave home; when they return, their house is swept clean and their bed made.

While he is away, out of another bush comes Cinderella ("Hamupepelica", in the original, which Vekerdi explains assumes an antagonistic role in Vlax tales, like that of an old witch), who sights the reed maiden.

[33][34] In a Hungarian tale collected from a teller named Palásti Annuska in Csongrád with the title Nádlányok ("Reed Girls"), a king has a son he notices to be very sullen and withdrawn.

The following morning, he finds her in that state again, and this time the reed maiden explains how the gypsy woman threw her in the well and replaced her.

[39] German philologist Heinrich Christoph Gottlieb Stier [de] collected a variant from Münster titled Die drei Pomeranzen ("The Three Bitter Oranges"): an old lady gives three princely brothers a bitter orange each and warns them to crack open the fruit near a body of water.

When he finds the lemons and cracks open each one, a maiden comes out and asks if the prince has prepared a meal for her and a pretty dress for her to wear.

[42] In another tale from Elek Benedek's collection, A fazékfedő ("The Potlid"), on their father's suggestion, the king's three unmarried sons go on a quest for wives in another country.

The three princes make their way back to their homeland, and the elder two cut open their respective apples and release a maiden that asks for water, but are given none and die of thirst.

[45] In a Hungarian tale collected from teller Szőcs Boldizsár with the title A Három Citrom ("The Three Lemons"), a king has a son.

The false bride is punished by being tied to forty horses, and the prince marries the lemon maiden in a grand ceremony.

At the end of the tale, the egg princess regains her human form and goes to a ceremony of kneading corn, and joins the other harvesters in telling stories to pass time.

[48] In a Hungarian tale collected from a source in Potyondon, Rábaköz with the dialectal title Léán, aki sé anyátú, sé apátú nem született ("The Girl, never born from father, nor mother"), a prince has been cursed by his parents to search for a girl who has not been born by neither father, nor mother.

The prince follows the instructions and fetches the eggs from the nest, cracking open the first: a maiden comes out of it and asks for water, but he cannot give any and he dies.

The prince tells him about the old woman's words, and the old man gives him a ball of yarn to throw and follow, for it will direct him to a tree with a golden cockatoo's nest with three eggs inside.

Finally, he reaches a spring on the shade of a willow tree, and cracks open the last egg, releasing a maiden seven thousand times more beautiful than the previous two.

They decide to kill the maiden and replace her as the prince's bride: they shove her down into the spring and place the gypsy daughter atop the tree.

The prince returns with a wedding party and notices the maiden has darker skin, which the gypsy girl explains it was caused by the sun and the wind.

The gypsy girl feigns illness and says she must lie on a bed made of the wood of the pear tree to be cured.